Will Air Pollution Lead to Weight Gain?

Even if you don't care about acid rain, asthma, bronchitis, cancer, heart disease, animals choking and crying out "help me, help me," crops and trees being damaged and mutated and the ozone layer being depleted, this may make you pay more attention to air pollution. Increasing evidence is linking air pollution to obesity. 

Yes, you may not care about the heart disease, diabetes, cancer and many health problems that come from being overweight, but air pollution could affect your...gasp...appearance. The latest evidence may may make you say, "Rats." In a study published in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, scientists founds that exposing laboratory rats to polluted air from Beijing, China, resulted in significant weight gain compared to those rats who breathed filtered air. 

Gee, who would have figured that inhaling carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, particulate matters, lead, arsenic, asbestos, benzene, chlorine, bromine, halons, methane and many other unpronounceable chemicals would harm your health in complex ways? 

Perhaps sucking on a car tailpipe is not a good thing. (What other shocking news will you tell...that some singers actually lip sync?) It's time to realize that controlling air pollution is not just about "saving the Earth", which makes it sound like we can pick up and move elsewhere, like Saturn, Jupiter or (tempted to make a planet joke here). No, reducing air pollution may literally be about saving your own butt...in many different ways.

Air pollution can cause many problems in the future, but think about what it may be doing to you today. (Photo by Xiaolu Chu/Getty Images)

The Beijing study brings important evidence. Yongjie Wei was the lead author of the study, which was conducted by a team of researchers from Peking University, the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Duke University, Rutgers University, Imperial College and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. During the experiment, exposing pregnant rats to unfiltered Beijing air led to greater weight gain in both the mother rats and subsequently born children rats than those who breathed filtered air. 

The researchers also found in both the mamma and baby rats many concerning changes, such as inflammation in the lungs, more fat, cholesterol problems and signs of tissue damage and metabolic problems. You may not be a rat, but seeing such changes during a relatively brief exposure to air pollution makes you wonder what years of breathing pollution will do.

Other studies have shown associations between pollution exposure and obesity. For example, a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2011 revealed that children in New York City (the Bronx and northern Manhattan) born to mothers exposed to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), common air pollutants, had higher obesity rates, body mass indices (BMI) and percentages of body fat. Also, 2013 study published in Environmental Health Perspectivesfound that exposing pregnant mice to tributyltin (TBT), commonly found in water pipes and plastic, resulted in increases in fat cell size and number and accumulation of fat in the liver. While more studies are necessary to scientifically firmly establish whether air pollution causes obesity, we need to take this potential link much more seriously.

What about air pollution may lead to obesity? Well, it would actually be surprising if all the strange chemicals, fluids and substances now floating in the air somehow did not affect how your body digests food, burns calories and all its metabolic processes. How would your car run if you kept throwing strange fluids and objects into its engine, fuel tank, carburetor, sump, electrical system and tailpipe? And even when you feel very lonely, you are never alone. Lots of bacteria are inhabiting your intestines, forming what's called a "microbiome" and helping you digest your food and regulate your body processes. All this weird stuff that's going into your body may be throwing off and killing this bacteria.

Obesity can be a sign that something is wrong in the systems in your life, whether it's the food, drink or medications that you put in your body, your family and friends, your work, your environment or other things around you. Like a bellwether, a canary in a coal mine, a harbinger or a movie advertisement that says "from the makers of..." or "from the producers of..." rising obesity is a warning sign of even worse things to come. (Can we once and for all dispel the notion that obesity is simply the fault of the individual? To those who still think that the obesity epidemic is simply people lacking self-control...no, no, no, no, no...no.)

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to recover fossil fuels from the ground brings concerns of releasing gases such as methane into the air (Photo credit: LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images)

So perhaps everyone should heed these warnings. While some measures of air quality may have improved in certain locations, air quality in many areas either remains bad or is steadily getting worse. Moreover, as new industries and practices emerge and grow, so do new types of air pollution. For example, the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has historically struggled with air pollution. 

In the American Lung Association's “State of the Air 2014” report, Pittsburgh made the top 25 list for all three measures of the worst air in the United States (ozone, for year-round particle pollution, and short-term small particle pollution). Increased  fracking activity (a process used to extract natural gas from the ground) brings concerns of releasing methane gas into the air.

The possible link between air pollution and obesity suggests that air pollution not only causes problems down the road but may be causing problems right now. Clean air initiatives (such as Bill Gates' investments in and call for clean and renewable energy technology) are not just about saving the earth for future generations. Even if you don't care about the future, think about what air pollution may be doing to you today.

You can work out and exercise, but what if the air that you breathe is affecting your weight? (Photo by Marc Andrew Deley / Invision for SELF Magazine / AP Images)

 

 Article source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2016/02/25/will-air-pollution-make-you-gain-weight/2/#3d6a14086b05