WHAT RESPIRATORY DlSEASE IS CAUSED BY COMMUNITY AIR POLLUTION?
The effects of air pollution should be viewed in two different groups: healthy people and people with chronic heart or lung disease. Most studies demonstrating harmful air pollution effects have been done on chronic disease patients and the very elderly, two groups more susceptible to air pollution than the general population. The most notorious example of air pollution in the United States occurred in 1948 in Donora, Pennsylvania. Weather conditions caused the already heavily polluted air to stagnate for several days. Out of a population of 14,000, twenty died and over 6,000 became ill. All of the deaths and most of the serious illness occurred in people with underlying heart or lung disease. Various epidemiologic studies in the United States, Canada, and England have associated increased levels of air pollution with: • an increase in the hospitalization rate of children with preexisting asthma • diminished lung function tests in children when compared with tests in unpolluted areas
