Experts are now increasingly confident that the impact of air pollution worse for health care quality. Not just limited to respiratory health, but also other parts of the body suffers. Poor air quality is proven to relate closely to heart disease, blood vessels, and brain.
Health experts from the American Heart Association says, the link between heart disease and air pollution more and more evident since they issued the study in 2004.
In research published last month in May 2010, the cardiologist was also found links between air pollution and various other diseases, such as stroke, arrhythmia, heart attack, and vascular disease.
Although the individual risk depends on risk factors that may be owned by each person, such as smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity, but the effect of air pollution is still high.
The most troubling, according to experts, is the fine particles of soot that comes from burning fuel oil, diesel or wood burning, which are found from the plant, generating energy, or motor vehicles.
"These fine particles can get into the lungs," said Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. The experts said the fine particles that can cause inflammation in the lungs that can spread to blood vessels, destroying, and making them more vulnerable to the narrowing or blockages in blood vessels.
Another theory says the particles are so small it will be absorbed into the blood or to blood vessels and cause damage directly. The polluted air is also triggering abnormal nervous system activity and influence on the heart and blood vessels.
Some research also clearly prove the link between air pollution and asthma, especially in children. Other studies mentioned, the lungs of children living in environments with poor air conditions are less able to grow and function properly, and its effects will be long term, even a lifetime.
This should be a concern to people living in big cities, like Jakarta. Therefore, the level of air pollution in this city is still very high. Transportation sector contributes about 70 per cent level of pollution due to the lack of environmentally friendly mass transportation.
