00:02A new study has found that bad air quality can lead to respiratory symptoms at lower exposure
00:09levels than previously thought even in relatively clean environments. It is due to the human
00:15respiratory system being extremely sensitive to short-term fine particulate matter fluctuations.
00:22Researchers from the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom,
00:25Tsinghua University in China, and the sleep technology company SleepCycle analyzed coughing sounds
00:32from around 1,000 users of the SleepCycle app across 32 cities in 12 countries over 500 days.
00:40In addition to immediate respiratory irritation, nighttime coughing also disrupts sleep,
00:47which could link acute air pollution exposure to broader systemic consequences.
00:52Across the 13 European cities included in the study, average daily fine particulate matter
00:58concentrations ranged from a low in Uppsala, Sweden, to a high in Bergamo, Italy.
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