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American Morning

Dramatic New Study Links Air Pollution to Lung Cancer

Aired March 06, 2002 - 07:23   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: A dramatic new study linking air pollution to lung cancer, that and some other medical news this morning from our own medical correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen -- good morning.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

ZAHN: Let's start off with this pollution study. Now they are determined to, I guess they have determined that there are certainly long-term health consequences as a result of pollution. What are we supposed to do about it?

COHEN: Well, there's not a whole lot that you can do about it. Let's talk about what some of the risks are. What this study did is it tried to look at what kinds of risks someone would have just walking out every day, day after day, being exposed to this pollution. And what the study found, and it was by the American Cancer Society and others, is that it's actually akin to being married to a smoker. If you live in some of the most polluted cities in this country -- L.A., Denver -- it is like living with a smoker. It's similar to getting all of that secondhand smoke.

And that's obviously not a good thing and those folks had a much higher chance of having heart disease, lung cancer, other kinds of lung diseases than folks who lived in less polluted cities.

And what you can do about it is not much besides write your congressman...

ZAHN: Yes, what are we supposed to do, walk around with a mask? Not go outside during the today?

COHEN: Right. Exactly. There's not much you can do.

ZAHN: I mean the same stuff gets sucked into your house, too.

COHEN: Right. Exactly. But the good news here is that -- well, I suppose you can look at it as good news, is that there are things that you can control. For example, it is 20 times worse to be a smoker than to live in a polluted city. So if you smoke, quit smoking. So there are things that are in your control.

I was talking to the author of this and I said how does it compare to, let's say, being overweight. He's like oh, being overwhelming is much more dangerous than living in a polluted city. So...

ZAHN: In terms of the diseases you might get down the road as a consequence of your obesity.

COHEN: Right. In terms of, right, exactly. In terms of heart disease, exactly. Exactly. So there are things that are in your control. And this one, write your congressman. Get them to continue to require regulations to get those rates down even further.

ZAHN: Yet at the same time they say more studies are required. I mean there we go again.

COHEN: Right. They always say that.

ZAHN: Scare the heck out of you and then hey, we're not so sure the link is as strong as we think it is.

COHEN: Right. Exactly.

ZAHN: We'll move on. Tell us a little bit about the study about migraine headaches in children.

COHEN: A fascinating story that uses a completely new tool for diagnosing a disease in children. When doctors are trying to figure out whether a child has a regular garden variety headache or a migraine, it's kind of hard because kids aren't very good at describing their symptoms. So one doctor got the idea, hey, let's have them draw pictures. So we're going to show you some of the pictures the kids drew.

The first picture we're going to show you, this is a child with just a regular headache, not a migraine. That's what the picture looked like. The child's obviously not happy, but compared to the next one where this child has hammers coming into his head, that is a migraine and that helped the doctors figure out, you know what, this isn't just a regular headache.

The next one is similar. You can see it says pound-o-matic at the top. It's those kinds of pictures, doctors found that they could really, really help them decide should we treat this kid with drugs for a migraine, they could tell by the pictures whether or not it was a migraine, to a large extent.

ZAHN: So in the past, what would happen? These kids would just suffer.

COHEN: Well, they would medicate them and...

ZAHN: And doctors might not necessarily believe that the headaches were as severe as the kids said they were?

COHEN: Exactly. On the one hand, you had kids who would suffer and they wouldn't give them drugs because they weren't convinced it was a migraine. And then on the other hand you would have kids who were treated when they really shouldn't have been. ZAHN: Yet another reason for all of us parents to pay attention to the pictures that our children paint and draw with crayons and pencils or whatever they draw with.

COHEN: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

ZAHN: Elizabeth Cohen, great to see you.

COHEN: Great to see you, too.

ZAHN: Thanks for all of that information this morning.

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