Heart attack victims at increased risk from car fumes
Scientists said pollution such as diesel emissions can pile on stress to people who have suffered heart attacks by increasing the risk of blood clotting.
Inhalation of too many fumes can also cause potentially dangerous changes in the heart’s electrical activity, the researchers found.
The findings come from a team of British and Swedish scientists who measured for the first time the effect of air pollution on heart activity in heart disease patients.
They found that breathing in diesel exhaust fumes can cause a threefold increase in heart stress of heart attack victims.
Twenty men who previously had suffered a heart attack, but were now stable, were used for the tests last year. The patients were exposed for one hour to either filtered air or dilute diesel exhaust while intermittently riding a stationary bicycle in a chamber at Umea University.
Electrical monitoring of the heart showed that inhalation of diesel exhaust caused a threefold increase in the stress of the heart during exercise.
In addition, the body’s ability to release a “guardian” protein known as t-PA, or tissue plasminogen activator, which can prevent blood clots from forming was also reduced by more than a third following exposure.
Dr Nicholas Mills, of Edinburgh University’s Centre for Cardiovascular Sciences, said the study explained why patients with heart disease are more likely to be admitted to hospital on days in which air pollution levels are increased. “Most people tend to think of air pollution as having effects on the lungs but as this study shows, it can also have a major impact on how our heart functions.”
Researchers are particularly interested in diesel engines because they generate 10-100 times more pollutant particles than petrol engines.
Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation said: “There is already evidence that air pollution can make existing heart conditions worse.
“This research is helping us work out why.”
