The PROPOSAL

The Problem

COPD death-rate statistics by state and by local region (county or Health Service Area) within states have been available for many years.  But even with age-adjusted data shifts, they do not correlate very well with smoker prevalence or lung cancer death rates by locale.   Nor do they correlate with contaminated urban air pollution levels, long monitored by state air pollution agencies.  This problem, though well recognized, has not generated significant study by CDC, AMA, or the American Lung Association.    Unfortunately, the AMA stance is unquestioned, to the point that it has stifled research into both cause and treatment for fifty years for a massively expensive, debilitating disease.  In those fifty years, five million Americans have died from COPD, and an additional five million have died where COPD was the secondary disease that triggered the primary death from heart attack or stroke. 

A hypothesis

A few scholarly studies have pinpointed fine-grain particulate material (smaller than 2.5 microns, usually written as PM_2.5) as a potential source of airway insult, correlating local measurements with increased COPD death-rates independent of smoking.  Fine-grain particulates, combined with toxic molecules in a ground-hugging atmosphere, could be possible agents for ingestion into the lung, with sufficient retention to cause significant spot damage.  Such agents might be causal for long-term lung damage, analogous to asbestosis.   Coal-fired power plants are a primary producer of sub-micron fly ash particulate; such emissions are hard both to measure and control with current technology.  Moreover, coal-fired power plants have increased their output by 240% in the past thirty years across America, as have cars with toxic gases.

A proposal

Ten million deaths in fifty years, examined from a ‘big data’ correlation analysis viewpoint, could potentially yield significant new information as to cause and possible mitigation.  An InnovaScapes Institute research proposal is in preparation in order to stimulate wider inquiry and appropriate action.