By Jamie Bartosch
Wildfire smoke, smog and pollution are increasingly present in the air we breathe.
What is this polluted air doing to our bodies? Two University of Chicago Medicine pulmonary experts –Director of Rhinology and Allergy Jayant Pinto, MD, and Chief of the Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine Gokhan M. Mutlu, MD, have published extensive research on this topic.
“It has an enormous effect on people,” Pinto said. “When the sky is gray and the sun is weirdly orange, it’s scary to think about what we’re breathing in. We really need to work on this as a problem and find the mechanisms to solve it.”
Pinto, along with leaders from UChicago Medicine’s South Side Pediatric Asthma Center, shared advice on what people can do to protect themselves and alleviate health problems during air quality alert days.