Suffering from air pollution? Aspirin might help

Prolonged exposure to air pollution has been linked to a variety of ailments from pulmonary diseases to worsening diabetes to early-onset Alzheimer’s and mental impairments. The best cure for toxic air is to avoid it, of course. If that’s not possible, though, you may fall back on taking acetylsalicylic acid, better known as aspirin.

A team of researchers from several prestigious medical schools in the United States analyzed data collected from 2,280 men in the greater Boston area whose average age was 73 and had been given tests to determine their lung functions. The researchers found that the use of any nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) nearly halved of the effect of airborne particulate matter on lung function and did so consistently over several weeks.

Most people in the study used aspirin as the prescribed NSAID. The scientists postulate that aspirin and other NSAIDs improve lung function in people by reducing inflammation triggered by exposure to polluted air. “Our findings suggest that aspirin and other NSAIDs may protect the lungs from short-term spikes in air pollution,” says Xu Gao, a research scientist at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Columbia Mailman School, who was an author of the study published on the findings in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

The scientist cautions, however, that this does not mean that by taking aspirin you can then eliminate health risks from long-term exposure to toxic air. “Of course, it is still important to minimize our exposure to air pollution, which is linked to a host of adverse health effects, from cancer to cardiovascular disease,” he says.

In 2017 scientists in the U.S. found that by taking higher doses of B vitamins people can reduce the harmful health impacts of air pollution. They found that in 10 volunteers who took B vitamin supplements for four weeks the effects of PM2.5 were reduced by between 28% and 76% at 10 gene locations as compared to people who took no such supplements.

The findings were promising but not conclusive. “While I think it is great that doing something as easy as taking a vitamin would help protect against air pollution harm, the public health goal still needs to be one of reducing air pollution to a level that is not harmful,” noted Prof. Carrie Breton, an expert at the University of Southern California.