(Press-News.org) Sophia Antipolis, 19 May 2021: Cities harbour a dangerous cocktail of environmental stressors which politicians must tackle to save lives and preserve health. That's the conclusion of a paper published today in European Heart Journal, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1
"By 2050, three in four people will live in cities, where up to 80% of energy is consumed and 70% of greenhouse gases are emitted," said study author Professor Thomas Münzel of the University Medical Centre Mainz, Germany. "There are limited actions that individuals can take to protect themselves from pollutants so politicians and policy makers need to take on this responsibility."
Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of mortality in Europe, accounting for 47% and 39% of all deaths in women and men, respectively.2 The World Health Organization (WHO) regional office for Europe has advocated urban planning which supports cycling and walking and improves air quality. The proposal, supported by the ESC, is a step towards meeting the WHO's target of a 25% relative reduction in premature mortality from cardiovascular disease by 2025 (compared to 2010).
"While cities have been an engine of innovation and wealth, they are also a source of pollution and disease," states today's paper. It sums up the evidence for the connections between bad air, noise, temperature, outdoor light and cardiovascular disease.
Air pollution is responsible for around 800,000 fatal illnesses per year in Europe, of which around half are heart attacks and strokes.3 Transport emissions are the largest contributor to air pollution in cities around the world. Similarly, the dominant source of noise is road traffic, which increases the risk for ischaemic heart disease. It has been estimated that long-term exposure to transportation noise is responsible for 48,000 new cases of ischaemic heart disease each year in the EU.
Nocturnal light pollution has been linked with hospitalisation and death from coronary heart disease. Meanwhile, concrete urban areas absorb and re-emit the sun's heat, leading to rising temperatures. These heat island effects have been connected with deaths during heatwaves, which can be mitigated with vegetation.
Environmental stressors cluster together and actions are needed which combat them all. "Transitioning to cities that promote local living and active and sustainable mobility is increasingly recognised as providing co-benefits for health and the environment by creating more sustainable and liveable cities," states the paper.
City planning is now recognised as one way to tackle adverse health outcomes. Designs include car-free areas and compact cities which shorten travel distances. Limiting car use while increasing public and active transportation (walking and cycling) would promote heart health by reducing air pollution, noise, and heat island effects and increasing physical activity.
The authors call for "a radical rethink about how we organise the way we live in the future in order to protect human and planetary health".
Professor Münzel said: "Individuals can avoid polluted areas and wear ear plugs but real change requires commitment from politicians. It is expected that metropolitan areas will house an ever-greater share of the world's population in years to come. Now is the time to design cities which promote rather than damage health."
INFORMATION:
Authors: ESC Press Office
Tel: +33 (0)4 89 87 20 85
Mobile: +33 (0)7 8531 2036
Email: press@escardio.org
Follow us on Twitter @ESCardioNews
Funding: Please see the paper.
Disclosures: None.
Notes
References
1Münzel T, Sørensen M,Lelieveld J, et al. Heart healthy cities: genetics loads the gun but the environment pulls the trigger. Eur Heart J. 2021. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehab235.
Link will go live on publication:
https://academic.oup.com/eurheartj/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/eurheartj/ehab235
2ESC Cardiovascular Realities 2020.
3Lelieveld J, Klingmüller K, Pozzer A, et al. Cardiovascular disease burden from ambient air pollution in Europe reassessed using novel hazard ratio functions. Eur Heart J. 2019;40:1590-1596.
About the European Society of Cardiology
The European Society of Cardiology brings together health care professionals from more than 150 countries, working to advance cardiovascular medicine and help people lead longer, healthier lives.
About European Heart Journal
European Heart Journal (EHJ) is the flagship journal of the European Society of Cardiology. It is the world's leading publication in general cardiology. Please acknowledge the journal as a source in any articles.
New research published in Anaesthesia (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) shows the huge pressure that anaesthesia and critical care staff in the UK have been under throughout the winter wave of COVID-19, as the number of newly admitted infected patients surged and most planned surgeries, including a substantial number of critical cancer operations, were cancelled.
"These findings have important implications for understanding what has happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, planning recovery and building a system that will better respond ...
A general practitioner, wife and mother has recounted her experience with COVID-19 which saw her stay in hospital 150 days and become one of the first patients to be treated with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), special equipment that completely takes over the function of the lungs and is a last resort option.
The self-written case report, which appears in the journal Anaesthesia Reports (a journal of the Association of Anaesthetists) is by Dr Anushua Gupta, who works as a general practitioner in Stockport, Greater Manchester, UK. It is thought to be the first patient-written account of ECMO to treat COVID-19 to appear in the medical literature.
Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation was introduced as ...
Simon Fraser University researchers are playing a key role in guiding conservation efforts to protect a declining butterfly population. The eastern monarch butterfly, an important pollinating species known for its distinct yellow-orange and black colour, is diminishing due to the loss of the milkweed plant--its primary food source.
Researchers analyzed current conservation strategies and recommended changes to how and where declining milkweed can be restored, based on assessments of climate and butterfly migration. Their study is published today in Frontiers in Environmental ...
As the global energy demand continues to grow along with atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), there has been a major push to adopt more sustainable and more carbon-neutral energy sources. Solar/wind power and CO2 capture - the process of capturing waste CO2 so it is not introduced into the atmosphere - are two promising pathways for decarbonization, but both have significant drawbacks.
Solar and wind power is intermittent and cannot be deployed everywhere; CO2 capture processes are incredibly energy-intensive. Both of these pathways have benefits, but each ...
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Mindfulness-based meditation programs have emerged as a promising treatment for conditions ranging from stress to sleeplessness to depression. In some cases, they're even offered to people -- schoolkids or employees, for example -- who aren't actively seeking help or who haven't been screened for suitability. Yet most research and discourse about these programs focuses only on their benefits, with little investigation of the risks or the potential for adverse effects.
A recent review of nearly 7,000 studies of meditation practices found that less than 1% of them measured adverse effects. Willoughby Britton, an associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University, said that this is largely because ...
New research from BYU published in PLOS Medicine found that providing medical patients with social support leads to an increased chance of survival and elongation of life. Such findings come at a critical time as doctors and healthcare professionals seek new ways to improve care and decrease mortality.
"The premise of the research is that everyone is strongly influenced by their social context," said BYU counseling psychology professor Timothy B. Smith, lead author of the study. "Relationships influence our behavior and our physical health. We now know that it is possible to prolong ...
ITHACA, N.Y. - Wines and table grapes exist thanks to a genetic exchange so rare that it's only happened twice in nature in the last 6 million years. And since the domestication of the grapevine 8,000 years ago, breeding has continued to be a gamble.
When today's growers cultivate new varieties - trying to produce better-tasting and more disease-resistant grapes - it takes two to four years for breeders to learn whether they have the genetic ingredients for the perfect flower.
Females set fruit, but produce sterile pollen. Males have stamens for pollen, but lack fruit. The perfect flower, however, carries both sex genes and can self-pollinate. These hermaphroditic varieties generally yield bigger and better-tasting berry ...
Due to climate change, the average global temperature will rise in the coming decades. This should also significantly increase the number of so-called cooling degree days. These measure the number of hours, in which the ambient temperature is above a certain threshold, at which a building must be cooled to keep the indoor temperature at a comfortable level. The rising values may lead to an increased installation of AC systems in households. This could lead to a higher energy demand for cooling buildings, which is already expected to increase due to climate change and population growth.
Nip-and-tuck ...
Scientists have long thought that there was a direct connection between the rise in atmospheric oxygen, which started with the Great Oxygenation Event 2.5 billion years ago, and the rise of large, complex multicellular organisms.
That theory, the "Oxygen Control Hypothesis," suggests that the size of these early multicellular organisms was limited by the depth to which oxygen could diffuse into their bodies. The hypothesis makes a simple prediction that has been highly influential within both evolutionary biology and geosciences: Greater atmospheric oxygen should always increase the size to which multicellular organisms can grow. ...
When a person views a familiar image, even having seen it just once before for a few seconds, something unique happens in the human brain.
Until recently, neuroscientists believed that vigorous activity in a visual part of the brain called the inferotemporal (IT) cortex meant the person was looking at something novel, like the face of a stranger or a never-before-seen painting. Less IT cortex activity, on the other hand, indicated familiarity.
But something about that theory, called repetition suppression, didn't hold up for University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Nicole Rust. "Different images produce different amounts of activation even when they are all novel," says ...
