This risk factor is minimized.
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Air pollution, plastic, climate change, noise… We are all affected by these environmental issues. If it becomes clear that this is not without consequences for our health, the question is: to what extent? Our environment can be the cause of numerous health problems: respiratory, cerebral, mental, hormonal… but also cardiac.
Indeed, the environment could well represent a major risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, which are the main cause of mortality in the world, with 20 million deaths each year. At least 4 to 6 million, or one in five, of these are attributable to environmental exposures. These would therefore be just as – or even more – responsible for cardiovascular diseases than other known risk factors, such as obesity, smoking, hypertension or even diabetes.
Professor Thomas F. Lüscher, president of the European Society of Cardiology, believes that “environmental risks must be considered in the same way as smoking, hypertension and diabetes in our risk assessments and our prevention strategies”. To decide on the implementation of a treatment, for example, a doctor will take into consideration these known risk factors, but not the patient’s exposure to environmental stress, which could nevertheless play a major role. Professor Thomas Münzel considers that “environmental stress factors have become silent accelerators” of cardiovascular diseases.
The European Society of Cardiology and other leading global cardiology societies have issued a joint statement “calling for urgent action to address environmental stressors as major, but preventable, causes of cardiovascular disease.” For Dr. Christopher Kramer, president of the American College of Cardiology, “the time to act to reduce the impact of the environment on cardiovascular health has come, and this action is essential to reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease worldwide.” Cardiologists particularly emphasize the importance of investing in more research to better understand the impact of environmental stress on cardiovascular and overall health.
