Research progress on air pollution health hazard mechanism of Peking University

[ Instrument Network Instrument R & D ] In the middle of the last century, there were serious air pollution incidents in Los Angeles, USA. With strict pollution control measures, the annual average concentration of fine particulate matter in Los Angeles, namely PM2.5, has fallen to 12 µg / m3. Today China is experiencing severe air pollution. In 2013, the PM2.5 concentration in Beijing was as high as 90 µg / m3. The huge contrast between Los Angeles and Beijing's air pollution concentrations provides an ideal controlled experimental condition for revealing the mechanism that harms human health.

Air pollution. According to the definition of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), air pollution refers to the entry of certain substances into the atmosphere due to human activities or natural processes, showing sufficient concentration to reach sufficient time, and thus endangering human comfort and health And welfare or environmental phenomena. In other words, as long as the quantity, nature, and time of a certain substance is sufficient to affect human beings or other living things and property, we can call it an air pollutant; and the phenomenon caused by its existence is air pollution.

It is reported that the Peking University Environmental Health team and US collaborators have made important progress in the research of air pollution health hazard mechanisms: the pro-oxidation and pro-inflammatory effects of air pollution.

Long-term exposure to air pollution is an important risk factor for cardiovascular death in the population, but currently there is insufficient understanding of the early mechanisms of air pollution-induced cardiovascular disease. In response to this problem, Peking University and the University of California, Los Angeles team conducted a long-term collaborative research, using the difference in atmospheric pollution concentrations between Beijing and Los Angeles to construct a natural exposure control experiment, based on the PKU-UCLA JRI exchange project Recruit healthy subjects.

The research on the health hazard mechanism of air pollution by the environmental health team of Peking University and American collaborators is based on a new type of early cardiovascular effect markers, combined with the analysis of key atmospheric pollutants such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in the body, to explore healthy adults from relatively "low Changes in the level of pollutant exposure and markers of cardiovascular effects in Los Angeles after the "pollution" of Los Angeles entered the "high pollution" Beijing and return to the "low pollution" environment.

Then for air pollution, we must also step up our efforts in air quality monitoring, monitor air pollution, understand the degree of air pollution through the monitoring system, and make corresponding words for different pollution conditions.

Source: Peking University, Baidu Encyclopedia