NEW STUDY: Air Pollution Good for Lungs

HAPPY APRIL FOOL’S DAY!

- by Fiske Ster­ling, April 1, 2014. Source: TBN News

A new study out of Miska­ton­ic Uni­ver­si­ty in Rhode Island has con­clud­ed that air pol­lu­tion, specif­i­cal­ly par­tic­u­late mat­ter, can repair dam­aged lung tissue.

The sci­en­tif­ic con­sen­sus up until this point had been that par­tic­u­late mat­ter — the byprod­uct of com­bus­tion from pow­er plants and auto­mo­biles — can pen­e­trate deep into the lungs, the blood­stream, and oth­er organs to cause a num­ber of debil­i­tat­ing ail­ments from asth­ma to diabetes.

The study, Long Term Expo­sure to Par­tic­u­late Mat­ter 2.5 Shows Alve­o­lar Tis­sue Regen­er­a­tion, has turned con­ven­tion­al wis­dom on its head in regards to the human health impacts of air pollution.

“All these years we have assumed that par­tic­u­late mat­ter caused inflam­ma­tion and lung dis­ease,” said Franklin Cor­ri­g­an, M.D., lead study author and Chair of the Miska­ton­ic Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter. “We now have rea­son to believe that it’s a cure.”

The Nod­bury Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion sent out a press release this week announc­ing “The End of Asth­ma,” report­ing that hos­pi­tals across the nation are already in the devel­op­ment stages of exper­i­men­tal treat­ments involv­ing the inhala­tion of par­tic­u­late mat­ter for those suf­fer­ing from asth­ma and COPD.

Where once patients with lung dis­ease were brought to remote loca­tions in rur­al areas to recov­er from their ail­ments, they may now be sent into res­i­den­tial com­mu­ni­ties in close prox­im­i­ty to coal-fired and bio­mass pow­er plants and trash incin­er­a­tors such as Vir­ginia City, Vir­ginia, Burling­ton, Ver­mont, and Detroit, Michigan.

The coal, bio­mass ener­gy, and trash incin­er­a­tion indus­tries react­ed with jubi­lance. “For years, our indus­try has been maligned as ‘dirty’ and ‘pol­lut­ing,’ been libeled in the press by envi­ron­men­tal­ists and shack­led with one gov­ern­ment restric­tion after anoth­er,” said Sylvia Rath­ness of the Clean Coal Insti­tute for Advance­ment. “Now the truth has come to light, we will be enter­ing a gold­en age for com­bus­tion-based technologies.”

Envi­ron­men­tal­ists had mixed reac­tions to the impli­ca­tions of the study. “As respon­si­ble voic­es for rea­son, we have rarely spo­ken out against pow­er plants, and in many cas­es advo­cat­ed for some forms of the tech­nol­o­gy,” said Mar­tin Spender of This Green Plan­et, an inter­na­tion­al envi­ron­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion based out of Wash­ing­ton, D.C.  “We hope that the indus­try will con­tin­ue to work hand in hand with us to move for­ward with a com­mon sense approach that will fur­ther ben­e­fit pub­lic health and the economy.” 

Rad­i­cal voic­es that have long opposed “dirty” ener­gy sources are in a state of remorse­ful shock fol­low­ing the release of the study, many of whom have already offi­cial­ly dis­band­ed their orga­ni­za­tions. “All these years, we thought the anti-dirty ener­gy move­ment was pro­tect­ing peo­ple,” said Shari Ran­dall of the Earth Breath Alliance based in Belling­ham, Wash­ing­ton. “We had no way of know­ing that we were actu­al­ly doing them harm…My God, what have we done?”