The Weird and Concerning Reason Human Bones Are Getting More Brittle

• A Columbia University study says air pollutants have increased bone damage among postmenopausal women.

• The study explores the connection between air pollution and bone mineral density.

• Air pollution can double the density reduction that age already brings on.

Is the air we breathe making us weaker? A Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health study, published in the peer-reviewed journal eClinicalMedicine, sifted through data on over 160,000 postmenopausal women and found that air pollution weakened bone mineral density at an annual rate of 1.22 percent, nearly double the annual effects of age alone.
“Our findings confirm that poor air quality may be a risk factor for bone loss, independent of socioeconomic or demographic factors,” Diddier Prada, associate research scientist at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and first author on the study, says in a news release. “For the first time, we have evidence that nitrogen oxides, in particular, are a major contributor to bone damage and that the lumbar spine is one of the most susceptible sites of this damage.”
The Weird and Concerning Reason Human Bones Are Getting More Brittle