Here's how to prevent the effects of air pollution on your health

UPDATE DAY

Over the past few days, our Bureau of Investigation has shed light on the many places in Quebec where the air quality is poor.

Air pollution is responsible for 4,000 premature deaths in Quebec each year. The good news is that there are tricks to prevent certain effects. Here they are:

Check the air quality BEFORE you exercise

Get into the habit of looking on the website of the ministry or the City of Montreal, or on weather applications, to find out about the air quality and smog alerts in your area before practicing your outdoor sport. < /p>

“During a smog alert, it is not recommended to do strenuous activities,” says cardiologist François Reeves, specialist in environmental cardiovascular medicine at the CHUM.

Do not think that smog only occurs in summer, on the contrary. On very cold days in winter, more people use their wood stoves, which increases the concentrations of fine particles in the air. For example, out of fifteen days of smog in the Capitale-Nationale in 2021, nine occurred during the winter. 

• Listen to Bruno Marchand on the microphone of Richard Martineau via QUB radio:

Close windows 

When possible, avoid opening windows on smoggy days summer.

Are we stopping ourselves from going out? “Not to this extent, the smog of Montreal, it is still not the smog of Beijing [China] or New Delhi [India]”, says Dr. Reeves.

Choose your places to run

When possible, it is better to go to a park than to run in the streets.

Especially if you are a marathon runner.

Studies have shown that marathon runners develop more calcifications in their arteries.

“One of the hypotheses was that it was especially those who training in an urban environment”, explains cardiologist François Reeves, specialist in environmental cardiovascular medicine at the CHUM.

“As a marathon runner's breathing is higher […], he will be more exposed if he is jogging on a very polluted artery,” he explains.

You can even feel the direct effects of air quality on its performance. It is not for nothing that for the Olympic Games in Beijing, factories had to stop their production to reduce atmospheric pollution, illustrates Dr. Reeve.

“It is demonstrated everywhere that, when you you have a peak of smog, you have an increase in hospitalizations, ”explains the doctor.

A study in Boston looked at deaths from heart attacks and found that each time there was a spike in pollution – and therefore smog – over the period studied, there was a 48% increase. heart attacks within an hour and 69% within 24 hours, says Dr. Reeve.

Avoid living near roads

< p>When possible, it is best to avoid living near heavily polluted arteries. This statement may seem obvious and yet condos and schools are still being built next to highways. 

A study that followed 2.5 million Canadians over more than 20 years showed that if you live less than 50 m from polluted roads, you have 15% to 25% more cardiovascular mortality, underlines Dr. Reeves.

Are we moving to the region?

We cannot suggest that you move outside of Montreal or Quebec, because again, it all depends on where you go, as David Widory, professor at UQAM and specialist in the traceability of air pollution, pointed out during a conference on air quality in early February .

“If you move away from the cities […], either you follow the plume of contamination and it is practically as if you lived in the city, or you move away from the plume and there, you will have a gain in terms of air quality”, he said.

During a fire in a peat bog in the Bas-Saint-Laurent, in 2021, even the quality de l'air de Longueuil was affected.

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< /p>  Measuring station

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Methodology

Sources: Ministry of the Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change, data from the Quebec Air Quality Monitoring Network (RSQAQ) website, Air Quality Monitoring Network (RSQA) of the City of Montreal, World Health Organization (WHO).

The number of poor air quality days was calculated for PM2.5, ozone (O3), carbon monoxide (CO) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) based on Ministry of Health thresholds. Environment and the Fight against Climate Change (MELCC). Some stations do not calculate these contaminants and measure others for which we have not found a threshold.

For PM2.5, this is the number of days when at least one times during the day, the three-hour average was above 35 µg/m3. The annual average of PM2.5 and sulfur dioxide (SO2) was calculated by taking the average of the hourly concentrations recorded during the year.

For the annual average of the Lac-Édouard and Sherbrooke stations – Parc Cambron, daily averages were used instead of hourly data.

The WHO standard is used on the map for stations measuring fine particles. For sulfur dioxide, this is the Canadian standard.

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