Sharon Chinthrajah: The air is making us sick

The connection between bad air and bad health is growing clearer by the day. One allergy specialist says that real change starts at home, but ends on a much larger scale. Air quality affects our health far more than many would suspect. It’s closely related to asthma, of course, but also to concerns like cardiovascular disease and other lifespan-reducing conditions. It’s a health emergency, says allergy and asthma specialist Sharon Chinthrajah, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford who studies and develops strategies for combatting conditions caused by air pollution. She says there are a number of ways we all can do better, including changing clothes frequently and showering in the evenings to wash away the day’s detritus collected on hair and skin. But, she says, those efforts are only stopgaps to truly solving the problem of air pollution. The most effective responses have to come at a societal level, and there, Chinthrajah says, we must target the biggest contributors — motorized vehicles that burn fossil fuels. Eighty percent of California’s air pollution comes from these sources. Often concerns about air quality are accompanied by racial and class aspects, as people of color and the poor tend to live in urban, heavily trafficked areas. Chinthrajah advocates for large-scale efforts to battle air pollution, particularly a move toward electric vehicles and public transportation. She notes that in California, low-income families can qualify for up to $20,000 in state, federal and local subsidies to purchase electric vehicles, putting clean cars within reasonable reach for the first time. Join host Russ Altman and allergy specialist Sharon Chinthrajah for an exploration of the connection between air pollution and health, and what we all can do to lessen its influence on our well-being, on the latest episode of The Future of Everything radio show from SiriusXM. You can listen to The Future of Everything on Sirius XM Insight Channel 121, iTunes, Google Play, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher or via Stanford Engineering Magazine.