Toxic air also fires up your sympathetic nervous system, the body’s stress response. This pushes up your heart rate, blood pressure, and the overall workload on your heart. At the same time, the inflammation makes the fatty plaques built up inside your artery walls more unstable and prone to rupturing. If a plaque bursts, a blood clot can quickly form at that spot. This clot can partially or fully block blood flow to the heart muscle, leading straight to a heart attack.
Furthermore, those tiny airborne particles make your blood platelets stickier and increase your blood’s tendency to clot. This cranks up the chance of clot formation and pushes heart risks even higher. When you combine high blood pressure, inflamed vessels, poor vascular function, and sticky blood, you create the perfect storm for an acute cardiac event.