“The connection between air pollution and heart attacks in our study was absent in smokers. This may indicate that polluted air can actually cause heart attacks. Smokers, who continuously introduce air pollutants into their lungs, seem less affected by additional external pollutants,” says the author of the study, D. R. Insa de Bohr-Stockburger from Berlin.
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The study was based on 17,873 patients from Berlin who had a heart attack between 2008 and 2014. The team extracted the patients’ daily heart attack statistics from the German B2HIR database as well as their basic characteristics such as, for example, gender, age, smoking status and diabetes. At the same time, the Berlin Senate provided information on two-day concentrations of PM10 and nitrogen oxide, which pollute the air. Weather information (duration of sun shining, minimum and maximum temperature, precipitation) came from the weather station Berlin, Tempelhof.