How to Protect Your Lungs in a Foggy City
If you live in a large city with traffic jams and cars, you are probably exposed to air pollution on a daily basis. This can be detrimental to your health, especially your lungs, and the surgical masks you see often in smoky cities don’t really protect you. Here’s what to do instead.
The best ways to protect yourself from urban air pollution are all of the options for how easy it is to avoid it, especially on bad days (which usually happens when the weather gets warm). If you can’t handle this entire list, try to do as much as possible to give your lungs a break.
- Avoid walking or cycling in busy streets . Try to choose routes with less traffic and fewer cars. It can be tricky (this is for me, I live and work in downtown San Francisco), but if you can drive through a park or into a small alley, do your best.
- Stay away from the sidewalk edge . Especially in cities with wide sidewalks, try to stay as far away from the sidewalk as possible so as not to walk near the exhaust fumes of cars.
- On hot days, use an air conditioner instead of opening windows . In warm weather, it can be tempting to open the windows and let in the spring breeze, but it also allows the smoky air to pass through. On particularly hot days, use conditioner to keep you cool. If the air conditioner is not right for you, buy an air filter.
- Limit your exposure during exercise . Choose an indoor, air-conditioned gym rather than outdoors to reduce your exposure to air pollution. If a gym isn’t right for you, find outdoor workout spots that are away from densely populated areas of the city (such as large parks or green open spaces).
If you still want to wear a mask to filter out pollutants and gases that irritate your lungs and can affect your long-term health, The Naked Scientists recommends that you purchase a mask that forms a seal around your nose and mouth and is certified to filter. traffic fumes.