[By Merry]
I mean the title of this post literally. Honest.
One of my pet peeves is people using the word "literally" incorrectly.
Friend - "He was so upset that he literally exploded with anger."
Me - "Wow, that must have been messy."
Friend - "Huh?"
[Crabby reaches out a claw -- figuratively -- and drags Merry back to the point]
Anyway, the point is that pollution is a problem.
Breathing on an airplane is bad for you. Apparently noxious vapors leak into the cabin through the air-conditioning system and can cause breathing difficulties, fatigue and even permanent brain damage. Some former pilots claim they have been left unable to fly after exposure to this recycled air.
Breathing while living next door to a shoe factory is apparently really bad for you. One woman spent 8 years fighting the shoe factory and the city council because she claimed the glue fumes from the factory were poisoning her. (It's a depressing, scary tale.)
But apparently you can exercise when you're in Los Angeles on a windless day. Exercising when air quality is bad is okay????
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Researchers at University of Dublin asked whether a person would absorb more pollutants while walking or cycling slowly, or while covering the same distance at a faster rate. You would think that the faster you move, the harder you breathe, causing you to absorb more pollutants through your lungs. However, the opposite is true. Cycling and walking at a faster speed causes you to breath at a higher rate over a shorter duration of exposure. This results in lower total absorption of pollutants than cycling or walking the same distance at a slower speed (Journal of Environmental Science and Health, November 2007). The reduction was greater at lower concentrations of pollutants than at high concentrations, and was more marked in walkers than in cyclists. They found that fast walking decreased absorption of pollutants by 26 percent compared to walking slowly, while cycling fast decreased absorption by 17 percent over slow cycling .
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This has me puzzled. The more breaths I take, the more I exercise, the better? Every expert I've ever heard speak on the subject says that when the air quality is bad, you shouldn't exercise. How much weight should I put in this study?
Sometimes all the different studies out there in Internet-land drive me crazy.
On the other hand, you can also find people on the Internet who get paid to drink or get paid to eat chocolate. So it's not all bad.
