I was not at all interested in writing anymore about the coal power plant and its medical consequences until I read the article on New England Journal of Medicine quite fortuitously.
I was doing some search on the evolutionary behaviour of a professional cell called macrophage (which is somewhat similar to an amoeba but ten times smaller). My interest was to gather some information to update a lecture on pigmentation (another brief article in the offing how the skin colour develops in Zebra Fish and Humans) and how these cells acquire pigments in the evolutionary ladder. Three weeks of search in the web was a failure. Web provides the information in a random way and reviews are noted for their absence. I had to resort to an old book in the library and a famous one too. The book on haematology by Wintrobe (1974) provided me with some of the clues and I was on my way in the right course.
But then when I looked at the weekly update (on the 6th of July) of the journal mentioned above there is an article on the effect of fossil fuels on the lung function of children from Leicester (not far from Sheffield).
The cells they studied were the professional cell I was talking about a little while ago. It is called a Macrophage because it is a big eater. It takes all the debris (particle pollutants) that reaches the lung and neutralizes them by ingesting them.
As medical students we were made to believe that carbon is an inert substance and do not elicit any adverse reaction from the cells (macrophages) once sequestrated within them and they remain their eternally doing no harm. Furthermore the pathologists would show us a baby’s (at post-mortem) lungs without any black pigmentation and an adult with all the black carbon pigments spread over lungs. At that time they were not talking about nanoparticles and various formations of carbon particles extending up to 60 to 100 atoms.
The researches showed the effect of carbon pigment on the cells (macrophages) and their increase in number and the relationship with the Lung Capacity and the Lung Function of Children. There was statistically significant reduction in both indices. The nanoparticles seem to incite the macrophages to release chemical mediators which now we call chemokines to adversely affect the lung function of children.
It is timely to look back on the great pace baller’s career (Freddie Trueman) in retrospect and his untimely death with cancer. Trueman would have continued balling for more years if he was not exposed to the coal as a child (fossil fuel and cigarettes much later). It is time for the cricketers and scientists (with knowledge and wisdom) to go hand in hand.
We should dedicate any further research to that of the memory of Trueman perhaps named as Freddie Foundation.
Little diversion before I end this precise. Even the much talked about cholesterol (essential ingredient in cell) does not do any harm to the cell. It is the oxidized form of this cholesterol within the macrophage that does cause the damage. Oxidized form of the cholesterol causes macrophage to release a battery of mediators of disease which include atherosclerosis and many more.
Sri-Lankan-Press Would Dare Publish 