Abstract
BackgroundVigorous outdoors exercise during an episode of air pollution might cause airway inflammation. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of vigorous outdoor exercise during peak smog season on breath pH, a biomarker of airway inflammation, in adolescent athletes.MethodsWe measured breath pH both pre- and post-exercise on ten days during peak smog season in 16 high school athletes engaged in daily long-distance running in a downwind suburb of Atlanta. The association of post-exercise breath pH with ambient ozone and particulate matter concentrations was tested with linear regression.ResultsWe collected 144 pre-exercise and 146 post-exercise breath samples from 16 runners (mean age 14.9 years, 56% male). Median pre-exercise breath pH was 7.58 (interquartile range: 6.90 to 7.86) and did not change significantly after exercise. We observed no significant association between ambient ozone or particulate matter and post-exercise breath pH. However both pre- and post-exercise breath pH were strikingly low in these athletes when compared to a control sample of 14 relatively sedentary healthy adults and to published values of breath pH in healthy subjects.ConclusionAlthough we did not observe an acute effect of air pollution exposure during exercise on breath pH, breath pH was surprisingly low in this sample of otherwise healthy long-distance runners. We speculate that repetitive vigorous exercise may induce airway acidification.
Highlights
Vigorous outdoors exercise during an episode of air pollution might cause airway inflammation
Mean (± standard deviation (SD)) PM2.5 measured at 5 pm was 27.2 (11.9) μg/m3
We sought to examine the association of exhaled breath pH with ambient ozone and particulate matter concentrations among 16 adolescent athletes exposed to these air pollutants during vigorous outdoor exercise
Summary
Vigorous outdoors exercise during an episode of air pollution might cause airway inflammation. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of vigorous outdoor exercise during peak smog season on breath pH, a biomarker of airway inflammation, in adolescent athletes. Exposure to PM has been repeatedly associated with increased mortality, how PM causes death is not well understood [2]. For both ozone and PM, health risks rise as exposure rises. Several studies have documented short- and long-term effects of ozone related to exposure during exercise [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15], few have examined children or young adults, and little is known about effects of repeated exposures to ambient ozone or PM among student athletes
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