Subscribe to Canada Free Press for FREE

Respiratory System and Health

Effects of urban living, polluted cities, hazardous to health

MEDICAL HAZARDS OF CITY LIVING

By Dr. W. Gifford Jones

February 24, 1991

What is the price families pay, medically, for living in the city? Physicians and sociologists know that the rapid pace of urban life makes people more susceptible to peptic ulcers, hypertension, nervous breakdowns and physical assault. Now we are being warned of another hazard. A report from California reveals that our children's lungs are being attacked from an unsuspected source. And what about adults who become "suddenly breathless"?

Dr. Russell Sherwin, a professor of pathology at the University of Southern California, reports that city living has become a truly breathtaking experience.

As related in The Medical Post, Dr. Sherwin conducted autopsies on young people killed in automobile accidents in Los Angeles County. To his surprise 80 per cent of the victims had significant lung tissue abnormalities. A shocking 27 per cent already suffered from severe lung lesions.

For years researchers have known that air pollution affects physical performance. But it's believed this is the first study that has shown how severely pollution can damage young lungs.

Dr. Sherwin admits that some youths between the ages of 14 to 25 were cigarette and marijuana users. But this fact could not account for the severity of lesions found.

Sherwin remarked as he looked at the pathology slide of one victim, "No 14 year old boy should have lesions like this one. This is a major injury showing destruction of lung tissue, thickening of the alveolar wall, fibrosis and inflammation all above and beyond the magnitude that we ordinarily associate with smoking."

Several lesions were found, but the most significant one was situated at the centriacinar region, the critical entrance to the lungs. If this entry is damaged other openings leading from it will suffer decreased air flow. The result? A domino effect, in which all the smaller units of lung tissue are deprived of air and more susceptible to infection and other disorders.

According to Sherwin's crystal ball, a grim future awaited these youths had they lived another 10 to 20 years. They were in essence, he said, "on their way to running out of lung."

He added, "We don't know how much lung reserve we have, but there is no way you can have this kind of damage and not be on the road to serious depletion of lung reserve. If one in four people in this age group has this kind of damage, what's going on out there?"

This finding shouldn't come as a great surprise. How can we expect otherwise when tons of pollutants are poured into the air day after day. According to the South Coast Air Quality Management District, Los Angeles, known as the "Super Bowl of Smog" experiences an oil spill every month as massive as the Exxon Valdez disaster. Every day 9,000 tons of pollutants are sent skyward. This includes 1,246 tons of reactive organic gases, 1040 tons of nitrogen oxides and 5,430 tons of carbon dioxide. On two out of every three days of the year Los Angeles smog exceeds the U.S. federal health standards.

Dr. Peter G. Tuteur of Washington University School of Medicine described another frightening scenario to the World Congress on Diseases of the Chest, which met recently in Boston. He presented 20 patients who became "suddenly breathless". Over one-third of these patients had never smoked, had no prior history of asthma, lung diseases or allergies and were mostly young and healthy. So what had happened?

One man who had never been sick a day in his life was delivering a truckload of vegetables to market when he inhaled something that left him gasping for air. Others remembered becoming suddenly breathless when they encountered fumes from diesel motor fire, perfumes, scented soaps, aerosol sprays, powdered chlorine and aniline glues.

"We used to think" Dr. Tuteur explained, "if you breathed a toxic element, you either died or got better. But that's not true. Exposures for less time than it takes to cross the Mississippi River can result in serious illness that can persist."

Tuteur claimed his 20 patients were not suffering from asthma, but had what he labeled, "twitchy airways". These behave like a loaded weapon in the chest with a sensitive trigger that can be discharged at any time by the right pollutant. And if we continue to pour tons of pollutants into the atmosphere more people of all ages will suffer from twitchy, diseased airways, which in turn cause the "suddenly breathless" syndrome.

I'm sure rural readers are saying," Thank God, I don't live in Los Angeles, New York or Toronto. But what happens when both urban and rural people travel to polluted cities around the world? More about this potential problem next week.




W. Gifford-Jones M.D is the pen name of Dr. Ken Walker graduate of Harvard. Dr. Walker's website is: Docgiff.com

My book, �90 + How I Got There� can be obtained by sending $19.95 to:

Giff Holdings, 525 Balliol St, Unit # 6,Toronto, Ontario, M4S 1E1

Pre-2008 articles by Gifford Jones
Canada Free Press, CFP Editor Judi McLeod