How is poor air quality related to dry air and respiratory health? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

Very tiny particles known as PM2.5 are a part of pollutants in the air, and have been shown to negatively affect health. Ditto for warming temperatures, which dry out our respiratory system, research by David Edwards, a respiratory health expert at Johns Hopkins, has shown. And the combination is especially bad.

Edwards: Dirty air is toxic and detrimental to respiratory health. Dry air is at least as toxic to airways and dirty dry air is the worst. It's understood that dry air worsens airborne infection disease, asthma, COPD and most respiratory diseases and humid air is helpful, but the mechanism was not understood. When your airways are dry and you get this mucus collapse onto cilia, mucus ceases to move and so when you breathe dirty air particles don't move. So that toxicity potential of particles goes up when your airways are dry.   :34

So drink lots of water, Edwards says. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.