Air Pollution Exposure and Exercise:How to Protect Health

Air pollutant is one of the risk factors that seriously threaten human health. Studies indicated that long-term air pollution exposure could induce cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, nervous system damage and cancer, etc. Recent studies showed that doing exercise under air pollution with high concentration of particulate matter would cause the inflammation of respiratory and cardiovascular tissues, and degrade exercise performance. However, some research proved that the beneficial effects of long-term regular exercise can resist the health damage caused by particulate matter. Therefore, there may be a balance between“exercises promotes health”and“air pollution threatens health”. There is a common concern in general people and scholars: How can we exercise scientifically and safely under air pollution? This review summarized the following topics: The health hazards of air pollution, the influence of air pollution on health and exercise performance, the effects and mechanism of exercise in resisting the health damage induced by air pollution, and the protective consideration for exercising in the air pollution environment. Moreover,this review proposed the following directions for the furtherThe mechanism of exercise resisting health damage induced by air pollutants, the safe threshold of exercise in air pollution environment, and the warning system of air quality for physical activity.