Louise had the privilege of interviewing some elite athletes (runners, cyclists and triathletes) today about the impact of air pollution on them and their training. Apart from being impressed by their superhuman achievements, she was also left with the impression that a lot more could be done to make the links.
We’ve posted before about some of the academic work on these connections. This study is a good overview and links to many others. It looked at adolescent elite football players in Germany. The key findings were that higher pollution levels (though still within WHO limits) were associated with the players running less in the match, having a higher heart rate, perceiving increased exertion and reporting reduced wellness the next morning. In a study with adult football players, also in Germany, the total number of passes in a match was lower when particulate matter (PM10) was higher. A recent Canadian-led study across four countries showed that elite 5K runners had their times slowed by about 1.5 percent in poor air quality.
Athletes competing at the World Championships in Budapest last year reported increasing concern about air pollution. Many sportspeople are speaking out about it - unsurprisingly given the terrible air quality in parts of South Asia, cricketers are speaking out and matches are being disrupted.
The interventions at those smog-filled cricket matches included water sprinklers around the stadium. Before the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government closed factories for a number of months. But those aren’t realistic actions for sports where long distances are travelled, or for the vast majority of training grounds for adolescent sport in London which exceed WHO limits.
What can be done?
Awareness raising is a good start. Then improvements could include choosing different, lower pollution, routes for training and competing over long distances. Even detailed changes such as careful choice of the part of your route to put in the most exertion would help. All sports, including fixed location team sports, could look carefully at the time of day to hold fixtures and training sessions. This article also recommends taking anti-oxidants (to reduce the oxidative stress of pollution). And for particulate matter, this blog recommends use of well-fitting masks and exercising indoors if PM10 is spiking. However, these last recommendations have less proven effectiveness than careful attention to time and route.
To achieve such changes, detailed information is needed on pollution levels. From our Breathe London Brixton node, we can gain information about the times of the day and week that pollution is highest and lowest. But we hope no-one is running a marathon or playing a 90-minute football match in the mini park under our node. Can more be done to increase the provision of data?
Speaking of which…
We’ve hit the big time, but for all the wrong reasons. We are on the front of the local Brixton Bugle, highlighting data from our node showing that we had breached the WHO’s guidelines for the number of exceedances of the daily limit for nitrogen dioxide within the first week of January.
Another great article! And 10/10 headline also 👌