Maybe it seems on the surface to be an exercise in obviousness to suggest that when you put fewer poisons and toxins into the environment, the plants, animals and people that live nearby will enjoy a reduction in negative health effects.
But because the complexity of natural systems, into which pollutants are introduced, make specific cause and health effect relationships very challenging to tease out, a new study presented in San Diego at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation is all the more worth listening to.
Medical doctors Nina Shapiro and Neil Bhattacharyya presented their study, which was conducted over a decade and involved a study population of more than 120,000 children.
Tracking the incidence of ear infections and respiratory ailments over the time period, Shapiro and Bhattacharyya cross-referenced the occurrences against air quality data from the EPA. What the doctors found was that improved air quality is clearly tied to a decrease in ear infection.
The study authors attribute the improvements to the measurable effects in environmental improvement that stem from the 1990 Clean Air Act, which ushered in stricter controls on air discharges of a wide range of pollutants, and offer their study as evidence for the real, positive health consequences that accrue when we clean up our act.
Photo courtesy of Paul Bridgewater, via Flickr
