As the 2008 Olympic games approach, more and more countries are getting concerned about the consequences of Beijing’s air quality on the health of their athletes. And rightly so. Results of recent studies indicate that the magnitude of the effects of fine particulate pollution on the general population may be actually larger than previously thought.

In the February issue of NEJM (vol. 356. pp. 447-458), Miller et al. presented the results of a large, prospective cohort study (N=65,893) in postmenopausal American women exposed to particles with diameters smaller than 2.5 µm (PM_2.5). The median follow-up period was 6 years. They report that with each increase of 10 µg PM_2.5 per cubic meter of air, there is a 24% increase in the risk of a cardiovascular event and a 76% increase in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. What is also alarming is that these risks increase with increasing BMI.

A more recent report from a German prospective study by Hoffman et al. (Circulation, vol. 116:489-496) linked traffic-generated fine particles to coronary artery calcification – within just a period of 5 years. Although this study is relatively smaller (N=4494), study subjects included both sexes with a wider age range of 45 to 74 years.

The US Environmental Protection Agency set health standards on air pollution way back in 1997 but only managed to finalize its Clean Air Fine Particle Implementation Rules this year. China and Beijing promise to achieve more than that in less than a year. Can they deliver?

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