It is well known that air pollution is a major risk factor for non-infectious diseases and that it contributes more to global morbidity and mortality than all other known environmental risk factors collectively. Still, guidelines for the prevention of cardiovascular illnesses have almost exclusively concentrated on individual behavioral and metabolic risk factors, and pollution reduction has been overlooked in programs for the control of cardiovascular disease. This is a significant oversight since including pollution reduction into the prevention of cardiovascular disease could result in millions of lives being saved. The focus of this review is to try to summarize the evidence supporting a strong link between the risk of cardiovascular diseases and cardiovascular risk factors with air pollution through a spectrum of exposure levels, possible mechanisms that increase cardiovascular risk are described, and evidence supporting the effects of air pollution on cardiovascular health is investigated, and some knowledge gaps that could help improve the rising cardiovascular morbidity and mortality linked to air pollution are discussed.
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