A major public health risk is caused by suspended particulates in the air or airborne particulate matter (PM) with a diameter of fewer than 10 microns. When people inhale these tiny particles, it deposits in the lungs and causes various health issues. A one-time exposure can be harmful, while prolonged exposure can cause chronic problems and increase the mortality rate of any chronic respiratory issues.
Since we spend 90% of our day indoors, it's crucial to care about our indoor air quality. There are many causes of poor indoor air quality, many of which produce harmful PM. We’ll cover the negative environmental and health impacts of PM.
When PM like smoke and dust enter your body, the fine and coarse particles can interfere with many heart and lung functions, causing adverse health effects ranging from mild to severe.
Exposure to PM can cause some short-term effects on your body. The most likely symptoms you will notice are related to your respiratory system and blood pressure.
Inhaling PM can cause quite a few short-term respiratory complications as pollutants collect in your lungs and throat. For example, you may start coughing or wheezing as your body attempts to expel these pollutants.
Other short-term respiratory symptoms you may experience include:
Fine particles smaller than 2.5 microns can get into the bloodstream through the lungs. These particles collect in blood vessels, making them narrow. This makes it harder for blood to travel around your body, so your heart has to pump harder, increasing blood pressure.
With long-term, chronic exposure to PM particles, you can develop chronic conditions that raise your risk factor for certain complications for the rest of your life.
Chronic bronchitis is a long-term inflammation of the bronchi, which can increase your risk of pulmonary diseases. It also makes you susceptible to episodes of acute bronchitis where bronchi tighten and restrict your airways further.
The symptoms of chronic bronchitis include coughing up mucus, wheezing, and chest discomfort. To classify your symptoms as chronic bronchitis, you must first meet two conditions:
This condition is often a result of smoking, but prolonged exposure to ambient air pollution will also cause it. Once you have it, there are treatments to help you live more comfortably, but no cure. This is why it's important to avoid PM particles by avoiding smoking and secondhand smoke and properly ventilating areas where PM may get produced.
As mentioned before, small enough particles enter your bloodstream and tighten your blood vessels. Particles, like cholesterol, are deposited on the walls of your arteries, reducing the space that the blood can travel through. When this happens in the coronary arteries, which provide oxygen-rich blood to the heart, it causes coronary artery disease.
If this buildup reduces or stops blood flow to the heart, the heart can't get enough oxygen and nutrients to perform its job correctly. This condition can cause chest pain or discomfort, also called angina. It also raises your risk for a heart attack — most people don't know they have coronary artery disease until then. As the heart muscle weakens, you may experience heart failure.
There is no way to reverse the buildup in your arteries. If you find out you have coronary artery disease, your best treatment options include lifestyle changes like a healthier diet and avoiding PM that may aggravate your condition further.
The blood vessels in the brain are responsible for bringing nutrients and oxygen to the brain to keep it functioning. But that also means any damage or interruption to these blood vessels has dire consequences. When particulate air pollution collects in the blood vessels, it raises the chance of a blood clot. If that clot forms in the brain, it causes a stroke. Within minutes without oxygen, brain cells will start to die.
You can assess if you or someone else is having a stroke with the FAST mnemonic (Face, Arms, Speech, Time):
Studies have shown that higher exposure to air pollution increases the chance of having cardiac arrhythmias, where the heart beats irregularly. This pattern could be too slow or too fast, and you can identify it by symptoms like:
PM can thicken the blood vessel walls and make the heart work harder to pump. Certain PM particles, like nicotine, can slow the conduction of electrical impulses in cardiac tissue, putting you at higher risk for atrial fibrillation (an irregular, fast pattern).
Since people spend most of their time indoors, it's vital to cut down on air pollution exposure indoors. The best way to do that is to set up an air quality monitor in your buildings that lets you know when there are unsafe pollutants in the air that need to be removed.
Try out Senseware's indoor air quality monitoring technology to get real-time updates on PM particles as small as 0.3 microns. Our tech outpaces the indoor air quality monitoring technology by every objective measure. You can rest assured that we will help you keep your air safe.
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