Everyone knows that air pollution is bad for health, but how bad depends a lot on who you are. People of different races and ethnicities, education levels, locations and socioeconomic situations tend to be exposed to different degrees of air pollution. Even at the same exposure levels, people's ability to cope with its effects -; by accessing timely health care, for example -; varies.
A new study by Stanford Medicine researchers and collaborators, which takes into account both exposure to air pollution and susceptibility to its harms, found that Black Americans are significantly more likely to die from causes related to air pollution, compared with other racial and ethnic groups. They face a double jeopardy: more exposure to polluted air along with more susceptibility to its adverse health effects because of societal disadvantages. "We see differences across all factors that we examine, such as education, geography and social vulnerability, but what is striking is that the differences between racial-ethnic groups -; partially due to our methodology -; are substantially larger than for all of these other factors," said Pascal Geldsetzer, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and lead author of the study published July 1 in Nature Medicine .
The results demonstrate how air pollution can drive health inequities, contributing a large portion to the difference in mortality rates among different groups. Yet, by the same token, the researchers say that reducing air pollution coul.