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Air pollution linked to a rise in antibiotic resistance that imperils human health
(www.theguardian.com)
Umm… correlation vs causation?? Anyone??
this post was submitted on 08 Aug 2023
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People seem to severely misunderstand what that phrase means.
It doesn't mean that every scientific article that says "X causes Y" is wrong because that implies correlation and therefore can't be the cause.
It just means that you generally can't say "X causes Y" if all you have is a correlation, and most people in eg. the environmental sciences actually do understand statistics better than the average member of the public whose understanding doesn't really go further than "correlation is not causation." So, no, correlation is not causation, but that's probably not news to the researchers
Maybe read the article instead of the title. I thought you people stayed over at Reddit.
That’s what autotldr is for, silly! /s
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Air pollution is helping to drive a rise in antibiotic resistance that poses a significant threat to human health worldwide, a global study suggests.
Evidence suggests that particulate matter PM2.5 can contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes, which may be transferred between environments and inhaled directly by humans, the authors said.
Long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with chronic conditions such as heart disease, asthma and lung cancer, reducing life expectancy.
Short-term exposure to high pollution levels can cause coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks, and is leading to increased hospital and GP attendances worldwide.
The lead author, Prof Hong Chen of Zhejiang University in China, said: “Antibiotic resistance and air pollution are each in their own right among the greatest threats to global health.
Until now, there was limited data on how much influence PM2.5 air pollution – which is made up of particles 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair – has on antibiotic resistance globally.