Breathing in polluted air has clear consequences for the lungs, but scientists have revealed that it may also advance the years at which British people develop chronic health conditions, causing some ailments to develop two years ahead of schedule.
The latest research from Sun Yat-sen University examined health outcomes across nearly 400,000 individuals in the United Kingdom, leading scientists to conclude that atmospheric pollution is a “silent accelerator that robs individuals of their healthiest years”.
The results of the comprehensive analysis suggest that the air Britons breathe in is systematically shortening the period of good health they might otherwise enjoy.
What's more, the implications could stretch across every major organ system in the body.
Air pollution could be shortening the number of healthy years Britons would otherwise enjoy
|GETTY
Professor Hualiang Lin and his team drew on 15 years of medical records from the UK Biobank to track the occurrence of 78 health conditions among respondents who enrolled between 2006 and 2010.
The data set encompassed more than 900,000 hospital admissions, and those studied ranged in age from 39 to 70 years when they volunteered.
Factors such as smoking habits, alcohol intake and socioeconomic circumstances were all accounted for.
Professor Lin noted that “the most striking finding was the sheer breadth and severity of the impact from air pollution exposure”, and that the responses of both neurological and psychiatric conditions to pollutant exposure were acute.
These include schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, dementia, and dystonia.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
To quantify precisely how pollution “steals” healthy years from an individual, the team employed an Accelerated Failure Time model.
Their calculations show that had Britain met the 2021 World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines, some 539,000 years of illness could have been prevented among the study cohort.
Reducing particle pollution would have delayed conditions such as hypertension, bone fractures, and diabetes by at least six months on average.
Air pollution is closely linked to conditions like hypertension and asthma
|GETTY
The most substantial gains would have come from delaying common ailments like high blood pressure, asthma and thyroid conditions.
Doctor Amy Ronaldson of King’s College London, who has previously conducted research using IK Biobank data but was not part of this study, offered her assessment of the findings.
She observed: “This new study goes further by suggesting that pollution may also accelerate the onset of many diseases.”
Our Standards: The GB News Editorial Charter