In the past quarter century, U.S. life expectancy has increased by more than 2.5 years, mostly due to factors such as healthier lifestyles, better nutrition and improved health care, but researchers determined that 15 percent of the longevity increase—about five months—is a direct result of breathing cleaner air.
Conversely, the dirty air that blankets many cities in the developing world, and collects near highways and industrial areas in American cities, can lower life expectancy. That kind of air contains fine particles that penetrate deep into a person’s lungs where they can damage blood vessels and cause serious respiratory problems.
"Clean or dirty air is something that is being imposed on you,” said Dr Douglas Dockery, head of the Environmental Health Department at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, which conducted the long-term research project. "You do have a choice on whether you smoke, drink, exercise or what type of food you eat. But you do not have a choice on what air you breathe."
Despite the smog in many cities, and spikes in dangerous air quality that occur during heavy traffic and near industrial and transportation centers, air quality in U.S. cities is expected to improve even more in the future. Filters and other technologies are making trucks and buses run cleaner, and efforts to combat climate change are increasing the use of biofuels and other alternative fuels that will improve the quality of the air we breathe.
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