Air Pollution Affects Women's Weight, BMI, Body Fat, and Waist Circumference

Obesity has long been thought to be caused by excessive eating and other unhealthy habits such as lack of sleep and genetic factors. However, a new study by the University of Michigan suggests otherwise that obesity in women is affected by air pollution, which contains harmful gases and other particles.

Women Obesity Study

(Photo : Photo by Pierre Crom/Getty Images)

In a news release on October 13, the University of Michigan announced it has found that air pollution determines the development of obesity amongst women, emphasizing that hazardous airborne particles can affect their weight, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, and body fat. In particular, middle-aged women are affected by environmental and biological correlation.

The study's lead author Xin Wang, an epidemiology research investigator at the University of Michigan, suggests long-term exposure to air pollution of women in their late 40s and early 50s can increase their body size and composition. Specifically, higher levels of so-called fine particles such as nitrogen dioxide and ozone are culprits behind the phenomenon of middle age women obesity.

In spite of the breakthrough discovery, the University of Michigan study retains the fact that obesity is still a major global health issue in the past several decades, as humans tend to engage in unhealthy lifestyle like poor diet and lack of exercise. This academic premise retains the common causes of obesity, while adding air pollution as a potential aggravating factor towards obesity in women.

Also Read: Eating White Bread Increases Obesity Risk

Annual Air Pollution

The University of Michigan research team used data from 1,654 respondents including white, black, Chinese, and Japanese women from the "Study of Women's Health Across the Nation." The study participants have a baseline median age of nearly 50 years and were tracked from 2000 to 2008.

The team arrived at their conclusion by linking residential addresses with estimated of combined air pollutant concentrations. In addition, the researchers examined the correlation between the pollution and the women's body size and composition measures.

The result yield that air pollution exposure is connected with higher body fat percentage, higher fat proportion, and lower lean mass among midlife women. The body fat percentage increased by 4.5% or around 2.6 pounds. Due to the limited data sample, the study is unable to generalize if the air pollution-obesity relation is also applicable to men and women from other age groups.

Global Obesity Cases

Obesity affects some groups more than others, with a prevalence of 39.8% among adults belonging to the 20 to 39 age range group, 44.3% among adults from the 40 to 59 age range group, and 41.5% among adults aged 60 years and above, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

While there is no unifying or universal data showing which specific group of people are likely to get obese, the CDC says that there is a complex link between obesity and educational level or income, which differs based on sex and race or ethnicity.

Since 1957, worldwide obesity has almost tripled as of June 2021, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which says over 1.9 billion adults were overweight and over 650 million of the figure were obese as of 2016.