Is Pollution Exposure a New Risk Factor for CVD?
From the recognition that cardiovascular tissues are highly vulnerable to pollutant exposure, it follows that the role of environmental exposures should be routinely considered in evaluating CVD risk. Smoking is necessarily considered as a major risk factor, but exposures to PM, arsenic, or metals may be important factors as well. Because exposure to endemic pollutants such as ambient aerosols and pollutant gases is positively associated with heart disease, it could be argued that in the general population exposure to pollutants such as PM is a significant determinant of the overall CVD risk as well. Classic CVD risk factors vary in prevalence among different populations, and, for a given set of risk factors, absolute risk varies among different population and age groups. Further studies are, therefore, required to determine whether the risk attributable to pollutant exposure is transportable across populations of different ethnic origins and age groups or whether it is predictive of r
