Study: Air Pollution Can Make You Fat

The effects of air pollution is one of the most well-studied topics in the field of environmental toxins research. Air pollution has also been linked to conditions ranging from cardiovascular disease to dementia, Alzheimer's and stroke.

But did you know it can literally make you fat?

The Study

Researchers wanted to find out how exposure to airborne fine particulate matter (diameter, <2.5 μm [PM(2.5)]) pollution impacted adiposity (how fat is laid in the body), as well as metabolic parameters and inflammation. They were interested particularly in exposure during the earlier part of life.

Their breeder at the Ohio State University, Qinghua Sun, had been interested in studying why city-dwellers seem to be at a particularly high risk of heart disease compared to country folk.

It’s common to hear lifestyle habits as a factor in obesity and metabolic diseases. In most cities, a fast food chain is rarely more than a block away, which makes it all too easy to fall in a habit of unhealthy eating.

The breeder wondered if another answer may be hanging, invisibly, in the air we breathe.

To find out more, he started to raise laboratory mice in the kinds of conditions you might find across various cities. Some breathed filtered, clean, air, while others were funnelled the kinds of fumes you might find next to a motorway or busy city centre. Along the way, his team weighed the mice and performed various tests to study how their metabolism was functioning.

Research Findings

After just 10 weeks, the effects were already visible. The rats developed insulin resistance, greater adiposity, and widespread inflammation throughout their body.

• The mice exposed to the air pollution showed greater volumes of body fat, both around the belly and around the internal organs; at the microscopic level, the fat cells themselves were around 20% larger in the mice inhaling a fine mist of pollutants.

• The rats seemed to have quickly become less sensitive to insulin, the hormone that signals to cells to convert blood sugar into energy: the first step towards diabetes.

• The tiny irritating particles may also unleash a flood of inflammatory molecules called “cytokines” to wash through the blood, a response that also triggers immune cells to invade otherwise healthy tissue. Not only does that too interfere with the tissue’s ability to respond to insulin; the subsequent inflammation may also interfere with the hormones and the brain processing that govern our appetite, says Michael Jerrett at the University of California, Berkeley.

This study with laboratory mice offered some of the earliest concrete clues that the effects of air pollution may penetrate far beyond the lungs.

This supports the findings of other studies.

Large studies from cities across the world suggest that humans might be suffering the same consequences.

Chen, for instance, examined the medical records of 62,000 people in Ontario, Canada over a 14-year period. He found that the risk of developing diabetes rose by about 11% for just every 10 micrograms of fine particles in a cubic metre of air.

This is a troubling statistic, considering that the pollution in some Asian cities can reach at least 500 micrograms per cubic metre of air.

In Switzerland, a study saw a similar signs of increased insulin resistance, hypertension, and waist-circumference in a sample of nearly 4,000 people living among dense pollution.

References and Resources:

• Xu X, Yavar Z, Verdin M, Ying Z, Mihai G, Kampfrath T, Wang A, Zhong M, Lippmann M, Chen LC, Rajagopalan S, Sun Q. Effect of early particulate air pollution exposure on obesity in mice: role of p47phox. Arterioscler Thromb Vasc Biol. 2010 Dec;30(12):2518-27. doi: 10.1161/ATVBAHA.110.215350. Epub 2010 Sep 23. PMID: 20864666; PMCID: PMC3065931.

• https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20151207-the-air-that-makes-you-fat

Research: Review on Water Issues in Malaysia

The water you drink and bathe in in your house affects your health.

The chlorine with which almost all municipal water is treated reacts with naturally occurring organic materials, creating harmful trihalomethanes.

This is in addition to the chlorine itself which is a microbial poison.

Read the research study here: The paper was published August 2021 International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478) 11(8):860-875. DOI: 10.6007/IJARBSS/v11-i8/10783

Is Your Tap Water Safe To Drink In Malaysia?

The paper review focuses on water management and usage practices in Malaysia. But it yields astonishing insights into the quality of water declining tremendously in the nation.

While the beautiful tropical country of Malaysia is blessed with the abundant resource, multiple municipal weakness mean the tap water can often be dangerously polluted.

A basic good practice is to install the best personal water filter you can at home to prevent heavy metal contamination.

Insights from the paper:

• Aluminium contamination is higher recorded more than the standard limit set by the Ministry of Health guidelines for drinking water. Based on a 2011 study , from two housing areas with a total of 100 respondents, the mean value of daily chronic aluminum intake (CDI) in PR drinking water (0.00707 mg / kg / day) is much higher than MPL (0.00164 mg / kg / day)!

• Half (49.5%) of all water supply problems in Malaysia were reported in — a densely populated state that houses the main city and urban areas. That increased in 2017 to 62.4% (Malay Mail, 2019).

  Nowadays, water shortage is no longer considered a natural disaster that must be borne and accepted but instead is a human-made cause that can be dealt with and solved by humans.

• mining, industrial, and agricultural activities also contribute to the contamination of heavy metals in the body of water due to improper management of wastewater and discharge from fertilisers (Karavoltsos, 2008). However, most heavy metals from surface water and groundwater are usually removing during the water treatment process (Kioko & Obiri, 2012). Furthermore, corrosion of water pipes, faucets, and water fixtures can cause contaminated water supply for daily use. Unclean practices at home, such as improper drinking water storage containers and unclean operators, also contribute to this. This exposes consumers to the dangers of excess copper ions in drinking water, which can lead to acute poisoning and lead to diseases and ailments, such as liver damage, heart and kidney failure, and brain disease.

• the cost of treating polluted water is high and reduces the overall water availability. In the year 2019, toxic chemical pollution in the Kim River in Pasir Gudang (Johor), which disrupts the water supply to around 20,000 households, is an example. Furthermore, there were 160 cases of river pollution reported in which enforcement was taken during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period from March 18 to May 4, 2020 (Malay Mail, 2019).

• How polluted are the rivers? The Malaysian Environmental Quality Report 2017 shows that the percentage of clean rivers has decreased since 2015, while the rate of polluted rivers has increased.

  …(out of 89 river basins in Peninsular Malaysia) 25 ‘dead’ rivers in Malaysia. Sixteen rivers were found in Johor, five in Selangor, three in Penang, and one in Melaka. These rivers were categorised under Classes 4 and 5, which are reserved for highly polluted rivers and where aquatic life cannot survive (The Sunday Daily, 2019).

• Many factories operate illegally along the banks of the Semenyih River. This adds to pollution to a source that serves several areas around the country’s capital such as Hulu Langat, Kuala Langat, Sepang and Petaling.

• This fact tells us about the possible integrity of pipes channelling water produced by treatment plants to consumer homes. Water wastage could be due to pipe leaks, inaccuracies of customer meters, and unauthorised use. The amount of water wasted in Malaysia is too high, with a national average of 35%. This rate is equivalent to losing 35 liters from every 100 liters of treated water (The Star, 2020).

The only way to assure the quality of what you drink and cook with is by having your own purification system

You can take steps to ensure that your own water system is carefully and periodically maintained.

Typically, purification systems for large municipal water systems can be standard off the shelf systems.

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