VIDEO: Pollution is a major but underrecognized risk factor for CVD

In this video, Philip J. Landrigan, MD, MSc, FAAP, highlights key points from his review article about the impact of pollution on cardiovascular health. The article was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Landrigan, who is the director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good and the Global Observatory on Pollution and Health at Boston College, cowrote the article with Sanjay Rajagopalan, MD, the director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Case Western Reserve University. They reviewed current evidence linking pollution to CVD.

“Until now, pollution reduction has received scant attention in programs for CVD control and has been largely absent from guidelines regarding the prevention of cardiovascular diseases, which have focused almost exclusively on individual behavioral and metabolic risk factors,” they wrote. “This is an important omission, since incorporation of pollution reduction into CVD prevention could save millions of lives.”

As pollution-related cardiovascular outcomes become more prevalent, it is important that physicians recognize and understand the role that pollution plays in patients’ health outcomes, they added.

Reference:

Landrigan PJ, Rajagopalan S. N Engl J Med. 2021;doi: 10.1056/NEJMra2030281.