Breathing in smoggy air over time can significantly raise a person's chances for dangerous blood clots, new research shows.
“What’s striking from our study is the increase in serious blood clotting disease with exposure to some of the most common types of pollutants in the air we breathe,” said study lead author Pamela Lutsey.
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“It’s clear that air pollution's health effects extend beyond respiratory diseases and impact blood clot risks even in otherwise healthy individuals without prior respiratory issues," noted Lutsey, a professor of public health at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
The study involved data on the health of more that 6,600 people living in communities across the United States.
Participants were tracked for 17 years and data was also obtained on each person's daily exposure to four major forms of air pollution: fine particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, nitrogen oxides and ozone.
Chronic exposure to high levels of fine particulate matter was tied to a 43% increased risk that a person would experience a clot over the course of the study.
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Fine particulate matter is often produced by major polluting events such as forest fires, the researchers pointed out.
Chronic exposure to airborne nitrogen dioxide was also linked to a near-tripling of the odds for a blood clot, Lutsey's team found, and high levels of nitrogen oxides in the air raised clot risks 2.3-fold.
Only ozone exposures showed no link to clotting risk.
Blood clots are linked to strokes and what's known as venous thromboembolisms (VTEs). VTEs can include deep vein thrombosis (DVT), clots that form in veins (often within the legs), or pulmonary embolisms, which involve blood clots traveling to the lungs.
According to Lutsey, the new findings give even more urgency to calls by health experts to tighten U.S. air quality regulations.
The findings were published Dec. 12 in the journal Blood.