Impact of Air Pollution on High-Caliber Athletic Performance

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Athletes who regularly train and compete outdoors experience elevated levels of exposure to air pollutants due to high minute ventilation rates. While many sports committees use the US Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Quality Index (AQI) to monitor the safety of high pollution events, little is known about the effect of repeated exposure to lower levels of air pollution. To quantify the burden, we estimated the association between repeated exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone and race performance of collegiate athletes using pollutant concentrations, two-pollutant (PM2.5 and ozone) version of the AQI, and a summed version of the AQI. METHODS: We aggregated data on 334 collegiate male track & field athletes from 46 universities across the United States during the years 2010-2014, comprising a total of 1,104 5-km meter race outcomes. Using distributed lag non-linear models (DLNMs), we analyzed the relationship between race performance and air pollution exposures 21 days prior to the race. We reported cumulative effect estimates for the change in average race time associated with increases in exposure from the 20th to 80th percentile. RESULTS:We observed a 12.8 (95% CI: 1.3, 24.2) second and 11.5 (95% CI: 0.8, 22.1) second increase in 5-km race times from 21 days of exposure to PM2.5 concentration (10.3 μg/m3 versus 4.9μg/m3) and ozone concentration (54.9ppm vs. 36.9ppm), respectively. Exposure measured by the two-pollutant AQI was not significantly associated with race time (95% CI: -5.23, 16.60); however, the association for summed two-pollutant AQI was similar to the associations for the individual pollutants (12.4 seconds, 95% CI: 1.8, 23.0). CONCLUSIONS:Training and competing at consistently higher levels of air pollution were associated with higher race times. This is a first step at identifying the association between pollution and running performance and a foundation for why coaches should consider approaches to reduce air pollution exposure. KEYWORDS: athletic performance, air pollution, particulate matter, ozone