Inhaling a heart attack: how air pollution can cause heart disease

"It's well known that measures such as exercise, a healthy diet and not smoking can help reduce high blood pressure, but researchers at the University of Michigan Health System have determined the very air we breathe can be an invisible catalyst to heart disease. Inhaling air pollution over just two hours caused a significant increase in diastolic blood pressure, the lower number on blood pressure readings, according to new U-M research. The study findings appear in the current issue of Hypertension, a publication of the American Heart Association"