No Environment Is Free From Pollutants

The Effects of Fine Dust, Ozone, and Nitrogen Dioxide on Health by Beate Ritz, Barbara Hoffmann, and Annette Peters in issue 51–52/2019

The authors of the review article promote a further reduction in maximum levels and reference values (1). However, one may also postulate that in tandem with further refinement of the measuring methods, effects can be confirmed below the currently required reference values that could then be defined as diseases.

The question is whether these effects are tolerable or even conducive (keyword: immunocompetence) or whether in order to prevent these effects lifestyles should be restricted and a reverse development into a preindustrial age should be achieved.

The latter is equal to a fight against windmills, because as long as volcanoes and fires exist on Earth, the air will carry pollutants. Eliminating these altogether is illusory.

We wish to remind readers of the 1958 Delaney Clause (Food Additives Amendment), an addition to the 1938 law regulating food, drugs, and cosmetics in the USA. The amendment provided that American foods are not allowed to contain carcinogenic additives. But improved measuring methods led to the discovery of ever smaller doses of possible carcinogenic substances over the years. This could have resulted in a situation where in practice the sale of all agricultural foods would have had to be banned, since plants, for example, themselves produce such substances in minuscule amounts. For this reason, the Delaney Amendment was abolished in 1996 (2).

The precautionary principle valid in Europe, which obliges the legislator to protect the population even if only the possibility exists that a substance may be causing harm, should be put on the testing workbench. It is extremely useful in restricting epidemics.

At its most extreme, this means that any fires, candles, or summer barbecues should be prohibited. The use of public transport should also be prohibited because of the possibility of an above-average transmission rate of flu viruses, and individual means of transport, such as cars, should be promoted.

DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.2020.0287a

Mario Loß

Doctor of Otolaryngology

Berlin

References

1. Ritz B, Hoffmann B, Peters A: The effects of fine dust, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide on health. Dtsch Arztebl Int 2019; 116: 881–6

2. Wikipedia: Food Additives Amendment of 1958. www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_Additives_Amendment_of_1958 (last accessed on 12 March 2020).