Urban stressors: effects on health

Abstract

Air pollution is defined as any change of air due to the introduction of one or more substances in quantities and with features that affect or threaten human health or environmental quality. In industrialized countries, the main sources of urban pollutants are the anthropic ones: vehicular or air traffic, domestic heating, factories, etc. Our team realized several research programs about the effects of urban stressors on the health of occupationally exposed workers, both males and females. The researches aimed at evaluating several neuro-immune-endocrine, cardiovascular, respiratory, hepatic and stress parameters, in workers occupationally exposed to urban pollution. The workers who performed their duties in streets belonged to the exposed group; the workers who performed indoor-activities belonged to the control group. Starting from a wide casuistry, the two groups were made comparable by gender, age, working life, cigarette smoking history (number of smoked cigarettes, years of smoking), habitual consumption of alcohol, and other confounding factors that, each time, were required. Our results showed that urban pollution can cause effects on cardiovascular and respiratory systems, on liver, on neuro-immune-endocrine system and on several psychological functions evaluated by an ad-hoc questionnaire. The parameters that we evaluated could be used as early markers of effect.