US Air Quality Improvements led to Reduction in Death and Disease

Improvements in US air quality have led to a 35 percent reduction in deaths and disabilities directly related to air pollution, according to new research which indicates that the air most US college students breath today is cleaner than the air they were breathing when they were born.

Arden Pope, a professor of economics at Brigham Young University and member of the research team who published the study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, said the find was some of the most optimistic news to come out of the last several years of air pollution research.

"Some of the best news relative to the air pollution research over the last few years is the evidence that our reducing air pollution in the United States has resulted in measurable improvements in life expectancy and public health," Pope said.

The find builds upon research from decades past on the health effects of particulate matter in the air, which is emitted from steel mills, cars and power plants. Across successive studies since the 1990s, Pope and others have found that the dirty air has impacted hospital admissions, overall mortality rates and the prevalence of cardiovascular disease.

"One of the biggest surprises of this research was that air pollution contributed to cardiovascular disease and not just respiratory disease," Pope said. "In fact, we're learning that air pollution not only impacts our lungs but it impacts our heart and our brain."

Pope's air quality research was published in collaboration with a huge team of researchers in the report "The State of US Health, 1990-2010: Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors." The report indicates that healthy life expectancy increased in the decade of the study, and all-cause death rates across all ages decreased. However, occurrences of morbidity and chronic health problems account for nearly half of the healthcare costs in the US, and the nation has not kept pace with quality of health care its citizens receive compared to other wealthy countries, the report states.