Run towards clean air
I consider myself a recreational runner. I lace up my shoes and hit the roads three to four times a week for anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes. I never once thought about the air quality until I started working closely with some of our company’s air and health clients. That knowledge instilled a new level of awareness in me when it came to outdoor running and how the air might be affecting my health.
Poor air quality and its impact on athletes is a hot topic in the media with the 2012 Olympics looming and the controversy over London’s air quality.
A topic not addressed as much is what poor air quality means for the recreational athletes – the ones who lace up their sneakers for a run or bike ride four times a week to get some cardiovascular exercise in. Even if their work out is only 30 – 60 minutes a day it has the potential to be detrimental when it comes to long-term health if the air quality is bad.
We breathe more deeply and rapidly than normal when exercising and this allows more air pollution to enter the lungs. Air pollution tends to be higher in the afternoon when there is more traffic and the mixture of heat and air begins to worsen air quality. Therefore, when possible, runners should try to work out in the morning.
But what about those who cannot? Is it better to run through poor air quality than not run at all?
According to this report by the Sport Information Resource Centre (SIRC), if the air quality is poor runners are better to reduce the amount of time they work out, take the day off or consider taking their workout inside.
Bottom line is it’s important for recreational athletes to be aware of the air quality in their community by getting in the habit of checking it the way they would check the weather before lacing up for a run.
Their lungs – and health – will thank them.
Do you regularly check the air quality in your community before exercising outdoors?
Who cares about the air?
Well it turns out, not enough of us.
Health Canada recently released an Environics’ Survey that examined our knowledge and attitudes about air quality – and the survey results will have profound changes on how air quality is managed and reported in Canada.
If you are like the one-in-seven Canadians surveyed, you are probably saying “so what” at this point and may be thinking about your dinner plans. Well don’t make your shopping list just yet. It seems that air quality affects us all. We just don’t know it yet.
The study found a significant difference between our understanding that air quality affects our health and our awareness of our own local risk factors. About 96% of Canadians believe air quality affects health to some degree; yet few Canadians seek out air quality information regularly.
A majority of us continue to rely on our sense to tell us when the air is ‘bad’. And it seems that we tend to think about the long term effects of poor air quality but are less good at identifying the immediate impact on health unless “the connection has been made directly through a personal experience”.
So why is it that even those of us living in the most polluted parts of the country do not seem to make the connection between air pollution and our own health?
The Survey authors suggest our collective head-in-the-sand approach might be due to a “they must be talking about someone else” reaction or even a “this is too big for me to think about” response.
But perhaps we are not getting information we know how to use.
When Environics compared provinces that had the highest (BC) and lowest (Alberta) air quality awareness, they found one critical difference – the Air Quality Health Index.
Launched in BC in 2006, the Air Quality Health Index is the first air quality measurement tool in the world that reports the health impact of the air we all breathe. It makes the connection for us. BC residents have been learning about the Index and now use it to manage exposure during times when the air quality is poor – like in the fires of 2010.
Those same fires created the worst air quality in Alberta that has ever been recorded in the province. But without the AQHI, residents had no way of knowing how the outside air was affecting their health. That is changing. Seeing the success, the Government of Alberta committed to a province-wide launch of the Air Quality Health Index in the summer of 2011. Now the AQHI is reported across the country.
Ask us again in a few years. It appears Canadians do care about the air and this new tool will help equip them in making decisions toward improved personal health.