Helps in Coping with Air Pollution

AIR POLLUTION has become more and more of a problem as cities and industries keep increasing in size. According to some authorities, New York city has the most air pollution in the United States, 88 percent of its air being polluted. Philadelphia is said to come next with 78 percent, and Pittsburgh and Los Angeles follow with 75 percent polluted air. The two main factors causing air pollution are motor vehicles and industry. Both are increasing in number​—last year for the first time more than 100 million autos were registered in the United States.

Just what does polluted air do to humans? For one thing, studies show that it can slow down the action of the cilia​—hairlike projections on cells that line our air passages and that aid in sweeping germs and dirt out of the respiratory tract. Pollution can even cause loss of cilia, constriction of the airways and swelling or excessive growth of the cells that form the lining of our air passages. Then again, air pollution makes breathing more difficult. And the main effects of some pollutants seem to be to weaken the body’s defenses against assorted viruses and bacteria.

The effects of air pollution range from sluggishness to deadly illnesses. A team of researchers, reporting in the American Journal of Public Health, has found a close association between regular exposure to air pollution and asthma and eczema in children under fifteen. Some laboratory tests have linked certain air pollutants with lung cancer, pneumonia and emphysema. And heart diseases can be aggravated, since the heart’s burden is increased by carbon monoxide, which can reduce the oxygen content of the blood.

Statistics underscore the effect that air pollution has on health. Thus deaths due to lung cancer among nonsmokers in rural areas are one-tenth that in city areas, and similar deaths among smokers living in the rurals are half that of smokers living in the cities. Severe lung ailments among London’s postmen have been found to be from 25 to 50 percent more prevalent than among postmen living in small towns. Authoritative researchers state that deaths from bronchitis would be reduced from 25 to 50 percent if air pollution in general were reduced to levels that prevail in city areas that have clean air.​—Medical World News, November 20, 1970.

What can you do about it? Researchers believe there are ways that you can cope with air pollution to some extent.

Vitamins May Help

A number of reports tell of the effectiveness of vitamins A and E as aids in counteracting the effects of air pollution. For example, a symposium on pollution and lung biochemistry in June 1970 was sponsored by Battelle-Northwest Research Institute and attended by some 200 scientists. Reporting on the symposium, Chemical and Engineering News of June 29, 1970, said: “Vitamins appear to play a much more vital role in safeguarding lungs from the ravages of air pollutants than has been generally realized.” It was pointed out that vitamins A and E “help maintain lung health​—vitamin E may protect vitamin A from destruction by air pollutants, while A directs formation of healthy cells in the lining of the lung.”

Scientific researchers have long known that vitamin A is important for healthy mucous membranes, cell walls and cilia. In fact, one report in the New York Times of October 25, 1966, told about scientist Dr. Umberto Saffiotti, who found that vitamin A inhibited the development of lung cancer in tests on laboratory animals. In the tests, he subjected more than one hundred hamsters to benzopyrene, a widespread product of combustion found in smoke and auto exhaust. Of 53 animals receiving just air pollutant, 16 got lung cancer. Of 60 animals protected by vitamin A, only five developed tumors, and four of these were nonmalignant.

Some researchers believe that vitamin E may prevent respiratory diseases caused by air pollution. Dr. D. B. Menzel, nutrition and food technology manager, told a scientific conference in Miami: “Laboratory tests on rats show that those fortified with vitamin E live twice as long as the unfortified rats in an atmosphere which simulates smog concentrations like those found over Los Angeles or Tokyo on a bad day.”

Menzel went on to say: “This research suggests a definite protective effect of fat antioxidants, such as vitamin E, against biological damage by photochemical air pollutants such as ozone and nitrous dioxide.”

Researchers thus believe that vitamin E helps body tissues in coping with a lack of oxygen. It evidently produces better circulation of oxygen through the blood vessels.

Many nutritionists and researchers also believe that vitamin C is of value in combating the effects of air pollution. An experiment performed at the University of California revealed that plant cells fortified with vitamin C were helped to overcome the damage from smog. Vitamin C is believed to neutralize the effects of poisons.

Then again, “some smog poisons may be counteracted by vitamin B,” reports the volume Our Poisoned Earth and Sky. “Desiccated liver [rich in vitamin B] is reported to have, in one week, completely restored the vitality of a man who had been severely debilitated for a year following poisoning by fumes from a plastics manufacturing process.”

Of course, not all authorities agree that these vitamins are helpful in combating air pollution, but many believe that the evidence increasingly supports the view that they are of benefit.

Care for Your Liver

Of all your body organs, your liver plays a key role in detoxifying the many poisons to which man is generally subject, whether they come via the digestive tract or via the respiratory tract. So it pays to take care of your liver. Doctors who specialize in natural methods of healing believe that certain foods are especially beneficial for the liver. For example, they mention artichokes, brown rice, finely grated carrots, dried pears, mangoes and radishes. “The radish is the best possible liver medicine that we are likely to have about the house,” says one of these doctors, who believes that it helps the liver if taken frequently and in small quantities.

Vitamin C is also often mentioned as valuable for liver health. For example, an experiment carried out at Cairo University involved injecting mice with carbon tetrachloride. The researchers found that none of the mice that received large doses of vitamin C died. However, five of the mice receiving carbon tetrachloride without vitamin C died after seventy-two hours. According to these researchers, one way that vitamin C protected the mice was by preventing the death of liver cells.

Nutritionist Adelle Davis mentions protein and vitamin C as being valuable in protecting the liver. She says: “Liver damage caused by various industrial poisons​—benzene, nitrobenzene, leaded gasoline, and numerous hydrocarbons—​has been corrected by diets high in protein and vitamin C.”

Dr. Klaus Schwarz of the National Institute of Health believes that vitamin E is important for good liver health. Tests showed that rats deprived of vitamin E suffered liver degeneration.

Other Helps

Various authorities mention other helps in coping with air pollution. For example, an aid to better breathing, and to better health in general, is to see that you drink enough water. Proper breathing requires quite a bit of moisture, and so, especially if you have any respiratory condition, make certain that your body gets enough water.

Another thing you can do to protect your lungs is to try to keep a healthful relative humidity: About 40 or 50 percent. When the humidity is too low, the mucous membranes dry out and are then likely to be irritated by air pollutants.

A specific food item pointed to by some nutritionists as being valuable as an antidote to pollution is garlic. According to research in Germany, it is said to dilate the blood vessels and help to detoxify the entire body.

Important also to building up your resistance to pollution are getting enough rest and sleep, and learning to relax if you tend to be tense much of the time.

Some persons with respiratory conditions find that an air filter is helpful, though it requires an outlay of money. Many air filters are small machines that circulate room air through a thin bed of activated charcoal, on the same principle as gas masks. However, some machines advertised as helping to control air pollution in homes generate as a by-product ozone, which is an air pollutant itself. Thus the New York Times recently carried a news item headed “‘CLEAN-AIR’ DEVICE EMITS POLLUTANT. Sold for Homes, Precipitator Also Produces Ozone.” So one who wishes to buy an air-filtering device ought to investigate before purchase.

Then again, some persons living in large cities where air pollution is very high take weekend trips into the country once in a while. Spending a day and a half or two days in a small village, on a farm or in the woods, may do you a world of good, even if you do not have a heart or lung condition.

The ever-growing size of the pollution problem makes plain that it will never be solved under the present system of things. But some of the foregoing suggestions may prove helpful in your personal battle against the effects of air pollution on your health.