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Ozone Linked to Deadly Lung Disease

Emily Sohn, Discovery News

After factoring in all the variables, analyses showed that people who lived in the smog-filled Los Angeles basin were 50 percent more likely to die from lung disease than people with no ozone exposure at all.

In New York City, the chances of dying from lung disease went up about 25 percent. In Seattle, one of the most ventilated cities in the country, ozone upped the risk by about 13 percent. Results appeared this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Fewer than 10 percent of the population dies from lung disease each year. But the effects of ozone are significant enough to cause concern, said Douglas Dockery, an environmental epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

"This has very significant implications in terms of policy-setting," Dockery said. "The standard is really based on what the maximum is for a given day, but this suggests that there might be a need for average annual limits."

Staying inside is helpful for particularly high-ozone days, Thurston added. But it's not a realistic long-term strategy.

"You can run, but you really can't hide," he said. "You have to breathe the air, and you have to go outside. The air should be cleaner. That's the message."

Related Links:

American Cancer Society

HowStuffWorks.com: Lung Disease

Discovery Earth Pub

Discovery Earth Live