OZONE pollution doesn’t just choke our cities as smog, it might also be bad for your heart.
Paul Wentworth and colleagues at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, showed in 2003 that ozone reacts with cholesterol and produces substances called atheronals. These are found in the fatty “plaques” that cause diseased arteries to narrow, but it was not known whether they had a role in plaque formation. Wentworth believes ozone is generated in the body when white blood cells attack the cholesterol that accumulates on artery walls.
Now he and his colleagues have found that atheronals, and hence ozone,…
