Abstract
Is air pollution health effect potentiated when we do exercise in polluted atmosphere, and if so, what mechanisms are responsible? This review tries to provide scientifically based answers to the above practical question.
There are evidences showing that oral breathing starts to participate in the pulmonary ventilation at minute ventilation of about 35-40l/min, and pollutant gases like ozone, when inhaled, are much less readily uptaken by the oral passage than the nasal one. Thus, exercise ventilation has a distinguishing characteristic that is an increased participation of oral breathing in additian to an increase in inhaled air volume, and will cause the penetration of a larger volume of pollutant gases into the deeper airways and lungs than expected on the basis of nasal breathing. On the other hand, there are many reports with human volunteers which demonstrated the increase in functional effects when they were subjected to continuous or intermittent exercise during the controlled ozone exposure. Similar, though not many, reports are also available in animal experiments.
