Heart patients vulnerable to Utah inversions, wildfires
Alixel Cabrera
(Utah News Dispatch) Winters in Utah usually come with inversions, smoggy lines of stagnant pollution dividing the Salt Lake Valley. And often, during the summer, the mountains become fuzzy with wildfire smoke.
On bad air quality days, some asthmatic children stay indoors during recess and, overall, many Utahns exposed to those particles can associate that thick air with trouble breathing.
However, those with respiratory concerns aren’t the only ones with reasons to worry, a Intermountain Health study found, as Utahns with heart disease may be especially vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution.
Researchers found two elevated markers of inflammation (CCL27 and IL-18) in patients with heart failure who were exposed to poor air quality, while people without heart diseases didn’t experience any changes in the tests.
“The short term elevation in air pollution causes a challenge to their health,” Benjamin Horne, principal investigator of the study, said about heart failure patients. “And they’re not able to manage it very well, and so these inflammatory biomarkers go up, and they stay up for a little while trying to get the body to readjust itself to the new reality of being exposed to air pollution.”
Air quality has remained a concern for Utahns, especially those living in the lowest part of the valley. Some days with inversions have ranked Salt Lake City among cities with the worst air quality in the country. And, one infamous day of 2021 amid wildfires, the city had the worst air quality in the world.
Patients with heart failure who experience these inflammations may experience shortness of breath, chest pain and lightheadedness, Horne said. They can also cause additional heart problems, including blood clotting, that may lead to heart attacks.
And, that inflammation can happen in a span of a day.
“In certain conditions like asthma and coronary disease, when you have that acute inflammation, then you can have very substantial immediate concerns,” Horne said.
Another Intermountain Health study published in 2006 found that during air pollution spikes, patients went to health centers with heart attacks and unstable chest pain, the precursor to a heart attack, Horne said. However, those heart attacks happened to those with already narrowed heart arteries.
Researchers in the latest study drew blood to study 115 proteins that are signs of increased inflammation in the body when levels of PM2.5, or fine particulate matter, were above 20 micrograms per cubic meters (μg/m3), which is within what weather monitors classify as “yellow” air quality, a moderate level. The study, which analyzed a small number of people, compared those numbers with samples obtained on good air quality days.
Previous research had demonstrated that people with chronic health conditions, including heart failure, coronary disease and asthma, struggled during bad air quality days, according to a news release. However, this study has specifically associated an increase in cardiac inflammation levels with air pollution spikes.
“People should be careful about their exposures,” Horne said. “(But), certainly it’s not something to panic about. And there are times when we can’t avoid being exposed. And so we just have to accept that we live in a time, in an area where we might be exposed to the air pollution, and we just have to go forward.”
Horne advised Utahns to check the air filters in their cars and homes, try exercising indoors, keeping up prescribed medications and avoiding roadways and highways, where there are elevated levels of traffic and pollution.