People's risks of having a heart attack would be three times higher when they are caught by traffic jam for one hour, according to a German study published on the American Heart Association's website on Saturday.
Females, elderly males, patients who were unemployed, and those with a history of angina were the most affected by traffic jams, said the study led by Annette Peters, from the Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum Muchen, Germany.
"One potential factor could be the exhaust air coming from other cars," Peters said. "But we can't exclude the synergy between stress and air pollution that could tip the balance."
The research was presented at the American Heart Association's 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease in Florida.
The researchers interviewed nearly 1,500 patients who survived heart attacks and found that about eight percent of heart attack patients in the study were attributable to traffic.
"Overall, time spent in any mode of transportation in traffic (driving a car, taking public transportation or riding a bicycle) was associated with a 3.2 times higher risk than time spent away from this trigger," it said.
The researchers said they were surprised that women appeared to be in the higher-risk group. "Their risk is more than five times higher," Peters said. "We're not sure what the physiological mechanism is behind this; however, it might also be due to the smaller number of women as we only interviewed 325 women in five years."
Previous studies by the researchers showed that those participating in strenuous activities such as playing soccer or squash or performing heavy work such as painting overhead or snow shoveling had five to six times the risk of having a heart attack within hours.
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