This laboratory research asks volunteers to breathe in poisonous smoke – and they voluntarily do it.
dietHow does bad air quality affect my health?
Dr. Ask Chris Carluston about the clear booth at the British Columbia University (UBC) laboratory, and he will assure you that it is completely safe – even if volunteers spend several sessions in breathing chambers in the polluted air.
Carlston, head of UBC and Canada Research Chair, said, “The period varies, but with the standard Wi-Fi for two hours in that booth, with the ability to use its computer, books, studies, whatever it is,” Professional and environmental lungs said the air pollution of the air pollution exposure and canada in the disease of Canada.
Wildfire smoke has a deteriorating effect Air quality in canadaLab is one of the only facilities of its kind in Canada, collecting pinpoint data to provide insight about poor air quality, is harmful to human health and well -being.
Despite the possibility of standing in a polluted chamber, Carluston and his research team say the volunteers are eager to give their time.
Through email, Carluston said, “They are ready to contribute to science and our efforts to solve a major public health problem.”
Lab’s heart air pollution room
Established by Carlston in 2007, APEL runs its tests using devices that produce pollution and pump that dirty air in a polycarbonate test room.
“We have a diesel engine, we have a furnace to burn wood for wooden smoke, we have a device that makes microplastic because microplastic is an emerging concern,” he said.
Researchers can fill the chamber like dust particles with allergies.
The key to maintaining voluntary security is that researchers dilute the levels matching the pollutants with levels found in major urban centers.
Carluston said, “(pollution) will be made by the engine or furnace and then diluted by the filtered air to a safe level.”
Lab data is published in a series of magazines, and highlights how air pollution affects everything Lung performance during physical activity till Health of people with asthma And Even on feeling,
Carlston says his team’s findings have also affected the policy, including the US Environmental Protection Agency.
Why would anyone want to breathe in polluted air?
The volunteers of the program ranges from people from people to the 70s in the 20s, with gender equality. Carluston says that volunteers demographics are quite widespread, saying that those results apply to more common population. Lab’s air quality studies follow strict Double-blades research standards,
Volunteers like Alana Green say that they cannot often tell if they are breathing in polluted air or clean air.
Green, a administrator of UBC, signed up for an air quality study when he first began working at the university.
“I felt that this is a way that I can contribute to participating in science and society,” he said.
Due to the smoke of the wildfire, with the air quality alert, with the parts of Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec, Dr. with air pollution exposure lab. Christopher Carlston says that exposure can also cause symptoms between healthy individuals such as brain fog and headache and shares practical advice to protect themselves.
Participating between January and December 2023, Green, who travels internationally, said that the air has not been compared to the poor quality that he has experienced in some destinations he has seen, where “smell is in the air.”
Brinn Edgington, a student of Dalhousie University Grad, also participated in a study of the program.
“I have done research where I have been dependent on the participating people, so I think for me, I need to pay it further and participate in other people’s studies, because it is important,” Edington said, who lived with asthma and allergies since childhood.
Eddington and Green said that the only experience they experienced were water eyes after a chamber session.
Air pollution negatively affects the health of the whole body
Contact with air pollution can affect the entire human body, Conditions like asthma And the possibility of developing conditions is increasing Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)Some researches have found relationship between poor air quality and Mental health loss And Heart disease,
“You are breathing in toxic chemicals and particles, they get deep in your lungs, your body does not like it, it triggers inflammation and then can give rise to all types of systemic reactions in various people,” Dr. Kerry Johansson, a pulmonologist and a pulmonologist and associate professor at the University of Calgary.
Although Carlston says that indoor air purifiers, closing windows, staying indoors and wearing face masks during the days with poor air quality are the options for many Canadian people, there are many people – including external laborers – who cannot always come in to repetitive.
Carlston gave Dr. “Those people need really need to pay attention and unfortunate, not enough.” diet,
Simulation can only provide so much expansion, experts say
As a working Pulmonologist, Johanson says that the research out of the apel has been a “field-changing”.
“The air pollution exposure lab that provides is the ability to measure the cause and impact, the function of a risk for a result, and you can measure it through time,” he said.
“You cannot get that type of information from any other type of research.”
However, Johansson says that exposure lab research has limitations, including that the lab usually measures only one exposure factor at a time.
This means that volunteers are not being taken into contact with many pollutants at a time-which occurs in the real world.
After announcing the emergency of another forest fire in his province, Manitoba Premier was withdrawn to six US lawmakers, who wrote a letter to the Canadian ambassador, convicting the lack of forest management for ‘forest management’ for the smoke of the country’s forest fire.
The lab recently submitted a grant proposal to address the issue of several exposure, according to Carlston.
And while UBC lab studies can last for several months, Johanson says people can be made harmful to harmful external Air pollution for decades at a time.
“Sometimes people are exposed to their workplace for 10 years, and 20 years later they introduce their chronic lung disease or heart condition,” he said.
However, if Apel Research shows a relationship between air pollution and poor health, Johanson said that it is safe to assume that the actual world results of air pollution are likely to be very bad.
Working to a cleaner future
Whereas Air quality in canada The world is the highest in the world, the smoke of the forest fire can greatly reduce the purity of the air – Such as when the air quality of Toronto The worst was measured in the world in mid -July.
Carluston says that the laboratory is now working to translate its data into real -world solutions.
“It is important that we provide gold-standard evidence for those interventions that can protect the revelations,” Carluston said.
“We believe that it is important when understanding the mechanism of adverse effects of the exposure, and can support logic for intervention, it is now time to test the intervention that will lead to practical applications.”