NEW STUDY: Air Pollution Good for Lungs

HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY!

- by Fiske Sterling, April 1, 2014. Source: TBN News

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"50","attributes":{"alt":"","class":"media-image","height":"451","style":"width: 333px; height: 322px; margin-left: 10px; margin-right: 10px; float: left;","width":"467"}}]]A new study out of Miskatonic University in Rhode Island has concluded that air pollution, specifically particulate matter, can repair damaged lung tissue.

The scientific consensus up until this point had been that particulate matter — the byproduct of combustion from power plants and automobiles — can penetrate deep into the lungs, the bloodstream, and other organs to cause a number of debilitating ailments from asthma to diabetes.

The study, Long Term Exposure to Particulate Matter 2.5 Shows Alveolar Tissue Regeneration, has turned conventional wisdom on its head in regards to the human health impacts of air pollution.

“All these years we have assumed that particulate matter caused inflammation and lung disease,” said Franklin Corrigan, M.D., lead study author and Chair of the Miskatonic University Medical Center. “We now have reason to believe that it’s a cure.”

The Nodbury Medical Association sent out a press release this week announcing “The End of Asthma,” reporting that hospitals across the nation are already in the development stages of experimental treatments involving the inhalation of particulate matter for those suffering from asthma and COPD.

Where once patients with lung disease were brought to remote locations in rural areas to recover from their ailments, they may now be sent into residential communities in close proximity to coal-fired and biomass power plants and trash incinerators such as Virginia City, Virginia, Burlington, Vermont, and Detroit, Michigan.

The coal, biomass energy, and trash incineration industries reacted with jubilance. “For years, our industry has been maligned as ‘dirty’ and ‘polluting,’ been libeled in the press by environmentalists and shackled with one government restriction after another,” said Sylvia Rathness of the Clean Coal Institute for Advancement. “Now the truth has come to light, we will be entering a golden age for combustion-based technologies.”

Environmentalists had mixed reactions to the implications of the study. “As responsible voices for reason, we have rarely spoken out against power plants, and in many cases advocated for some forms of the technology,” said Martin Spender of This Green Planet, an international environmental organization based out of Washington, D.C.  “We hope that the industry will continue to work hand in hand with us to move forward with a common sense approach that will further benefit public health and the economy.” 

Radical voices that have long opposed “dirty” energy sources are in a state of remorseful shock following the release of the study, many of whom have already officially disbanded their organizations. “All these years, we thought the anti-dirty energy movement was protecting people,” said Shari Randall of the Earth Breath Alliance based in Bellingham, Washington. “We had no way of knowing that we were actually doing them harm…My God, what have we done?”