SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4 News) - A new study shows even small amounts of smoke and air pollution can substantially increase the risk of death from heart attack and stroke.
The study was published in a journal of the American Heart Association and was authored in part by Dr. Arden Pope at Brigham Young University. The study illustrates the dramatic impact cigarette smoke and pollution has on our health.
Researchers know smoking, second hand smoke, and air pollution increase your risk of heart attack, heart failure, and stroke. What scientists didn't know until now, was what level of exposure creates the greatest risk.
"The biggest incremental jumps in risk for cardiovascular disease occurs at relatively low levels of exposure… and then levels off at high levels of exposure,” Dr. Pope says
The study found smoking three or less cigarettes a day increases the risk of cardiovascular disease by 64 percent. Smoking a half pack a day resulted in an increase of 79 percent, and a full pack resulted in a 100 percent increase.
The numbers also hold true for second hand smoke and air pollution. Breathing moderate to high levels of polluted air or secondhand smoke, amounting to less than a cigarette a day, still increases cardiovascular disease by 20 to 30 percent.
"The risk goes up very steep at second hand smoke and air pollution, remains fairly steep going up through light smoking, and then levels off,” Dr. Pope says.
So living along the Wasatch Front where the air pollution is not always the best could also be damaging to your health.
"Our pollution isn't super bad, it's not good, it's just moderately polluted and so there is an increased risk of cardiovascular disease due to the exposure we have along the Wasatch Front,” Doctor Pope says.
Whether the risk levels stay the same for lung disease and lung cancer is currently being studied and so far that does not appear to be the case.
