Nutrition Solutions to Counter Health Impact of Air Pollution: Scientific Evidence of Marine Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Vitamins Alleviating Some Harmful Effects of PM2.5

Affiliation

¹DSM Nutrition Products, Human Nutrition and Health, Beijing, China

²DSM Nutrition Products, Human Nutrition and Health, Kaiseraugst, Switzerland

³DSM Nutrition Products, Nutritional Lipids, Columbia, MA, USA

⁴DSM Nutrition Products, China Innovation Center, Shanghai, China

⁵School of Public Health, Soochow University, Suzhou, China

Citation

Zhang, W. et al. Nutrition Solutions to Counter Health Impact of Air Pollution: Scientific Evidence of Marine Omega-3 Fatty Acids and Vitamins Minimizing Some Harms of PM2.5. (2015) J Food Nutr Sci 2(1): 58-63.

Abstract

Inhaling polluted air, especially air containing fine particulate matter (i.e. PM2.5) constitutes an environmental risk that has proven impact on the quality and duration of human life. The objective of this article is to highlight human clinical investigations in which vitamins and marine-derived long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (i.e. fish oil or docosahexaenoic and eicosapentaenoic acids) were administrated to minimize certain detrimental responses to PM2.5 exposure. The results from both randomized and cohort studies in last decade demonstrated that PM2.5 exposure induced unfavorable physiological and biochemical responses (i.e. heart rate variability reduction and oxidative stress) in human body. Supplementation of fish oil, some B vitamins, vitamin E and C abrogated these responses. A large number of the world’s population are now exposed to air pollution daily, which will largely remain for many years. These studies hold promise for nutrition to play a role in ameliorating some detrimental responses to PM2.5. Future investigations are warranted to determine whether long-term administration of these nutrients improves PM2.5-related clinical endpoints e.g. cardiovascular and respiratory outcomes.