Healthy Indoors Magazine - USA Edition

Healthy Indoors | 9 W ith this issue of Healthy In- doors combining two months of information, we also had two different directions for a cover story. The options were how air quality can affect health for November, and the traditional year-end review for December. When we started to re- search both topics one thing became clear: air quality and health was in the news non-stop in 2017. Now Nate Adams has called some of these stories "scare tactics." You could also call them public rela- tions and/or marketing. For every study produced, there's a little bit more published awareness of the health effects of air pollution. After all, indoor pollution still has a long way to go in terms of being on the tip of a consumer's tongue. A recent Google search found more than 64 million hits for "health effects of air pol- lution," as opposed to when you add the word "indoor" before air and only get 8 million hits. This year, we learned about how to avoid negative health effects of air pollution from Consumer Reports. They cited a new study in the journal Lancet Plane- tary Health that stated, "regularly inhaling tiny parti- cles of pollutants might be linked to poor bone health and fractures." One interesting thing they suggest consumers do is "walk, bike, or take public transporta- tion." Also in Lancet, there is recent research from Duke University and Imperial College London that cites air pollution pretty much cancels all the walking, biking and exercise in people over 60. Air pollution is also linked to poorer quality sperm in men; it makes you worse at your job; it's grounding planes in Asia; it affects bird health; it increases asth- ma chances in adults; it may damage your kidneys; it can affect your child's memory; it takes a toll on solar energy; and if affects the amount of sleep you get. Finally, air pollution could be making you fat, which is really depressing. Here are more of the big stories we were following and learning about in 2017… California Wildfires There were quite a few wildfires in North America in 2017, but none more heavily covered in the main- stream media than the ones in northern California (and now as of press time in southern California). With California wildfires

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