The new airborne disease. Community air pollution.

Community air pollution is the new airborne disease of our generation's communities. It is caused by the increasing use of fuel, associated with both affluence and careless waste. Photochemical air pollution of the California type involves newly defined atmospheric reactions, is due mostly to motor vehicle exhaust, is oxidizing, and produces ozone, plant damage, impairment of visibility and eye and respiratory symptoms. Aggravation of asthma, impairment of lung function among persons with chronic respiratory disease and a possible causal role, along with cigarette smoking in emphysema and chronic bronchitis, are some of the effects of photochemical pollution. More subtle effects of pollution include impairment of oxygen transport by the blood due to carbon monoxide and interference with porphyrin metabolism due to lead. Carbon monoxide exposures may affect survival of patients who are in hospitals because of myocardial infarction. While many uncertainties in pollution-health reactions need to be resolved, a large number of people in California have health impairment due to airborne disease of this new type.