Air pollution in cities lifts the benefits of movement

How urban air pollution affects walking elderly people?

Older people are often advised to walk more on foot to increase their overall physical activity and protect their health. Researchers have now found out that the pollution from traffic emissions in our cities largely negates the health benefits of walking.

The researchers from Imperial College London and Duke University in the US found in their study that urban air pollution reduces or even completely negates the benefits of walking on our health. The physicians published the results of their study in the journal "The Lancet".

The ever-increasing pollution of urban air causes all health benefits of outdoor exercise to be removed. (Image: Gina Sanders / fotolia.com)

Older people should avoid roads when walking

If people over the age of 60 live in a city, they should take care when walking that they do it in parks and green areas. Roads should be avoided. Because the air pollution by traffic exhausts lifts the health benefits of the walks.

Even younger people could suffer from air pollution

Especially older people are often advised that they should exercise more to increase their physical activity. The current study found that people over the age of 60 and people with lung and heart problems should avoid urban areas with heavy traffic. The negative effect of air pollution could be similar in younger people, the authors of the study speculate. This reinforces the urgency to reduce emissions in the streets of cities.

Subjects were divided into two groups

Subjects in the study either walked for two hours on Oxford Street, or they walked for two hours through Hyde Park. Of course, air pollution is present in this well-known park, but far less so than in the heart of the shopping district of the capital, the experts explain.

Physicians examined 119 participants

For their study, the researchers recruited 119 subjects who were either completely healthy, had heart disease, or had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The persons were randomly divided into two groups. One group walked through the western area of ​​Oxford Street, where air quality limits set by the World Health Organization are often exceeded. The other group moved through the traffic-free zone of Hyde Park. A few weeks later, participants switched places where they moved.

Effects of walks

All participants benefited from a walk in the park, with lung capacity improving within the first hour and in many cases a significant permanent increase of more than 24 hours. By comparison, a walk on Oxford Street only resulted in a small increase in lung capacity among participants. The noise and pollution levels were significantly higher on Oxford Street, including increased levels of soot, nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter.

Significant positive effects were drastically reduced when walking along main roads

The movement also increased the blood flow, with a decrease in blood pressure and an increase in heart rate, explain the doctors. When the subjects walked in Hyde Park, the arteries became less stiff, with a maximum change of more than 24 percent in healthy volunteers and participants with COPD. For people with heart disease, such a walk led to a maximum change of 19 percent. This observed effect was drastically reduced as participants walked along Oxford Street. Such a walk only resulted in a maximum change in arterial stiffness of 4.6 percent in healthy subjects. In people with COPD, the value was 16 percent, in subjects with heart disease it was 8.6 percent, the researchers say.

Another study required on younger people

For many older people or people with chronic illnesses, walking on foot is the only way to improve their physical activity, explains author Professor Kian Fan Chung. The findings of the study suggest that older adults should take their walks on green spaces and in parks that are far from pollution from traffic, the expert adds. The same advice might apply to younger people, the only difference being that they are much more resilient. A study on younger people should be conducted to verify this assumption, the researchers concluded.

Physical activity and exercise is important to people

We know from other research that for the vast majority of the population, the benefits of any physical activity far outweigh the most extreme concentrations of air pollution, scientists say. It is therefore important that people continue to train. In the United Kingdom alone, physical inactivity is the fourth leading cause of disease and mortality, contributing about 37,000 premature deaths each year.

Air pollution can remove any health benefits of outdoor exercise

The results of the survey show that air pollution on a main road in London removes any environmental benefits of outdoor exercise. In addition, pollution has a direct impact on people with chronic diseases such as COPD and cardiovascular disease. But healthy people are also affected by environmental pollution, which is largely linked to emissions from transport. (As)