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Home > Archive > Pathology > October 2004 > Heart-attack risk triples in traffic, study finds : BOSTON : By JEFF DONN : is Health
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Heart-attack risk triples in traffic, study finds : BOSTON : By JEFF DONN : is Health
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| From: "John O-Gorman" <jcogorman@sympatico.ca>
To: <getsmart-l@list.web.net>
Subject: [getsmart-l] Heart-attack risk . . .
Date: Thu 10/21/04 04:25 PM
"That would make traffic to blame for 8 per cent of their heart
attacks." Therefore, it certainly seems to link to Smart Growth,
public transit and curbing sprawl, don't you think?
Heart-attack risk triples in traffic, study finds
By JEFF DONN
UPDATED AT 4:28 PM EDT Thursday, Oct 21, 2004
BOSTON -- Does heavy traffic make you feel all sweaty and tight in the
chest? It could be more than road rage: It could be a heart attack.
People prone to a heart attack face triple their usual risk as a
result of traffic, whether they are in cars, on bicycles or riding
mass transit, according to a German study published today in The New
England Journal of Medicine.
The researchers put most of the blame on polluted air.
Studies have long tied respiratory disease to air pollution. More
recent evidence over the past decade shows that microscopic particles
in the air also hurt the heart and blood vessels, probably even more
than the lungs.
The researchers interviewed 691 heart attack survivors around
Augsburg, a German city of about 260,000. They were questioned about
their activities on the four days leading up to their heart attack. In
the end, they were three times more likely to have a heart attack
within an hour of driving, riding or bicycling than they were during
their activities away from traffic. That would make traffic to blame
for 8 per cent of their heart attacks.
"We didn't expect it to be that strong," said lead researcher Annette
Peters, at the GSF National Research Centre in Neuherberg, Germany.
"There are two things that are surprising: that the effect is so
immediate -- you see it in one hour -- and then also the size."
Previous studies have mostly suggested that pollutants cause gradual
heart and circulatory damage over years of exposure. The invading
particles may ratchet up the body's immune defences, contributing to
the blood-vessel blockages of heart attacks. However, the immediate
risk seen in the German study may stem from the ability of tiny air
contaminants to trigger a reflex that disturbs the heart's rhythm,
researchers said.
Earlier studies have linked heart trouble to stress -- the kind that
commuters encounter daily in traffic. The German researchers
acknowledged that stress and noise might have contributed to the
higher risk of a heart attack, but they saw the effect even in the
quieter, more relaxing setting of a bus or train ride.
"The clever contribution of the Peters study was the exposure to
traffic, not exposure to cars," said Dr. Peter Stone, a Harvard
Medical School cardiologist who wrote an accompanying commentary. "The
road-rage phenomenon, which might be related to cars, is probably much
less of a feature in riding bicycles or buses."
Associated Press
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