By Genevra Pittman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A Danish study
hints that air pollution from car exhaust might trigger strokes,
although much more study is needed to confirm this, the study
team notes. In the study, short-term exposure to certain
pollutants affected admission rates for mild, "ischemic" strokes
at hospitals around Copenhagen, Denmark. Ischemic stroke, the
most common type of stroke, occurs when a clot disrupts blood
flow to the brain. The Danish findings, reported in the European
Heart Journal, follow another recent study that showed a link
between long-term exposure to traffic-related pollution and
stroke death rates in the United Kingdom. "The key observation
is that the traffic-generated air pollution seems to be the
primary source of the exposure," Dr. Jiu-Chiuan Chen, of the
Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern
California, Los Angeles, told Reuters Health. Stroke is the
second leading cause of the death worldwide, accounting for
about 4.4 million deaths every year. In the