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Air Pollution and Climate Change

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Achieving Respiratory Health Equality

Part of the book series: Respiratory Medicine ((RM))

Abstract

Considerable disparities in respiratory health due to race/ethnicity or socioeconomic status (SES) have been reported, including for asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Strong evidence exists that air pollution is associated with asthma and COPD. Air pollution is likely contributing to health disparities for asthma and COPD because the economically disadvantaged and minorities have greater exposures to traffic and disproportionate proximity to polluting land uses and toxic emissions. Poor communities also have more health-damaging factors and less health-promoting amenities. The concept of cumulative risk captures the interplay of intrinsic factors of biological susceptibility and extrinsic factors of social vulnerability on health responses to environmental hazards like air pollution and climate change. In utero and early-life exposures to pollutants and other stressors can increase risk of adverse health outcomes later in life. Preexisting health conditions and behaviors, such as obesity and smoking, also can increase individual susceptibility to pollutants. Extrinsic social stressors (e.g., poverty, crime and violence, segregation, lack of community resources or healthcare access) have been linked to chronic stress. Although exposure to family stress and violence have been found to increase the effects of traffic-related air pollution on childhood asthma in several studies, better understanding of impacts of extrinsic neighborhood factors on air pollution–health effects associations is needed, as well as more research on the biological mechanisms of air pollution–stress interactions. Methods to better characterize and model cumulative impacts are also needed. Policy approaches to air quality and climate change, which currently focus on pollutants and their sources, should consider the cumulative impact of stressors and vulnerabilities encountered by people who live in minority or low SES communities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

    John R. Balmes MD

  2. Department of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    John R. Balmes MD

  3. Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, 1001 Potrero Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110, USA

    John R. Balmes MD

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  1. Division of Pediatric Pulmonary Medicine, Allergy, and Immunology, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

    Juan Carlos Celedón

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Balmes, J.R. (2017). Air Pollution and Climate Change. In: Celedón, J. (eds) Achieving Respiratory Health Equality. Respiratory Medicine. Humana Press, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43447-6_4

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