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Published on Leave a comment on One Course of Antibiotics And Your Microbes

New research found that one course of antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, clindamycin, amoxicillin or minocycline) had varying effects on the gut and saliva microbes, with ciprofloxacin having a negative and disruptive effect on gut microbiome diversity up to 12 months. While the microscopic communities living in the mouth rebound quickly, just one course of antibiotics can disrupt the gut microbiome for months - with amoxicillin the least and ciprofloxacin the most (up to a year).The researchers stressed that for these reasons "antibiotics should only be used when really, really necessary. Even a single antibiotic treatment in healthy individuals contributes to the risk of resistance development and leads to long-lasting detrimental shifts in the gut microbiome."

The scary part is that Americans typically take many courses of antibiotics throughout life. And people with conditions such as chronic sinusitis typically take many more than average. From Medical Xpress:

One course of antibiotics can affect diversity of microorganisms in the gut

A single course of antibiotics has enough strength to disrupt the normal makeup of microorganisms in the gut for as long as a year, potentially leading to antibiotic resistance, European researchers reported this week in mBio, an online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. In a study of 66 healthy adults prescribed different antibiotics, the drugs were found to enrich genes associated with antibiotic resistance and to severely affect microbial diversity in the gut for months after exposure. By contrast, microorganisms in the saliva showed signs of recovery in as little as few weeks.

The microorganisms in study participants' feces were severely affected by most antibiotics for months, said lead study author Egija Zaura, PhD, an associate professor in oral microbial ecology at the Academic Centre for Dentistry in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In particular, researchers saw a decline in the abundance of health-associated species that produce butyrate, a substance that inhibits inflammation, cancer formation and stress in the gut.

"My message would be that antibiotics should only be used when really, really necessary," Zaura said. "Even a single antibiotic treatment in healthy individuals contributes to the risk of resistance development and leads to long-lasting detrimental shifts in the gut microbiome."

It's not clear why the oral cavity returns to normal sooner than the gut, Zaura said, but it could be because the gut is exposed to a longer period of antibiotics. Another possibility, she said, is that the oral cavity is intrinsically more resilient toward stress because it is exposed to different stressors every day.

The investigators enrolled healthy adult volunteers from the United Kingdom and Sweden. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a full course of one of four antibiotics (ciprofloxacin, clindamycin, amoxicillin or minocycline) or a placebo. The researchers, who did not know which medication participants took, collected fecal and saliva samples from the participants at the start of the study; immediately after taking the study drugs; and one, two, four and 12 months after finishing the medications....

Researchers found that participants from the United Kingdom started the study with more antibiotic resistance than did the participants from Sweden, which could result from cultural differences. There has been a significant decline in antibiotic use in Sweden over the last two decades, Zaura said.

In addition, fecal microbiome diversity was significantly reduced for up to four months in participants taking clindamycin and up to 12 months in those taking ciprofloxacin, though those drugs only altered the oral cavity microbiome up to one week after drug exposure. Exposure to amoxicillin had no significant effect on microbiome diversity in either the gut or oral cavity but was associated with the greatest number of antibiotic-resistant genes.

Gut bacteria. Credit: Med. Mic. Sciences Cardiff Univ, Wellcome Images

Published on Leave a comment on Nonprescription Cold Meds That Don’t Work

When suffering from cold symptoms or acute sinusitis, there are some products that work for nasal congestion, and thick phlegm and mucus. Mucinex works well for thick phlegm and mucus, and Sudafed containing pseudoephedrine works for nasal congestion. However, that Sudafed is behind the pharmacy counter, can only be bought in limited quantities, and one must show a driver's license and sign for it before getting any. There are also many other easily available nonprescription cold products containing phenylephrine. But this latest research shows clearly that products containing phenylephrine don't work at any dose. Bottom line: when buying a decongestant, get the stuff containing pseudoephedrine that is behind the pharmacy counter. From Forbes:

The Popular Over-The-Counter Cold Medicine That Science Says Doesn't Work

The market for over-the-counter cold medicines is worth $8 billion annually, with a hefty portion of that amount spent on drugs marketed as decongestants....According to University of Florida researchers, the oral decongestant phenylephrine simply doesn’t work at the FDA-approved amount found in popular non-prescription brands, and it may not even work at much higher doses. Their conclusions were presented in an editorial in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice....

The study of 539 adults lasted one week and failed to find a dose of phenylephrine within the 10 mg to 40 mg range that was more effective than a placebo in relieving nasal congestion. The approved Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dose is 10 mg every four hours for “temporary relief of nasal congestion.” Consequently, the UF researchers are asking the FDA to remove oral phenylephrine from the market.

“We think the evidence supports that phenylephrine’s status as a safe and effective over-the-counter product should be changed,” said Randy Hatton, Pharm.D., a clinical professor of pharmacotherapy and translational research. “We are looking out for the consumer, and he or she needs to know that science says that oral phenylephrine does not work for the majority of people.”

Back before methamphetamine cooks started buying up non-prescription decongestants to brew crank, all of us were able to buy effective decongestants right off the store shelf without a problem. The active ingredient in those meds, coveted by meth smurfers and cold sufferers alike, was pseudoephedrine. But then federal legislation was enacted to restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine-containing products (Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act of 2005) and they were moved behind the pharmacy counter. You can still buy them, assuming you know they’re available, by presenting identification and signing a statement saying you’re not buying the drugs for nefarious purposes.

To fill the store-shelf void, drug companies substituted the already-FDA approved ingredient phenylephrine for pseudoephedrine. Several studies testing phenylephrine against a placebo produced results that question its effectiveness, and eventually the FDA started to at least listen to critics in the research community asking for greater scrutiny. The latest research adds a boldface exclamation point to the criticism. Whether the FDA will choose to act on the findings is another matter, but the science is there.

The number of brands containing phenylephrine are too many to list, but the majority of on-the-shelf oral decongestants list it as an active ingredient, including many multi-symptom products. Instead of buying products containing phenylephrine, the researchers suggest cold and allergy sufferers choose a pseudoephedrine product from behind the counter or nasal steroids for allergic rhinitis.

Published on Leave a comment on Exposure to Animals In First Year of Life and Lower Risk of Asthma

Labrador Retriever image Other studies have found this same association - that living with a dog or farm animal has health benefits such as lower risk of allergies and asthma. In a Swedish nationwide study looking at over a million children, the association between early exposure to dogs and farm animals and the risk of asthma was evaluated. All children born in Sweden from January 1, 2001, to December 31, 2010 were included. The researchers found that exposure to dogs and farm animals during the first year of life reduces the risk of asthma in children at age 6 years. From Science Daily:

Early contact with dogs linked to lower risk of asthma

A team of Swedish scientists have used national register information in more than one million Swedish children to study the association of early life contact with dogs and subsequent development of asthma. This question has been studied extensively previously, but conclusive findings have been lacking. The new study showed that children who grew up with dogs had about 15 percent less asthma than children without dogs.

A total of more than one million children were included in the researchers' study linking together nine different national data sources, including two dog ownership registers not previously used for medical research...."Earlier studies have shown that growing up on a farm reduces a child's risk of asthma to about half. We wanted to see if this relationship also was true also for children growing up with dogs in their homes. Our results confirmed the farming effect, and we also saw that children who grew up with dogs had about 15 percent less asthma than children without dogs.

"These kind of epidemiological studies look for associations in large populations but do not provide answers on whether and how animals could protect children from developing asthma. We know that children with established allergy to cats or dogs should avoid them, but our results also indicate that children who grow up with dogs have reduced risks of asthma later in life. Thanks to the population-based design, our results are generalizable to the Swedish population, and probably also to other European populations with similar culture regarding pet ownership and farming" says Catarina Almqvist Malmros, senior author on the study, Paediatrician at Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital and Professor in Clinical epidemiology at Dept of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm.

Published on Leave a comment on Chemicals Remain On New Clothes

Research for a doctoral thesis found that thousands of chemicals (from manufacturing the textiles and clothes) remain on finished clothes, and many of these remain after washing. Bottom line: wash new clothes before wearing! From Science Daily:

Toxins remain in your clothes

Thousands of chemicals are used in clothes manufacturing. Researchers at Stockholm University have examined if there are chemicals in the clothes we buy as well. Several substances related to health risks were identified and not even organic cotton was a guarantee for non-toxic textiles. In a new thesis 60 garments from Swedish and international clothing chains have been tested. An initial analysis found thousands of chemicals in the clothes and around a hundred chemicals were preliminary identified. Several of the substances were not on the producers' lists and are suspected to be by-products, residues or chemicals added during transport.

"Exposure to these chemicals increases the risk of allergic dermatitis, but more severe health effect for humans as well as the environment could possibly be related to these chemicals. Some of them are suspected or proved carcinogens and some have aquatic toxicity," says Giovanna Luongo, PhD in Analytical Chemistry at Stockholm University.

Depending on occurrence, quantity, toxicity and how easily they may penetrate the skin, four groups of substances were chosen for further analysis. The highest concentrations of two of these, quinolines and aromatic amines, were found in polyester. Cotton contained high concentrations of benzothiazoles, even clothes made from organic cotton.

The researchers washed the clothes and then measured the levels of chemicals. Some of the substances were washed off, with a risk of ending up in aquatic environments. Others remained to a high degree in the clothes, becoming a potential source of long-term dermal exposure. It is difficult to know if the levels of these harmful substances are hazardous, and what effects chemicals in our clothes can have in the long run.

Published on Leave a comment on Nanotubes Found in Lungs of Children

Scary study results showing what may scientists have long feared - that carbon nanotubes are being released into the environment and getting into our bodies with unknown health effects. The researchers point out that fine particulate matter (PMs) from air pollution penetrate lower airways and are associated with adverse health effects even with low concentrations and that carbon nanotubes are part of this fine particulate matter. Here they discussed how catalytic converters may convert carbon monoxide into carbon nanotubes during the process of converting carbon monoxide into safer emissions. The problem with carbon nanotubes is that they are so small - so small that we inhale them, but can't cough them out. Carbon nanotubes can be envisioned as one-atom thick sheets of carbon atoms that have been rolled into tubes with diameters as small as 1 nm and lengths up to several centimeters. And scientists are concerned that they may have inflammatory effects on the lungs (similar to what asbestos does). Of course the long-term studies have not yet been done....Because once again, technological advances have outpaced any safety sudies. The researchers studied the lung cells of children with asthma, but it is unclear whether the carbon nanotubes had any effect on or caused their asthma.

Two additional areas of serious concern regarding carbon nanotubes: (1) many tires now contain carbon nanotubes, and with abrasion (wear and tear) the nanotubes are released into the air (air pollution), and (2) the tire crumb fill used in synthetic turf fields. People, including athletes and developing children, are playing on these fields and whatever is in the tires (toxic chemicals, lead, etc. and carbon nanotubes) is being released into the air, and inhaled and ingested by those playing and exercising on the synthetic turf. From Futurity:

Nanotubes Found in Lungs of French Kids

Cells taken from the airways of Parisian children with asthma contained man-made carbon nanotubes—just like the kind found in the exhaust pipes of vehicles in Paris. The researchers report in the journal EBioMedicine that these samples align with what has been found elsewhere in US cities, in spider webs in India, and in ice cores. The research in no way ascribes the children’s conditions to the nanotubes, says Rice University chemist Lon Wilson, a corresponding author of a new paper describing the work. But the nanotubes’ apparent ubiquity should be the focus of further investigation, he adds.

“We know that carbon nanoparticles are found in nature,” Wilson says, noting that round fullerene molecules like those discovered at Rice are commonly produced by volcanoes, forest fires, and other combustion of carbon materials. “All you need is a little catalysis to make carbon nanotubes instead of fullerenes.”

Carbon nanotubes (the long rods) and nanoparticles (the black clumps) appear in vehicle exhaust from tailpipes of cars in Paris.

 

 

 

 

 

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Carbon inside a lung cell vacuole takes the form of nanotubes (rods) and nanoparticles (black clumps). Credit: Both photos Fathi Moussa, Paris-Saclay Univ.

 

A car’s catalytic converter, which turns toxic carbon monoxide into safer emissions, bears at least a passing resemblance to the high-pressure carbon monoxide, or HiPco, process to make carbon nanotubes, he says. “So it is not a big surprise, when you think about it,” Wilson adds.

The team—led by Wilson, Fathi Moussa of Paris-Saclay University, and lead author Jelena Kolosnjaj-Tabi, a graduate student at Paris-Saclay—analyzed particulate matter found in the alveolar macrophage cells (also known as dust cells) that help stop foreign materials like particles and bacteria from entering the lungs. 

The cells were taken from 69 randomly selected asthma patients aged 2 to 17 who underwent routine fiber-optic bronchoscopies as part of their treatment. For ethical reasons, no cells from healthy patients were analyzed, but because nanotubes were found in all of the samples, the study led the researchers to conclude that carbon nanotubes are likely to be found in everybody.

The study notes but does not make definitive conclusions about the controversial proposition that carbon nanotube fibers may act like asbestos, a proven carcinogen. But the authors reminded that “long carbon nanotubes and large aggregates of short ones can induce a granulomatous (inflammation) reaction.”

The study partially answers the question of what makes up the black material inside alveolar macrophages, the original focus of the study. The researchers found single-walled and multiwalled carbon nanotubes and amorphous carbon among the cells, as well as in samples swabbed from the tailpipes of cars in Paris and dust from various buildings in and around the city. “The concentrations of nanotubes are so low in these samples that it’s hard to believe they would cause asthma, but you never know,” Wilson says. “What surprised me the most was that carbon nanotubes were the major component of the carbonaceous pollution we found in the samples.”

The nanotube aggregates in the cells ranged in size from 10 to 60 nanometers in diameter and up to several hundred nanometers in length, small enough that optical microscopes would not have been able to identify them in samples from former patients. The new study used more sophisticated tools, including high-resolution transmission electron microscopy, X-ray spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and near-infrared fluorescence microscopy to definitively identify them in the cells and in the environmental samples.

“We collected samples from the exhaust pipes of cars in Paris as well as from busy and non-busy intersections there and found the same type of structures as in the human samples,” Wilson says. “It’s kind of ironic. In our laboratory, working with carbon nanotubes, we wear facemasks to prevent exactly what we’re seeing in these samples, yet everyone walking around out there in the world probably has at least a small concentration of carbon nanotubes in their lungs,” he says. The researchers also suggest that the large surface areas of nanotubes and their ability to adhere to substances may make them effective carriers for other pollutants.

Published on Leave a comment on Chemicals Migrate From Containers to Food

 More and more studies are finding negative health effects from hormone disrupting chemicals (which we are exposed to every single day, and subsequently which are in all of us), such as parabens, phthalates, Bisphenol-A (BPA), and chemical substitutes for BPA such as Bisphenol-S (BPS) and BPF.  The last post had some recent studies that looked at health effects of hormone disrupting chemicals. The following article points out some of the many difficulties in developing packaging that is safe and doesn't leach endocrine disrupting chemicals or even other chemicals.

We generally focus on hormone disrupting chemicals in plastic bottles or metal cans (which their epoxy liners), but other parts of packaging may (or may not) also leach chemicals. Some leaching may occur with the adhesives used to seal foil pouches, and the polypropylene inner layers also may leach stabilizers. Glass jars are OK, but jar lids may be equipped with BPA-based epoxy liners and/or gaskets that leach plasticizers. Greaseproof wrappers may leach poly- and perfluorinated compounds used to make some packaging greaseproof (may occur if packaging is from India and China - because it is legal to import into USA and use).  Some ceramic kitchenware - the glazes used in artisanal pottery and older mass produced ceramics may leach toxic metals, especially lead. There can even be "offset migration" which occurs when the printed outer surface of food packaging transfers chemicals to the inner food-contact surface.  Whew...

Bottom line: Even BPA alternatives (labeled BPA-free) should be viewed as the same as BPA (as endocrine disruptors) - in other words, currently there are no good BPA substitutes. Read labels and try to minimize plastics in personal care products (e.g., lotion, fragrances) and your food if possible (e.g., choose glass, stainless steel, wax paper, aluminum foil). This is especially important during pregnancy.  Don't microwave food in a plastic dish or container, or covered with plastic wrap. Eat fresh foods and try to avoid soda cans and other packaged, processed foods, especially in plastic containers or metal cans. From Environmental Health Perspectives: A Hard Nut to Crack: Reducing Chemical Migration in Food-Contact Materials

When we buy food, we’re often buying packaging, too. From cherries to Cheez-It® crackers, modern foods are processed, transported, stored, and sold in specialized materials that account, on average, for half the cost of the item, according to Joseph Hotchkiss, a professor in Michigan State University’s School of Packaging. Consumer-level food packaging serves a wide range of functions, such as providing product information, preventing spoilage, and protecting food during the journey from production to retail to pantry, fridge, or freezer. That’s why food producers lavish so much time and money on it.

But what happens when these valuable and painstakingly engineered containers leach chemicals and other compounds into the food and drink they’re designed to protect? Such contamination is nearly ubiquitous; it happens every day, everywhere packaged food is found, with all common types of packaging, including glass, metal, paper, and plastic. Even as awareness of the issue grows, large-scale solutions that are scientifically and financially viable remain out of reach. The challenges in reaching them are many.  ...continue reading "Chemicals Migrate From Containers to Food"

Published on Leave a comment on Forget the Pills, Eat the Vegetables Instead

An article that discusses why supplements containing large doses of antioxidants, or beta-carotene, or even vitamin megadoses  doesn't work, and can even cause harm, while eating actual foods such as fruits and vegetables has many health benefits. This is what a number of the studies I've been posting also found (especially with health benefits from eating fish and not from fish oil). go ahead and throw out the megadose supplements, and instead eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Remember fruits and vegetables contain a complex mix of nutrients and feed our microbial communities, as well as having microbes on them. From Medical Xpress:

Forget the antioxidant pills; just stick with veggies

Why just stick to eating fruits and veggies when you can get an extra boost from supplements that put good things like antioxidants into a handy pill? And that seems like it should be a good idea. If the antioxidants that occur naturally in our food, like broccoli and carrots, are good for us, a supplement with the same thing must also be good. But that's not quite true.

Antioxidants are touted as protectors of our health because they eliminate free-radicals that damage molecules in cells and tissues by grabbing electrons from them, making those molecules, in turn, unstable....On this basis, a group of scientists proposed in 1981 the creation of a nutritional supplement to fight free-radicals. They reasoned that since many observational epidemiological studies had shown that people who eat lots of vegetables are at lower risk of colon cancer, heart disease and many other bad conditions, then the "active" ingredient should be identified and put into a pill. They thought that it must be beta-carotene, which helps make carrots orange, because it's an antioxidant.

But in the late 1980s, two intervention trials, one in Seattle and the other in Finland, started....For the Seattle trial, approximately 18,000 men and women were randomized in 1988 to receive either a tablet containing beta-carotene or a tablet containing no active ingredient, which is the famous placebo. The plan was to follow the men and women for 10 years; the researchers hypothesized they would observe a lower lung cancer risk in the beta-carotene tablet group, hopefully much lower. But the opposite happened and the trial had to be stopped early because the beta-carotene group suffered significantly more cases of lung cancer than the placebo group. The same thing was seen in the Finland trial. Importantly, the amount of beta-carotene in the tablet was much higher than occurs naturally in the body in both trials.   ...continue reading "Forget the Pills, Eat the Vegetables Instead"

Published on Leave a comment on New Report About Harms of Endocrine Disruptors

A report released this week by the Endocrine Society states that the list of health problems that scientists can confidently link to exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals has grown to include: diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, reproductive and developmental problems, thyroid impairment, certain reproductive cancers, and neurodevelopmental problems such as decreased IQ. This statement (report) is based on the summaries of 1300 studies on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), and it also adds support to the idea that even minute doses of these chemicals can interfere with the activity of natural hormones, which play a major role in regulating physiology and behavior. The statement also stated that most industrial chemicals released into the environment—numbering in the tens of thousands—have never been tested for endocrine-disrupting potential. EDCs include such common chemicals as bisphenol A (BPA), phthalates, parabens, some pesticides (e.g., atrazine), flame retardants, some persistent organic pollutants, and dioxins.

Where are endocrine disruptors found? People are exposed to chemicals with estrogenic effects in their everyday life, because endocrine disrupting chemicals are found in low doses in thousands of products. Many plastic products, including those advertised as "BPA free", have been found to leach endocrine-disrupting chemicals (the substitute chemicals are no better than BPA, and may be worse). Examples: plastic food containers which then leach into foods, linings of metal beverage, formula, and food cans, soft plastic toys, dental sealants, consumer goods, receipts, personal care products that contain parabens or phthalates (e.g., found in lotions,sunscreens, fragrances), household products (such as cleaning products, vinyl shower curtains) , cars (that new car smell in car interiors), etc. Americans love plastics, but there is a serious human health cost.

NOTE: To minimize EDC exposure - try to avoid plastic food and beverage containers. Instead try to use glass, stainless steel, or ceramics. Eat as many unprocessed and fresh foods as possible. Use cloth shower curtains. Read labels and avoid BPA, phthalates, parabens. Avoid fragrances. Don't use or buy non-stick pans, stain and water-resistant coatings on clothing, furniture and carpets. When buying new furniture, check that it doesn't have added fire retardants.

Of course any public discussion of the harms from endocrine disrupting chemicals, as well as the newly released Endocrine Society report, is drawing sharp criticisms from the chemical industry (especially the American Chemistry Council, the largest trade group for the chemicals industry). Of course. We all know that the lobbying efforts by the chemical industry to suppress and deny the evidence of harm to humans from EDCs has been and will continue to be massive. Sadly, but at this point EDCs are found in almost everyone on earth. More about the report, from Science Daily:

Chemical exposure linked to rising diabetes, obesity risk

Emerging evidence ties endocrine-disrupting chemical (EDC) exposure to two of the biggest public health threats facing society -- diabetes and obesity. EDCs contribute to health problems by mimicking, blocking or otherwise interfering with the body's natural hormones. By hijacking the body's chemical messengers, EDCs can alter the way cells develop and grow. Known EDCs include bisphenol A (BPA) found in food can linings and cash register receipts, phthalates found in plastics and cosmetics, flame retardants and pesticides. The chemicals are so common that nearly every person on Earth has been exposed to one or more.  ...continue reading "New Report About Harms of Endocrine Disruptors"

Published on Leave a comment on Shrink Your Brain With An Unhealthy Diet

Over and over studies find that a person's diet is linked to health and diseases, and now a study finds that an unhealthy diet is linked to shrinkage of the brain, specifically the volume of the left hippocampus. The biggest effects on the hippocampus are found with both greater consumption of an unhealthy diet and lower consumption of a healthy diet.  The hippocampus is a brain structure associated with both learning and memory, as well as mood regulation, and is specifically implicated in depression. In dementia and Alzheimer's disease, the hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage.

So....you want to protect your hippocampus from shrinkage. The researchers themselves  suggest that the effects may be reversible, and suggest "dietary interventions to promote hippocampal health". Once again, a healthy diet means lots of plant-based foods (for example, a Mediterranean based diet with lots of fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, berries, seeds), and decreasing a Western-style diet with highly processed foods, low fiber, lots of meat, fat,  and refined sugars. From Medscape:

Unhealthy Diet May Shrink the Brain

Consumption of an unhealthy Western diet characterized by meat, hamburgers, chips, and soft drinks, may reduce the volume of the left hippocampus, whereas a healthy diet of fresh vegetables and fish may increase hippocampal volume. In a study of more than 250 individuals, investigators found that during a period of 4 years, there was a difference of more than 200 cubic millimeters in hippocampal volume between individuals who ate a healthy diet and those who consumed an unhealthy diet.  ...continue reading "Shrink Your Brain With An Unhealthy Diet"

Published on Leave a comment on Millions of Deaths Annually Due to Air Pollution?

A recent post (Air Pollution Can Kill You) discussed recent research that found that air pollution is linked to an overall increase in death rates, especially cardiovascular disease. But how many deaths each year are linked to air pollution? Recent research suggests that outdoor air pollution, mostly by fine particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), leads to 3.3 million premature deaths per year worldwide, predominantly in Asia. The number one cause  worldwide is residential energy use such as heating and cooking, (India ,China, and the developing world).

But surprisingly agriculture or farming is number 2 worldwide. How can that be? Well, farms produce ammonia from fertilizer and animal waste. That ammonia then combines with sulfates from coal-fired power plants and nitrates from vehicle exhaust to form the soot particles that are the big air pollution killers. The United States had about 54,905 deaths in 2010 from soot and smog. Power plants and traffic (vehicle emissions) are big sources of the air pollution linked to deaths in the USA. From Medical Xpress:

Millions of premature deaths tied to air pollution

Outdoor air pollution leads to more than 3 million premature deaths per year, primarily in Asia, according to a letter published online Sept. 16 in Nature.

Johannes Lelieveld, Ph.D., from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, and colleagues used a global atmospheric chemistry model to investigate the link between premature mortality and seven emission source categories in urban and rural environments. The researchers found that outdoor air pollution, mostly by fine particulate matter with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), leads to 3.3 million premature deaths per year worldwide, predominantly in Asia. The largest impact on premature mortality globally comes from residential energy use such as heating and cooking, prevalent in India and China. In the United States, emissions from traffic and power generation are important. Agricultural emissions make the largest relative contribution to PM2.5 in the eastern United States, Europe, Russia, and East Asia, with the estimate of overall health impact depending on assumptions regarding particle toxicity. 

...continue reading "Millions of Deaths Annually Due to Air Pollution?"