Hypertension, or high blood pressure, is a disease that can be silent and have no symptoms. According to the Ministry of Health, in ten years the mortality rate went from 11.8 deaths per 100 thousand inhabitants, in 2011, to 18.7 in 2021. Around 60% of elderly people living in Brazil have hypertension.
If hypertension is silent, pollution is not always so visible to everyone. In some cases, however, it is possible to know where it is most harmful. Exposure to pollution within the same city depends on factors such as people’s habits and movements.
“We can say that there are two pollution indicators, one measured by the Cetesb network [Companhia Ambiental do Estado de São Paulo], which is objective. And another related to how much each individual is exposed to it”, he states.
“In other words, the concentration level of environmental pollution does not mean the same dose received by everyone. If you are in a traffic corridor for hours, you receive a higher dose because the concentration in that environment is particularly higher.”
Saldiva explains that several factors, such as hypertension itself, influence the development of cardiac fibrosis and that it is now proven that pollution is one of them.
“The question was ‘is the pollution big enough to appear in this photo?’ It has and it was the first time it was demonstrated in humans in the world. That’s the difference in the work”, he points out.
Tags: Research shows relationship pollution heart risk residents
