Healthy And Beauty: Air Pollution

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Saturday, August 30th, 2008 Subscribe To Our Feed

Urban areas are known for many different things. On the positive side, there are countless restaurants and entertainment ideas in urban areas. There is always something to do and often times it is within walking distance. On the negative side, urban areas have high crime rates. However, there are other negatives in urban areas. A threat to your health and beauty that is found in urban areas is air pollution.

How Air Pollution Affects Your Health

Air pollution affects both your health and beauty. Air pollution can affect your health in two ways: short term and long term. Short term effects of air pollution on your health can be eye irritation, nose and throat irritation, and upper respiratory infections including pneumonia and bronchitis. Headaches, allergic reactions, and nausea are other short term health effects of air pollution. In addition, if you have asthma or emphysema air pollution can aggravate your condition.

Long term effects from air pollution exposure are many. Lung cancer, heart disease, and chronic respiratory disease have been linked to air pollution exposure. In addition, air pollution can also cause damage to the brain, nerves, kidneys, or liver. Long term exposure to air pollution especially affects the health of growing children and the elderly.

If you doubt the affect of air pollution on your health, think about this. In 1952 during the great “Smog Disaster” in London, due to the high concentration of pollution in the air four thousand people died in just a few days.

How Air Pollution Affects Your Beauty

Even if you are not concerned about the effects on your health alone, rest assured that air pollution can, and will, affect both your health and beauty. For most people, health and beauty are inextricably linked, and any aging or poor health will result in poor health and beauty.

It has been considered that the pollutions found in the air in urban areas can contribute more to early aging of one’s skin (i.e. wrinkles), than even sun damage can. While sun damage is bad for your health and beauty, so is air pollution. Recent studies have shown that air pollution in urban areas can cause modifications in the structure and biophysical properties in the skin, therefore causing wrinkles. When your skin is damaged, it is showing damage in both health and beauty. Normal, undamaged skin does not age prematurely. Here is a health and beauty tip if you want to prevent the air pollution in your urban area from destroying the health and beauty of your skin: use an antioxidant to neutralize the damaging effects of air pollution on your skin. You may not be able to prevent short or long term affects of air pollution on your overall health, but you can protect your skin while living in an urban area.

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