What is more harmful: dirty air or cigarette smoke?

It's pretty hard to believe, but annually becauseMore than five million people die in the world's polluted air. Perhaps the air is ruining your health right now, because in urban air there is often a high content of carbon dioxide, methane, ozone and other harmful substances. According to scientists, included in the list of toxic substances for people, ozone can cause the development of emphysema. This disease destroys the lungs, leads to shortness of breath, wheezing and coughing, thereby increasing the likelihood of sudden death. But how bad are things? Is dirty air worse than, say, cigarette smoke?

It was previously believed that the most commonThe cause of emphysema is smoking. However, over time, doctors from around the world began to notice that a terrible disease develops even in non-smokers. Scientists suspected that the destruction of lung tissue can also occur due to dirty air. To check whether this is true or not, they conducted a rather large experiment, which lasted from 2000 to 2018.

How dirty is the air in cities?

The first thing scientists decided to go around different statesUSA and measure the concentration of nitric oxide and ozone, which are some of the main air pollutants. According to the researchers, if the level of these substances is more than 100 parts per billion, the human body is seriously harmed. But, to their surprise, in most cities the level of ozone is only 10-25 parts per billion, and nitrogen is even less.

The dirtiest city in the world - Tianying

The collected data was compared with the results.computed tomograms of the heart and lungs of 15,000 people. It turned out that the symptoms characteristic of emphysema were indeed observed even in non-smokers. How exactly the calculations were carried out is unknown, but in the end, scientists announced that even a small concentration of ozone could cause lung damage. The harm of nitric oxide was less pronounced - the study showed that its concentration decreases every year.

Harmful urban air

Thus breathing ozone-contaminated airfor ten years, people do the same harm to themselves as with thirty-year-old cigarette smoking. According to scientists, in the future polluted air will become even more dangerous - the average global air temperature rises almost every year, which indicates the onset of global warming. And with global warming, we recall that on the Earth there is an accumulation of greenhouse gases, including hazardous ozone.

People die from dirty air. How to deal with this?

Do you know what else can cause lung damage? It sounds pretty scary, but human lungs can get damaged even during Chinese therapy - acupuncture. Such an unpleasant situation was recently encountered by a 79-year-old resident of Portugal, who came to the session and, due to the inexperience of the therapist, went home with a punctured lung. The woman had to go through many difficulties, but in the end everything ended well.

Now, let's argue - how clean do you think the air you breathe is? Does it affect your health? Write your answers, as always, in the comments or in our Telegram chat.