Less pollution in recent years means that Americans are living longer, a new study shows. In the 20-year period beginning in 1980, there has been a reduction in pollution that translates into about five months more to people’s lives across 51 cities, according to a study published Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The biggest jump in life span occurred in the cities that did the best job of cleaning up their air, CNN reports. In Pittsburgh, for example, residents live almost 10 months longer. “Here’s a situation where we say, ‘We think that improving our air quality should improve health and life expectancy,’ and so we did it, in many cities more so than others,” says lead researcher C. Arden Pope III, Ph.D., of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. “We wait a couple of decades and see if it really helps, and the answer is that it did, and that’s good news.” CNN reports that long-term exposure to dirty air – specifically, the tiny specks known as fine-particulate air pollution – shortens lives and contributes to cardiovascular and lung disease. Particulate matter is inhaled almost like a gas and is thought to hike blood pressure, heart attack risk, and the chance of heart disease-related death. The American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology recommends that heart patients avoid driving for two to three weeks after leaving the hospital to avoid pollution (and stress), CNN.com writes. Other research has suggested that a nonsmoker living in a polluted city has about the same risk of dying of heart disease as a former smoker. Gas and diesel engines, coal-fired plants, steel mills, smelters, refineries, and other industrial processes involving burning at high temperatures produce these particles, which are no bigger than 2.5 microns across — or about one-fortieth the diameter of a human hair. “Those are the ones that can penetrate deeply into the lungs and cause most of the health problems,” says Pope.

One in three schools are in “pollution danger zones.” One in three U.S. public schools are in the “air pollution danger zone,” according to new research from the University of Cincinnati (UC). More than 30 percent of American public schools are within 400 meters, or a quarter mile, of major highways that consistently serve as main truck and traffic routes, the researchers found. And studies have shown that proximity to major highways—and thus environmental pollutants, such as aerosolizing diesel exhaust particles—can leave school-age children more susceptible to respiratory diseases such as asthma later in life. “This is a major public health concern that should be given serious consideration in future urban development, transportation planning and environmental policies,” says Sergey Grinshpun, PhD, principal investigator of the study and professor of environmental health at UC. To protect the health of young children with developing lungs, he says new schools should be built further from major highways. “Health risk can be mitigated through proper urban planning, but that doesn’t erase the immediate risk to school-age children attending schools that are too close to highways right now,” he adds. “Existing schools should be retrofitted with air filtration systems that will reduce students’ exposure to traffic pollutants.”

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