Cardiovascular Vulnerability to Particulate Exposure

This project is part of a program project directed toward assessing cardiac effects of particulate and other ambient air pollutants. In this project active elderly adults living in the communities of Boston and Steubenville have attended 12 weekly sessions including approximately 40 minutes of Holter monitoring, blood pressure, and oximetry evaluation before, during, and after outdoor exercise. To investigate the relation of air pollution to cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation, a second portion of this study involves abstraction of blood pressure and symptom data and downloading of available repeated measures telemetry data in two populations. These populations include: 1) 200 outpatients attending 8 to 36 repeated weekly exercise training sessions in a major hospital cardiac rehabilitation unit.

Approximately 60 subjects have participated fully in Boston and Steubenville in the repeated 40 minute measurement of continuous EKG (Holter), blood pressure, and oximetry. In Steubenville we have also measured exhaled nitrogen oxide, an index of pulmonary inflammation. The exposure monitoring has included outdoor particle mass of PM2.5, outdoor gaseous pollutants, and indoor home and personal monitoring to evaluate the indoor contribution of pollution to health effects.