ABSTRACT
The proposal to burn coal in Mayagüez fails to address important facts that may affect human health. In the first place, the pattern of winds prevailing in Mayagüez is simply excluded and arbitrarily substituted by a pattern prevailing twenty kilometer north of Mayagüez. The fact that pollutants in compliance with the air standards may, nevertheless, affect human health is entirely disregarded. Also is the episodic accumulations of pollutants by meteorological conditions, such as thermal inversions coupled by low winds. The remarkable effect of exercise amplifying ozone harmful action is ignored, in spite of the athletic activity at the Mayagüez Campus of the UPR. The effect of chronic exposures of nitrogen dioxide on children living in houses with gas stoves is also ignored. These and other omissions raise serious human health concerns about the burning of coal in the setting already existing in Mayagüez.
Subject(s)
Air Pollutants , Coal , Environmental Health , Adult , Child , Humans , Meteorological Concepts , Nitrogen Dioxide/toxicity , Puerto RicoABSTRACT
The literature on the performance of those exercising in air containing ozone was examined. The action of ozone is mediated by muscarinic receptors and others of unknown nature localized, apparently, over the respiratory epithelium of gaseous transport. Due to its action on those receptors the inspiratory phase of the pulmonary ventilation is reduced in an effect associated with pain and, simultaneously, the resistance to the pass of air is increased. If exercise increases ventilation to 90 or more liters per minute the effective dose of ozone increases potentiating its effect on the inspiration and the resistance. The potentiated reduction of the inspiratory phase and the associated pain (a) strongly antagonize the ventilatory effort of exercise and (b) reduced the capacity of response to the increase in resistance with augmented inspirations. In this way an important decrease in performance appears.
