Environmental pollution and cardiorespiratory diseases

There is suffcient evidence that associate the exposure to a variety of environmental air pol lutants, such as nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulate matter, to respiratory diseases, such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmo nary disease, lung cancer and respiratory infections, as well as cardiovascular diseases. The air in the urban environment is made of a complex mixture of chemicals and carcino gens, derived mainly from combustion sources. However, quantifying the magnitude of pollutants on health presents considerable challenges due to the limited availability of information on exposures to air pollution. The association between air pollution, mainly par ticulate matter (PM) and ozone exposure, and cardiopulmonary diseases has long been recognized. There is evidence coming from time series studies of hospital admissions for respi ratory diseases, which indicates thatadmissions for chronic obstructive lung diseases, asthma and pneumonia are more frequent on days with high air pollution concentrations. These associations are usually observed in association with PM, O3 and NO2.Moreover, in last decades, several studies have showed that hospital admissions for cardiovascular diseases were more frequent on days with high concentrations of PM and ozone. Different studies found associations between ambient air pollution and hospital admissions for various cardiovascular dis eases, such as ischaemic heart disease, congestive heart failure and dysrhythmia including congestive heart failure. The aim of this chapter is to give an update of these relationship with the latest evidence from the scientifc literature.