Can you die of a broken heart?
What happened to an older woman named Dorothy Lee wasn't all that unusual. In 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported that after learning her husband of 40 years had died suddenly in a car accident, Lee started getting chest pains reminiscent of an impending heart attack. It was as though her body was revolting against the unexpected loss.
When a long-time spouse dies, it isn't that uncommon for potentially life-threatening health problems to arise in his or her partner soon afterward, or for chronic conditions to take a grave turn. In fact, anecdotal evidence cites husbands and wives who inexplicably die within weeks, or even days, of each other, and empirical studies have supported that phenomenon. Separate studies involving thousands of couples in Scotland and Israel concluded that the risk of death among widows and widowers surges anywhere from 30 to 50 percent during the first six months after their beloveds pass. After that initial period of bereavement, the statistical risk of death diminishes.
This type of extreme mind-body connection appears to be more common when spousal death is unexpected – as in the case of Dorothy Lee's husband – and the surviving partner is ill-prepared to forge on alone. A 1996 study of 158,000 Finnish couples found the highest incidence rate of excess mortality, or statistically unforeseen death, correlated to the accidental, sudden passing of one spouse. Medical doctors have attributed that pattern to chronic health problems, psychologists to grief-induced stress and social workers to lack of a support system. Romantics, meanwhile, might sum it up more sweetly as the byproduct of a broken heart – and in some cases, they might not be so far from the truth.
At least, that's what Dorothy Lee experienced on the day her husband died. It turned out that her chest pains weren't the result of blocked arteries, but rather a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or broken heart syndrome.
CAN AIR POLLUTION AFFECT HEART HEALTH?
Scientists have long known that air pollution causes health problems. Most attention has focused on lung issues like asthma, lung development in children and even lung cancer. It makes sense: When air is infused with harmful chemicals like sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, along with tiny particles of matter, our lungs are going to suffer.
These pollutants come from lots of sources, some natural, like volcanic eruptions and plants' chemical reactions, and some not so natural. Factories and cars that burn fossil fuels send tons of pollutants into the air every day. The manufacturing processes for plastics release chemicals like chlorine, sulfuric acid and (in the case of PVC) vinyl chloride. Spraying aerosol cans, exhaling cigarette smoke and burning trash all decrease the level of our air quality.
Some of these pollutants are producing ground-level ozone. Others fall to Earth as acid rain, and some stay airborne to cloud the skies of big cities as smog.
There's no avoiding dirty air these days. Just going outside means inhaling molecules that our lungs would be better off without, and sitting in traffic – well, if we all had air purifiers in our cars, our lungs would thank us. But what about the rest of our bodies? Surely the damage doesn't stop at our lungs when the activities of the lungs and the heart are so closely connected.
In fact, medical science has long known that exposure to high levels of air pollution, especially particulate matter, can exacerbate or even trigger heart disease. But until the last few years, exactly how this happened was a bit of a mystery. Now, researchers have uncovered some good evidence that air pollution hurts the heart.
In this article, we'll take a look at the evidence linking air pollution and heart disease. We'll examine how certain pollutants affect the cardiovascular system and see what we can do to minimize the risk of damage.
Let's start with a quick review of the cardiopulmonary (heart-lung) system to get an idea of how breathing polluted air into our lungs directly affects the heart.
Our bodies can't run without oxygen. All of our cells need it, and they rely on our lungs and heart to deliver it.
Every breath we take brings oxygen into our lungs, and the lungs are the first destination for the blood pumped out by the heart. When the right atrium contracts, it squeezes blood into the lungs so it can pick up oxygen from the air there. That oxygenated blood then enters the left atrium, which sends it out to the rest of the body.
But what happens when there's carbon monoxide, particulates or sulfur oxides in our lungs right alongside the oxygen? The blood picks up that stuff, too, and it gets to the blood supply, the heart and to every inch of our bodies.
That's the problem: It's all connected. Unfortunately, the heart reacts just as badly to air pollution as our lungs do. While the main causes of heart disease are poor diet, family history, obesity, diabetes and smoking, there's increasing evidence that heart problems are significantly impacted by pollution. For instance, carbon monoxide from secondhand smoke decreases the amount of oxygen our blood can carry, which can starve the heart muscle of the oxygen it needs to work properly. Particulates in diesel exhaust can cause blood vessels to constrict, limiting blood flow.
These particulates appear to be especially damaging in terms of heart health.
Particulates are tiny bits of liquid or solid matter. When we talk about this type of air pollution harming the heart, we're usually talking about PM2.5 – particulate matter that's less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter. That's roughly 1/10,000th of an inch, or about one-tenth the diameter of a human hair. These particles are small enough to get deep into the lungs. The American Heart Association reports a 1.4 percent increase in heart-related deaths for each 10 micrograms of particulates per cubic foot of air. And 10 micrograms is not a lot. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) considers the low concentration of 35.5 micrograms (average over the course of 24 hours) to be acceptable for health purposes.
Some researchers have found that even those EPA-approved levels can cause damage to the heart and blood vessels, though, especially in people already suffering from heart disease. And now they might know why.