Land-Use Changes and Heart Disease Risk: Evidence That Rapid Development Plays a Role

Abstract

Hyderabad, a city in the South Indian state of Telangana, is known for its iconic bazaars and 16th century architecture 1 as well as a booming tech industry that is fueling massive growth. 2 Undeveloped landscapes and farmland in the area are being rapidly lost to development, and the city's traffic congestion ranks among the worst in India. 3 Now a recent study in Environmental Health Perspectives reports that heart disease risk among Hyderabad's local population is increasing as the pace of landuse changes accelerates. 4 Cathryn Tonne, an environmental epidemiologist at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, is the study's senior author. She says higher levels of air pollution and reduced physical activity resulting from land-use changes in and around Hyderabad may contribute to the findings, which she describes as "remarkably consistent." Several years ago, Tonne and her colleagues launched a project called Cardiovascular Health Effects of Air Pollution in Telangana, India (CHAI), to measure combustion air pollutants in households and quantify the corresponding relationships between exposure and cardiovascular disease end points. For this Environmental Health Perspectives 094004-2 128(9) September 2020

Associations between Land-Use Patterns and Cardiovascular Disease Mortality in the Beijing—Tianjin–Hebei Megacity Region

“…It underscores the necessity of addressing environmental determinants to improve public health and well-being [6]. Taking inspiration from environmental health theory, land-use patterns, including most of the environmental factors, are crucial in mitigating CVD risks in megacity regions [7]. There is a new land-use management system in China, which emphasizes the basic management objects in three types of spaces: ecological space, agricultural space, and construction space [8].…”