It can cause lung cancer and other health problems like heart disease. Most exposure to second-hand smoke happens in the home and is particularly dangerous for children. Read more about passive smoking. If you smoke, smoking outside , well away from the home can help reduce exposure for others.
And stopping smoking reduces the risk for both you and your loved ones. Find out how to stop smoking. Brown, K. Outdoor particulate matter exposure and lung cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Environmental health perspectives. Skip to main content. How can air pollution cause cancer? Some people face higher risk, including children, the elderly, people with lung and heart disease and diabetes, people with low incomes, and people who work or exercise outdoors.
Check the air quality index forecast for the day and limit your activity if pollution levels are high. Avoid exercising along heavily traveled highways regardless of the overall forecast. As individuals, we can take steps to limit our contributions to local pollution sources by not burning wood or trash and not idling vehicles, especially diesel engines.
It's also critically important to join with organizations like the Lung Association working to ensure that the U. Here's a quick way to help right now: join us in calling on our members of Congress to protect the Clean Air Act. This landmark law is responsible for much of the progress our nation has made to clean up particle pollution. Working through the U. Environmental Protection Agency EPA and state and local governments, we've reduced emissions from power plants and retired dirty diesel engines, just two of the steps that have lowered the particle pollution in the air we breathe.
Still, we aren't done. Many areas in the nation have too much of this recognized carcinogen in the air they breathe. Unfortunately, some members of Congress are trying to block some of the EPA's work to limit dangerous air pollution.
Congress is working on crucial bills to fund the federal government, but these members have added unrelated policy provisions, called riders, that would block EPA pollution limits that will help clean up particle pollution. Riders don't belong in funding bills. Congress needs to pass bills that are free of these harmful provisions, including riders that block lifesaving air pollution protections.
Join us in urging members of Congress to protect our health from air pollution and oppose riders to funding bills. There are two quick ways to make your voice heard. Particle pollution forms through two separate processes—mechanical and chemical. Mechanical processes break down bigger bits into smaller bits with the material remaining essentially the same, only becoming smaller.
Dust storms, construction and demolition, mining operations, and agriculture are among the activities that produce particles. Tire, brake pad and road wear can also create particles. Combustion of carbon-based fuels generates most of the fine particles in our atmosphere.
Burning wood in residential fireplaces and wood stoves as well as wildfires, agricultural fires and prescribed fires are some of the largest sources. Wildfires are growing, particularly in the Mountain West because of climate change. These processes create about 36 percent of fine particles.
Chemical processes in the atmosphere create most of the tiniest fine and ultrafine particles in the air. Burning fuels, other human activity and natural sources emit gases that form particles in the air. These gases can oxidize and then condense to become a particle of a simple chemical compound. Or they can react with other gases or particles in the atmosphere to form a particle of a different or of multiple chemical compounds. Particles formed by this latter process come from the reaction of elemental carbon soot , heavy metals, sulfur dioxide SO 2 , nitrogen oxides NO x , ammonia NH 3 and volatile organic compounds with water and other compounds in the atmosphere.
With so many sources of particles, researchers want to know if some particles pose greater risk than others. Researchers are exploring possible differences in health effects of the sizes of particles and particles from different sources, such as diesel particles from trucks and buses or sulfates from coal-fired power plants. Recent studies have tried to answer this question. So far, the answers are complicated.
Each particle may have many different components. The building blocks of each can include several biological and chemical components. Bacteria, pollen and other biological ingredients can combine in the particle with chemical agents, such as heavy metals, elemental carbon, dust and secondary species like sulfates and nitrates.
These combinations mean that particles can have complex effects on the body. Some studies have found that different kinds of particles may have greater risk for different health outcomes. Other studies have identified the challenges of exploring all the kinds of particles and their health effects with the limited monitoring across the nation. The best evidence shows that having less of all types of particles in the air leads to better health and longer lives.
Air pollution affects lung cancer survival. Thorax, Air pollution as a risk factor for type 2 diabetes. Toxicological Sciences. Association between ambient air pollution and diabetes mellitus in Europe and North America: Systematic review and meta-analysis. Environ Health Perspect. Effect of air pollution control on life expectancy in the United States: An analysis of U. Counties for the period from to Chronic exposure to fine particles and mortality: An extended follow-up of the Harvard Six Cities Study from to EPA, , Section 6.
Low-concentration PM2. Estimating causal effects of local air pollution on daily deaths: Effect of low levels. Moderate increases in ambient PM2. J Occp Environ Med. Skip to main content. Particulate Matter PM Pollution.
Contact Us. Health Effects The size of particles is directly linked to their potential for causing health problems.
Exposure to such particles can affect both your lungs and your heart.
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