- (3 knocks) Hello?

(4 knocks) Helloo?

(4 knocks) - [Chris] Hi - [Katie] Great to meet you.

- [Chris] Nice to meet you Katy, thanks for coming.

- [Katie] Yes.

Thanks for having us in Canada.

- [Chris] It's a country of freedom and social expression.

- [Katie] I keep hearing that.

And socialized medicine too.

- Enjoy your time here until you have to go back to hell.

No, I'm just kidding.

Sort of.

- [Katie] Alright, I'm going to step down from the stool.

- [Chris] Okay.

(typewriter typing and return sound) - I'm Chris Carlsten, I'm a professor and the head of respiratory medicine here at UBC.

I also direct the air pollution exposure lab.

- And exposure, can you explain what that is?

- [Chris] If you went to Beijing for two hours and then were instantly taken away, it's very similar to that.

- [Carley] This is the air pollution exposure laboratory or APL.

We often refer to it as the booth.

- Okay, so why would you do this, why would you drop someone in the middle of Beijing for a couple of hours, metaphorically speaking.

- [Chris] Right, yeah exactly.

I mean you could go to see the Great Wall but for our purposes, we're studying the effects of air pollution and we're using that exposure as a common level in places like Asia.

We would randomize, meaning that you or me would not know whether you're getting first the diesel exhaust or the air pollution versus the filtered air on your first visit to the actual exposure lab.

- [Katie] So is this safe?

- [Carley] Oh definitely.

Yeah, at these levels it's about as safe as going for a run while there's a wildfire going on like two towns over or going to a polluted city for a day.

Definitely no long term effects.

- [Katie] Okay, I'll take your word for that.

- [Carley] So while you're in there most participants read, watch movies, we have wi-fi, it's pretty chill.

You can do whatever you want.

You can't sleep.

- [Katie] It's like a Seattle apartment, about the size.

- [Carley] We could charge 600 for rent.

- [Katie] Oh 600, that's a steal.

I feel like I won't have to exercise today so that's a benefit.

Although I wasn't really gonna exercise today anyway.

- [Katie] What are the major causes of pollution.

- It depends on the environment, it's really in an urban environment.

Traffic.

And by pollution, I mean, the particles and gasses that we study in our lab which we call traffic related air pollution or TRAP.

The Beijing concentrations can go up in a day up to 1000 on rare occasions.

On a typical day, I wouldn't be surprised to see 50-100 in Beijing.

Whereas we typically are around 6-10, sometimes even lower.

And what we're really trying to do is understand what happens to the lungs and other parts of the body of people who are unfortunate enough to inhale air pollution.

- We're not using fire smoke but we're using exposure that's very similar.

So even just recently here and certainly last summer, both in B.C.

as well as, Washington and Oregon, there were levels that were very similar to ours.

And the composition of that smoke is very similar to what we're using.

So while its diesel exhaust exposure meant to represent traffic, it also, we think, tells us a lot about other typical exposures.

- [Katie] At high levels of pollution, how does that affect us?

- [Chris] Oh, right.

Every part of the body is essentially affected.

So we started focusing on the lungs but the next big frontier about three four decades ago was cardiac, or heart issues.

And then essentially from there, we've moved on to issues including the skin, the endocrine system, which is the hormones that circulate in our body, the brain, even the eyes.

Everything that's been looked at so far has shown to be affected at one level or another.

You can get bronchitis from air pollution.

Inflammation.

Asthma.

Even lung cancer.

Now most of these are from very long term decades of exposure but when we look, we find it in relation to air pollution unfortunately.

The fact that air pollution is one of, if not the largest environmental causes of death is obviously something to pay attention to.

- [Katie] And how do you measure the health effects after someone's been through this process?

- [Chris] We get nasal samplings, we get samples from the lungs, we get blood samples, and we get urine samples.

And then we would take all of that information, both the paper based questionnaire data and all the biological samples back to this lab and do really a whole range of studies with my team.

We believe strongly that reducing air pollution at the source is critical and our primary goal.

However, in the reality that we're not necessarily gonna get rid of cars in the very near future or other sources of pollution.

We do need to do what we can to provide evidence as to what helps reduce the harmful effects of air pollution.

It is ironic to work in such a clean place on such a dirty problem.

The real issue, I think, is what is going to happen with the rest of the world and the balance between the need for development.

The understandable need for people who want to have mobility, who want to have air conditioning, who want to have a high quality of life, and don't wanna wait for it, whereas the rest of the world has already been enjoying it.

- [Katie] Okay, so if I were going to do one or the other, which would be worse?

Live in Beijing or smoke like one or two cigarettes a week?

- [Chris] Yeah.

I don't recommend either, obviously.

- [Katie] This program is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.