Question: What is the worst thing that can happen to our lungs because of pollution? Where is the place with the worst pollution that you know of?

Liza Selley answered on 20 Jun 2018:

Hi 🙂

In the UK 40,000 people die every year because they have been exposed to air pollution. A lot of these people will have died because the air pollution will have caused them to develop a condition called Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disorder (or COPD for short).

Part of COPD is where your lungs lose their ability to stretch, making it difficult to fill your air sacs with fresh air for gas exchange. This happens because air pollution inflames the lungs – it encourages white blood cells to enter the airways and try to remove the pollution. They do this by releasing lots of chemicals that are designed to break down dust and germs that get into the lung. Unfortunately the chemicals can’t tell the difference between the pollution and the lungs so they also attack the walls of the air sacs, damaging them so that they no longer stretch.

The other part of COPD is having a lot of chest infections. Air pollution contributes to this by preventing those same white blood cells from destroying bacteria. The white blood cells are supposed to eat up anything that gets inside the lungs but when they are full of pollution they can’t fit in the bacteria as well. This means that bacteria can grow in the lungs and cause nasty chest infections.

The most polluted places in the world are China and India – there are lots of people living there and the pollution gets so thick that it is dangerous to go outside a lot of the time.