Comparison will be difficult as there are so many confounding factors and air pollution takes a long time to act. In the case of a chronic lung disease (such as asthma, COPD) it will be easier to investigate the relationship between air pollution levels and symptoms and exacerbations.

Air pollution might cause lung cancer by creating inflammation that encourages proliferation of cells with existing cancer-driving mutations — not by mutating DNA itself. The results provide a mechanism that could apply to other cancers caused by environmental exposure and might one day lead to ways to prevent them. “The idea is that exposures to carcinogens could promote cancer without actually doing anything to the DNA,” says medical geneticist Serena Nik-Zainal. “Not every carcinogen is a mutagen.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00989-z

Reducing air pollution to levels advised by the World Health Organization could lead to a 17% decrease in antibiotic resistance by 2050. Researchers found links between fine particles and resistant pathogens in data from 116 countries between 2000 and 2018...

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-08-08/study-suggests-that-rise-in-antibiotic-resistance-is-linked-to-pollution.html

India’s capital has been blanketed by choking smog since the beginning of November. But the situation is not unusual. Every year, the cooler, drier weather of the post-monsoon season provides ideal conditions for pollution to spike...

As the Hindu festival of Diwali kicks off on 10 November, the Indian capital of Delhi, already blanketed in choking smog, is bracing for pollution to worsen. Over the past week, children struggling to breath the acrid air have flooded hospital emergency departments, and schools have been forced to close...

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03517-1

From desert minerals that feed Atlantic Ocean algae to deadly particulate pollution, dust is a powerful force in the world. For her book Dust, Jay Owens travelled the globe to explore how microscopic particles — both natural and human-made — affect health and the environment. Often, dust affects people differently in a way that reflects societal inequalities, Owens explains. “Is there always going to be dust in the world? Absolutely. But do we have to accept the state of pollution at the moment? Absolutely not.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03588-0

"California’s Salton Sea offers a tableau of dead wildlife, toxic dust, and neglect. It was long in the making...

Morales attributes their family’s breathing problems to the Salton Sea, a strange and troubled body of water 17 miles by car to the north. The largest lake by surface area in California, the Salton Sea is a 316-square mile, exceedingly shallow glaze of water that stretches from the Imperial Valley in the south to the Coachella Valley in the north. The lake has been shrinking in recent years, the result of drought, reduced Colorado River inflows to the Imperial Valley, and a package of water transfer agreements (where parties buy and sell water rights) that depleted the Sea’s main source: agricultural runoff. As the shoreline recedes, it reveals swathes of formerly submerged lakebed, or playa, laced with heavy metals, agrochemicals, and potentially hazardous microbial byproducts. Toxic dust from the playa then blows into local communities, where scientists believe it is contributing to sky-high rates of respiratory disease. As even greater expanses of playa are exposed by the shrinking lake in coming years, those health impacts will likely become much worse.

“It’s one of the biggest crises in California right now,” said Emma Aronson, a microbiologist at the University of California Riverside. “And so many people don’t even know about it.”"

https://undark.org/2023/07/03/scientists-warned-of-a-salton-sea-disaster-no-one-listened/