Stanford Radio

The Future of Everything with Russ Altman "Sharon Chinthrajah: The air is making us sick" The connection between bad air and bad health is growing clearer by the day. One allergy specialist says that real change starts at home, but ends on a much larger scale. Air quality affects our health far more than many would suspect. It’s closely related to asthma, of course, but also to concerns like cardiovascular disease and other lifespan-reducing conditions. It’s a health emergency, says allergy and asthma specialist Sharon Chinthrajah, a clinical associate professor of medicine at Stanford who studies and develops strategies for combatting conditions caused by air pollution. She says there are a number of ways we all can do better, including changing clothes frequently and showering in the evenings to wash away the day’s detritus collected on hair and skin. But, she says, those efforts are only stopgaps to truly solving the problem of air pollution. The most effective responses have to come at a societal leve