Most of us expats live in cities, I suspect. I doubt you’ll find very many Americans hanging out in the rural areas of China, India, Russia, South America, and Africa. The big opportunities are mainly in cities, even if just to network.
That means we have to deal with pollution. Air pollution, especially. You can drink filtered water, but no matter what else you do to safeguard your health, you’ve got to breathe the air.
A question we expats often have is whether or not it’s healthy for us to exercise outdoors. When the Air Quality Index in Beijing is over 200 (and considered dangerous), I’m not always sure it’s even a good idea to take a stroll. Well, a recent study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives has an answer:
Go ahead. Do it. Exercise.
Entitled Do the Health Benefits of Cycling Outweigh the Risks? the study focused on bicycling, but I don’t see why the results wouldn’t apply to walking, running, playing tennis, or whatever else you might want to do in the smog. Basically, the study says yes, the benefits outweigh the risks. Although it’s not good to breathe in the pollution, exercise improves your overall health and it’s better for you to exercise in the smog than it is to not exercise at all.
As the authors state in their principal findings:
We quantitatively compared the health benefits from physical activity with the risks related to air pollution and traffic accidents between cycling and car driving for short trips, distinguishing the individuals who shift modes of travel from society as a whole. Estimated inhaled air pollution doses were higher in cyclists. The risk of a fatal traffic accident is higher for cyclists than for car drivers. Substantial benefits of physical activity have been demonstrated, including decreased cardiovascular disease and mortality.
For the people who shift from car to bicycle, we estimated that the well-documented beneficial effect of increased physical activity due to cycling resulted in about 9 times more gains in life-years than the losses in life years due to increased inhaled air pollution doses and traffic accidents. For the society as a whole this can be even larger because of reduced air pollution emissions. If the risk presented to other road users is included, the risk of a fatal traffic accident is virtually the same for cyclists and car drivers.
This study is an academic research paper, so it’s not a fun or easy read. I didn’t understand it all (and I skipped the math bits). Nevertheless it’s good to know that the research is showing that it’s better to exercise.
Another interesting item: exposure to air pollution is actually higher in cars.
Photo credit: Simone Ramella
Hi Carl
I had the same worry when I moved to Santiago in Chile. But I figured that the city has produced many world class sportsmen, quite a few footballers who have been snapped up by European teams – so working out in the smog can’t be that bad.
A slight plus in my case is that in order to work around job and family commitments the only time I can go running is before rush hour, i.e. 5am. I guess that’s another way around the smog!