Everyone agrees that a good night’s sleep can make you feel instantly better – both physically and mentally. However, almost everyone occasionally struggles to get that essential good night’s sleep, blaming it on stress from work or simply the struggle to “switch off”.
But did you know that air pollution could be the culprit of our poor quality of sleep?
Recent research done by the University of Washington has revealed that there is indeed a link between toxic air and our sleep. Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Washington and lead author, Martha E. Billings, states that: “Prior studies have shown that air pollution impacts heart health and affects breathing and lung function, but less is known about whether air pollution affects sleep.”
”We thought an effect was likely given that air pollution causes upper airway irritation, swelling and congestion, and may also affect the central nervous system and brain areas that control breathing patterns and sleep.”
The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Washington and consisted of more than 1800 people, with air pollution data from six US cities over a five-year period. It measured how long participants would spend asleep in bed each night compared with the amount of time they spent being awake – a measure known as sleep efficiency. They found participants that had more exposure to nitrogen dioxide and small particles called PM2.5s, had a higher chance of having low sleep efficiency.
“These new findings indicate the possibility that commonly experienced levels of air pollution not only affect heart and lung disease, but also sleep quality. Your nose, your sinuses and the back of your throat can all be irritated by those pollutants so that can cause some sleep disruption as well as from breathing issues,”” said A/Prof Billings.
This study definitely gives us an important insight and future studies can now be conducted to further explore the association between other air pollutants and sleep.