Strong Link Between Diabetes and Air Pollution Found in National U.S. Study

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Sep. 30, 2010) — A national epidemiologic study finds a strong, consistent correlation between adult diabetes and particulate air pollution that persists after adjustment for other risk factors like obesity and ethnicity, report researchers from Children's Hospital Boston. The relationship was seen even at exposure levels below the current EPA safety limit.

The report, published in the October issue of Diabetes Care, is among the first large-scale population-based studies to link diabetes prevalence with air pollution. It is consistent with prior laboratory studies finding an increase in insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, in obese mice exposed to particulates, and an increase in markers of inflammation (which may contribute to insulin resistance) in both the mice and obese diabetic patients after particulate exposure.

Like the laboratory studies, the current study focused on fine particulates of 0.1-2.5 nanometers in size (known as PM2.5), a main component of haze, smoke and motor vehicle exhaust. The investigators, led by John Pearson and John Brownstein, PhD, of the Children's Hospital Informatics Program, obtained county-by-county data on PM2.5 pollution from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), covering every county in the contiguous United States for 2004 and 2005.

They then combined the EPA data with data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the U.S. Census to ascertain the prevalence of adult diabetes and to adjust for known diabetes risk factors, including obesity, exercise, geographic latitude, ethnicity and population density (a measure of urbanization).

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100929105654.htm

[Confusious]

1. diet?

don't see it mentioned.

I find particulate matter kind of hard to swallow. I'll wait for the follow up, which I am sure there will be one.

[HereSince1628]

2. Epidemiological evidence suggests cig. smoking increases diabetes

So I am not immediately put off the idea that particulate matter in air could raise diabetes risk.

As a type II diabetic with a Ph.D. in a biological discipline I know enough to understand a lot of the research literature, and the one thing that stands out to me is that blood levels of glucose are influenced by many driving forces. The more that is learned, the more complex the picture. Hyperglycemia can be thought of as a destination and many different things along the paths leading to it can go punky.

[TNDemo]

3. There has got to be a lot more than diet causing type II.

Every member of my family has type II and none of us are overweight. There has never been an overweight person in our family ever that we are aware of. I have spent my adult years eating low on the food chain, eliminating hydrogenerated oils from our diet when everyone thought I was crazy and concentrating on having food in the form nature intended us to have it. Obviously there is a genetic factor at work in my family but who knows what else? Maybe all that acid rain from the Smokies has hovered over us or something.

[BadgerKid]

4. Wild idea: Link between coal mining and diabetes? n/t