Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

London used to be called “The Smoke” for very good reasons. In that time the air was usually polluted and dirty. There were times, too often, when it was filthy and all pervading. Almost all the old smoke is long gone but the air is now as bad.

You will know the reasons for that. What is different is that the old smoke and dirt could be washed out and with care clothes restored to cleanliness and without the staleness nastiness of the time.

As for the locomotive in the picture, I knew it well and its class. They were almost part of my upbringing, the old Midland Compounds this one coming out of St. Pancras Station.

We have been up and down to London on a run of events for one reason or another. However we now have to maintain a complete changed of clothing for such visits. On our return they have to be bagged and then washed and keep totally apart from any other clothing.

The reason is the nature of the chemical pollution, notably “fragrances”. We do not use any products with them, personal or household. The contamination is derived entirely from other surfaces they might come into contact with, for example seating, or from the air around.

The stink on them cannot be washed out fully. As we go on using them, despite the washing in non fragranced organic products, it seems to increase visit on visit. Then we have to dump perfectly wearable clothing because it has become so bad.

When we complain about this, we are told airily to “avoid” the problem. We might be able to in a complete vacuum, but there are slight technical problems with that. The only other way would be to stagger about in the full array of protective clothing and face masks with high power filtration systems.

There is a worse and even more worrying effect. It is that if the visits made are close to each other then the progressive effect of the reactions on health worsens.

The nastiest, undoubtedly, is the creeping fatigue that is progressive. After our recent run of visits it has taken days of rigorous control to come round to any sort of normality. Paradoxically, the exercise we take to assist this is more demanding physically than the business of the visits we make.

So the fatigue does not arise from increased activity, mental or physical.

Just how many people, I wonder, are being worse and worse affected in this day without being able to identify or to understand what is happening to them.

It is all too likely that some time soon if the wrong conditions arise there will be a widespread health set of issues which nobody in authority will be prepared to recognise or address.

Burning Question

The connection between wood smoke, a sort of “natural” stuff in the air, tobacco and other extensive airborne pollutants may be a loose and debatable one. But to my simple mind if there is a lot of stuff in the air all of which does no good at all to the lungs then the more complex and the more general it is then the more lung issues that will arise in more people.

Quote:

Wood Smoke Exposure Multiplies Damage from Smoking, Increases Risk of COPD

ScienceDaily (July 16, 2010)

Smokers who are exposed to wood smoke, either through home heating and cooking or through ambient neighborhood pollution, are not only at increased risk of COPD, but are also more likely to have epigenetic changes in the DNA that further increase their risk of COPD and related pulmonary problems.

Together, smoking, wood smoke exposure and these epigenetic changes can increase an individual's risk of COPD fourfold.

"When cigarette smokers are exposed to wood smoke their risk of having reduced lung function increases," explained lead author Yohannes Tesfaigzi, Ph.D. senior scientist and director of COPD Program at the Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute, where the research was completed.

"Cigarette smokers who have both changes in sputum DNA and are exposed to wood smoke have a synergistically increased risk of having reduced lung function and other indicators of COPD such as chronic mucous hypersecretion. "

The research was published online ahead of the print edition of the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Dr. Tesfaigzi and colleagues administered questionnaires to more than 1800 current and former smokers between 40 and 75 years old, and obtained demographic and smoke exposure information, as well as sputum samples which were analyzed for epigenetic changes to eight genes known to be associated with lung cancer.

They found that wood smoke exposure was significantly and independently associated with an increased risk of respiratory disease, especially among current smokers, non-Hispanic whites and men.

Furthermore, wood smoke exposure was associated with specific COPD outcomes in people who had aberrantly methylated p16 or GATA4 genes, and both factors together increased the risk more than the additive of the two risk factors together.

They also found that people with more than two of the eight genes analyzed showing methylation were also significantly more likely to have a lower than predicted FEV1 than those with fewer than two methylated genes.

"Because exposure to wood smoke appears to increase the risk of reducing lung function, cigarette smokers should try to avoid heating their homes or cooking with wood stoves and try to avoid environments where wood smoke is likely (for example, neighborhoods where wood smoke is common)," said Dr. Tesfaigzi.

"Because the same gene changes were associated with increased risk for lung cancer one would assume that wood smoke exposure also increases the risk of developing lung cancer. Future studies may show that it would be appropriate to screen patients for lung cancer if these exposures were present for prolonged periods."

Based on these findings, Dr. Tesfaigzi and colleagues established an animal model that will be able to further test whether both wood and tobacco smoke exposure cause more damage to the lung than either one of the exposures alone.

"We observed increased inflammatory response in mice that were exposed to both cigarette smoke and low concentrations of wood smoke compared to those exposed to cigarette smoke only. We would like to use this animal model to determine the mechanisms underlying this exacerbation," said Dr. Tesfaigzi.

Because wood smoke exposure was documented by self-report and was not quantified in this study, in the future Dr. Tesfaigzi also intends to characterize the type and amount of wood smoke the participants were exposed to. Such studies will help to further refine the analysis and provide intervention strategies.

Unquote.

I am just going out to light the bonfire, have a cigar and to cover the smell will give myself a good big dose of deodorant. If I cough it must be that strong coffee.