Transcript
Breathing Highway Air increases blood pressure? Let's play Headline Hype or Real Science. Here's the study, published in a good journal just today. They had 16 people driving during rush hour traffic in Seattle. On one day, they outfitted the cars for the hepa filter, and the other day, nada. But it was blinded, so the participants didn't know what they were getting. They measured blood pressure both during the drive and for 24 hours afterwards. And the results were a bit scary. The drivers without the hepa filters had 4.5 millimeters HG blood pressure higher than the ones with the heparation. That's around as much as you would get from eating a high sodium diet when you're susceptible to sodium. And a lot of that effect lasted for 24 hours, at which point they stopped measuring. But the really crazy thing here is that they were only measuring blood pressure, and we know that air pollution has effects on immune function, cognitive function that leads to greater incidence of Alzheimer's disease and neurodegenerative disease, lung problems, immune issues, I said immune didn't die, so many different areas. So most cars don't actually have hepifilters, but it would be a good one. good idea to upgrade to that and test to air in your home and see that you're not getting a similar sort of issue at home, especially if you live in a big city or close to a highway.
Additional notes
Do you have a hepa filter in your car? at home? Its best to combine it with a carbon filter to tackle a lot of the noxious gases. Many studies have shown that there IS NO SAFE LEVEL of air pollution. Risk starts to go up from 0. Note: this study was fairly small and short, so these exact results definitely need to be replicated 📚Study- doi: 10.7326/M23-1309 #science #health #airpollution #cars #edutok
References
- Blood pressure effects of roadway traffic-related air pollution exposure in vehicles / Annals of Internal Medicine study. DOI: 10.7326/M23-1309.
- University of Washington News source article.
- Linked background sources from draft: cardiovascular disease, asthma, lung cancer, death, earlier diesel exhaust experiment.