Climate and the Skin

Health Impacts of Wood Smoke and PM2.5 Pollution on Your Skin

January 12, 2020 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

Curling up with a book by a blazing wood fire is a cozy image, but the PM2.5 pollution from the wood smoke has serious negative consequences for our health and skin | Mary L. Williams, MD | EliasandWilliams.com

Picture this: A person enjoying a cup of hot chocolate and a good book while resting in an arm chair in front of a blazing fireplace. A cozy image of the winter season? Perhaps, but it’s becoming increasing clear that this picture is not a healthy one. That wood, which is burning so brightly, is spewing forth an invisible battalion of minute particles to pollute the air we breathe and that surrounds our skin. Wood smoke generates PM 2.5 pollution.

‘PM_2.5’ stands for particulate matter less than 2.5 microns – which is less than 1/100 000 of an inch – in diameter.

PM_2.5pollution is well known to cause flares of asthma and to be harmful for adults with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and other chronic lung disorders. Inhalation of these particlesis also dangerous for those with preexisting heart disease, raising blood pressure and, indeed, precipitating heart attacks. PM_2.5pollution is also linked to chronic kidney disease and lung cancer. It is dangerous for pregnant women, as well. These particles are also linked to miscarriages, prematurity, and lower birth weight babies.

PM_2.5 pollution is bad for the skin, too.

PM_2.5and even smaller, ‘ultrafine’ particles enter the skin. PM_2.5can enter via the hair follicles, the even smaller, ultrafine particles can even penetrate through lipid membranes of the stratum corneum. Particles can also access skin through the blood after being absorbed through the lungs.

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Skin Cancer: A Subtle Sign Of Climate Change

March 29, 2019 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

A patch of daffodils in full bloom on the Sonoma California coast in late January 2019. A shift towards an earlier spring is one of the subtle, but very important signs of climate change. An increased incidence of skin cancers is a health consequence that will only appear after many years, because of the long time lag between the injury to the skin and the development of a cancer.

Photo by Mary L. Williams

Subtle Signs Of Climate Change

Amidst the drumbeats last Fall, which seemed to bring nothing but bad news about our changing climate and its perils to human health, came one small ray of hope. A new study out of Yale University demonstrated that nearly 3/4ths of American now believe in climate change. Not surprisingly, it was the calamitous effects of extreme weather events – the floods and the forest fires, for example – that largely accounted for this new wave of understanding.

Such environmental catastrophes are the big red flags of climate change – and, of course, we need to pay attention to them. But there are also quieter, more subtle signs of our changing world that are equally portentous.

During a recent break in our winter rains, I seized the opportunity to take a walk along a coastal bluff about 80 miles north of San Francisco. Taking a spur off the main trail, I was surprised to come upon a field of daffodils, as I rounded the bend. They lay near what appeared to be the remains of the foundation of a small building – perhaps an old sheepherder’s hut from an earlier time. The daffodils may have been planted by someone who hoped to tame and humanize an otherwise bleak and wind torn landscape. Though long abandoned by humans, the flowers had carried on, undisturbed by grazing deer – growing, blooming, and withering in annual cycles, year after year, for decade after decade, thereafter.

Just as a choking blanket of smoke last Fall brought home to many Californians the realization that climate change was the real arsonist behind those terrifying forest fires — so too, did the sighting of a beautiful patch of daffodils, blooming ‘out of season’, remind me that the hand of the demon of climate change is everywhere, operating at every level.

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Pollution Affects Skin, Too

January 20, 2019 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

Urban smog in China. Hazy conditions due to air pollution are rich in particulate matter, coated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and in ozone. Both particulate matter and ozone pollution are linked to skin aging and flares of eczema. Photo by Mary L. Williams — Urban smog in China

Pollution Affects Skin

It’s common knowledge that air pollution is bad for our lungs. Individuals with asthma or other chronic lung ailments are particularly vulnerable to its effects. But how often have we thought about the harm that pollution could be doing to our skin? Don’t feel guilty if you haven’t given this much thought, because dermatologists, themselves, have paid little attention to it– at least not until recently, that is. And one thing seems obvious at the outset. Unlike our eyes, which itch and water on days when the pollution index soars, or our lungs which may tighten if we have sensitive lungs – skin gives us no warnings that it is under attack.

The effects of pollution on our skin are typically insidious, their onset delayed.

Yet, several recent studies have shown that polluted air is bad for the skin. Air pollution increases office visits for acne, and is associated with flares of eczema (atopic dermatitis) in children and the increased prevalence of other eczemas in older adults. Air pollution is also linked to the development of pigmented spots on the face.

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Air Pollution, Climate Change and the Skin

December 6, 2018 By Mary L Williams, M.D. Leave a Comment

The link between climate change and air pollution was experience in San Francisco in November 2018. Fires burning 100 miles north of the city forced people to stay indoors or wear breathing masks. — Pollution from distant climate change-related forest fires cloud San Francisco’s skies forcing many to stay indoors or wear protective masks. Photo by Mary L Williams

Air pollution and climate change go hand in hand. The truth behind this statement may not be immediately apparent to everyone, but those of us who live and breathe in San Francisco now know it all to well. We learned the hard way. As wildfires more than 100 miles north of our city raged out of control last month– fires that were triggered by drought that was fostered by climate change – their smoke clouded our skies, filled our lungs and bathed our skin.

The Bay Area was on air quality alerts for weeks. ‘Red’ alert days, cautioning the very young, elderly and those with heart and lung disease to remain indoors. These announcements soon gave way to a few days of even more extreme, ‘purple’ alerts, when the air was simply unsafe for everyone!

Schools were closed and those who ventured out wore surgical masks – all because of air pollution because of Climate Change!

Wildfires have been a problem in California more or less forever. [Read more…] about Air Pollution, Climate Change and the Skin

Climate Change, Infectious Diseases And The Skin

September 13, 2018 By Mary L Williams, M.D. 1 Comment

Climate change is impacting habitats such as those of Joshua trees and causing the spread of many infectious diseases — Joshua trees are also threatened by climate change. Photo by Mary L. Williams

One undisputed consequence of our changing climate is the spread of infectious diseases into new regions as their habitats change. Many so-called tropical diseases are now moving into more temperate latitudes.

While Washington fiddles and California burns, deadly microbes are on the march.

Diseases, particularly those that are carried by mosquitoes, fleas and ticks, are expanding into new regions. No matter where you live in the US, one or more of the infectious diseases they bear is or will soon be in your neighborhood. Recently, The Center for Biological Diversity published an interactive map that shows the tick- and insect-borne diseases which are predicted to enter your locale.

How Skin Is Impacted By The Shifting Landscape Of Infectious Diseases

Global warming is shifting the landscape of infectious diseases, and skin is a player on this field because – at the very least – it provides the ‘portal of entry’ through which microbes can be introduced by these biting ‘arthropods’, (the invertebrate phylum that includes insects and ticks). But beyond serving as the entry point, skin often is involved at an early stage in these infections and its involvement can provide the key clue to the correct diagnosis. The rash of Lyme disease is a good example.