Fine Particulate Matter and Health Effects

On November 3 and 4, Chad Weldy gave a few presentations on campus. Chad is a PhD student in the Dept. of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences at the School of Public Health, University of Washington. He graduated with his BS from Huxley in 2007 with an emphasis in Environmental Toxicology; I was glad to welcome him back.

Chad had a busy scheduled. He lectured in my Toxicology 1 class and was the Huxley Seminar Speaker for the week. He was also interviewed on, The Joe Show, a local radio show on KGMI . The second part of the show has Chad's interview.

All of the talks were related to his PhD work on the human health effects of a specific type of air pollution, fine particulate matter (PM2.5). He focused on the impacts of diesel exhaust (a source of PM2.5) on cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular related mortality. With the proposed coal terminal in north Whatcom County and a potential increase in diesel trains as a result, the talk was very quite relevant to current issues here. What was interesting to me was that studies support increased myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) when PM2.5 was high, which can occur when there are weather inversions and sources of PM2.5 (for example, from wood stoves or diesel exhaust). Even more interesting is that a recent epidemiological study found an increased incidence of heart attacks during air pollution episodes, but the authors found a decrease in heart attacks following the episode. They concluded that the air pollution may have shifted the timing of the heart attacks forward in people who would have had heart attacks despite the air pollution episode. As Chad stated, though, this is of debate in the scientific community right now. What doesn't appear to be of debate is that older people are more at risk of heart attacks during acute exposures to PM2.5 from air pollution.

The Huxley Seminar was recorded and is available on Youtube here. Great work Chad!

Additional Resources:

• Dockery et al. 1993. An Association between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities. New England Journal of Medicine: 329:1753-1759
• Katsouyanni et al. 2001. Confounding and Effect Modification in the Short- Term Effects of Ambient Particles on Total Mortality: Results from 29 European Cities within the APHEA2 Project. Epidemiology:12(5).
  
• Tonne et al. 2009. Traffic particles and occurrence of acute myocardial infarction: a case–control analysis. Occup. Environ. Med.:66:797–804
• Bhaskaran et al. 2009. Effects of air pollution on the incidence of myocardial
  infarction. Heart: 95:1746–1759.

Read more here: http://www.bellinghamherald.com/2011/11/03/2256496/wwu-to-host-air-pollution-lecture.html#storylink=cpy