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Harvard-Cyprus Initiative to study pollution-asthma links

By Fiona Mullen from "Financial Mirror"
8 December
2004

People live longer in cleaner areas
Need for science-based policy

At the first Symposium of the Harvard-Cyprus International Initiative for the Environment and Public Health last week, delegates identified links between air pollution and asthma/respiratory diseases as their first project for research, which will be conducted in Cyprus and the surrounding Eastern Mediterranean region.

The Initiative, which was first launched in June, includes the legal establishment by the end of this year of the Cyprus International Institute for the Environment and Public Health (CII), followed by the offer of scholarships at the Harvard School of Public Health, the recruitment of professionals and the opening of temporary offices in Nicosia.

Observers expect the fully operational site as part of a technology park to be located in Kornos, an ideal location to attract non-Cypriots as it is 10-15 minutes from both the beach and Nicosia.

”The aim of the Symposium is to identify and prioritise potential research needs ... and to identify local research personnel, trainees and research infrastructures to carry out the studies,” said  Professor Philip Demokritou of the Harvard School of Public Health and Interim Director of CII.

Interest only recently increased

Speaking at the Symposium, Nicos Georgiades, Director of Environment at the Ministry of Agriculture, admitted that ten years ago there would have been no interest among policy-makers in measures relating to the environment.

"The Cyprus situation evolved from a speedy transition from a pastoral to an urban society within a period of 10-15 years ... The environment was ripe for exploitation. That was the philosophy at the time,” he said. 

This led, for example to “gross mismanagement” of the coastline.

However, creating a sustainable environment has now risen on the agenda, thanks in large part to EU rules, and an increasing awareness of the links between air pollution and health.

Professor Dockery Douglas at the Harvard School of Public Health has conducted studies in the United States showing that, in essence, the more polluted the town, the shorter the life expectancy.

(Studies within economically developed countries are more effective in identifying links between pollution and health than cross-border studies, because of the influence of other variables, such as healthcare systems, economic development and so on.)

Studies found that Los Angeles County had the highest pollution levels.  Studies were also conducted in Switzerland, where it was found that  the higher the air pollution level, the worse people’s lung health was.

Wheezy Nicosians

Suggestions that the same is true in Cyprus come from studies conducted by the Research Unit at Makarios in 2001 and Dr Panayiotis Yiallouros, a Paediatric Pulmonologist.

The prevalence of active asthma was higher among 13-14 year-olds in Nicosia (11%) than in Limassol (6%). The same was true for 7-8 year-olds, where it was 8% in Nicosia and 6% in Limassol.

Noting that the population has the same genetic background and the distance between to two towns is not that far, Yiallouros said that “ones needs to look for other factors in the environment or in the lifestyle” and that it was therefore “an issue for further research”.

One of the reasons why Cyprus is a good place to start is the existence of raw data and the interest shown by the Ministry of Health.

"The Health Ministry has a good administrative database to serve as a basis for studies,” said HSPH Associate Professor Joel Schwartz.

Tourism: both cause and effect

Professor Douglas Dockery explained how air pollution can act as both a by-product of tourism and a negative factor for future tourism arrivals.

“We came here thinking here is a beautiful island in the middle of the Mediterranean so the air is going to be clean. But what we’ve learned is that there is a lot of industry and a lot of air pollution associated with automobile traffic and there is a lot of transport coming in from other parts of Europe,” he told the Financial Mirror.

Dockery said that this means Cyprus is “at the end of the tailpipe” of all the accumulated pollution.

“If people come here to get a clean environment that is not necessarily what they are experiencing.”

Not just fossil fuels

While the link between air pollution and respiratory disease is primarily a matter of burning fossil fuels, it is not the only source of air pollution.

“There is some evidence that wind-blown dust can also be bad for you,” said HSPH’s Schwartz.

This could be because smaller particles, or “real tiny bugs”, from agricultural chemicals such as pesticides attach themselves to the larger dust particles.

Schwartz noted that pollutants can also be biological: fungal spores carried in the air are one of the key reasons for the erosion of the Caribbean coral reef, for example.

Need for science-based policy approach

Environment Service Director Georgiades said that the establishment of the Cyprus International Institute comes at a crucial time “because we are really in need of some sounds science in the environmental field.” Having gone from one extreme of not caring at all about the environment, he said, “We are in an Age of Unreason, where there is a lot of dogmatism, value-judgements and polarised viewpoints in the formulation and implementation for environmental policy.”

Lack of scientific evidence for one argument or another causes huge headaches for policymakers.

Georgiades said that only last week the ministry was faced with 20-30 agencies and public authorities arguing over the establishment of an incineration plant and whether or not it would pollute the air with dioxins.

“But nobody had concrete evidence and concrete information,” he said. Similar problems relate to the highly emotive issue of mobile phone masts or the antennas at the British bases, where reactions are often based on gut feeling rather than science.

Demokritou told the Financial Mirror that research into electro-magnetic fields is one area which they are considering for the future.

Perhaps then we shall know if it is actually more dangerous to stick a mobile phone to your ear all day than to spend a Sunday afternoon lying on Ladies Mile beach near the British Bases.

By Fiona Mullen, Financial Mirror, 8 December 2004

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