Air pollution causes dangerous blood clots

THE latest in a growing list of health problems linked to air pollution: dangerous blood clots triggered by smog from traffic and factories.

If a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) breaks loose from where it forms in the lower leg or thigh and travels to the lungs, it can cause breathing problems and sometimes death. Andrea Baccarelli and colleagues at Harvard School of Public Health monitored the air quality in different parts of the Lombardy region of Italy. They also collected the home addresses of 870 people from the region diagnosed with DVT between 1995 and 2005, and 1200 healthy controls. When they controlled for socio-economic factors, they found that living in an area with 25 per cent more particulate pollution than the average for big European cities increases the risk of DVT by 70 per cent compared with the average for the whole population (Archives of Internal Medicine, vol 168, p 920
SOURCEhttp://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19826563.800-air-pollution-causes-dangerous-blood-clots.html