This is Scientific American 60 Second Science.

I'm Christopher in Dangata.

Got a minute?

I'm running over the Williamsburg Bridge in New York City. It connects Brooklyn to downtown Manhattan.

It's one of my favorite places to run because the views are great.

Until you look at all the taxis and trucks spewing exhaust always makes me wonder

Is all that pollution essentially undoing any health boost I'm getting from the run.

A new study of more than 50,000 Danish adults suggests I might be okay.

Of course, being Denmark, more than two-thirds of them regularly rode a bike,

and half played sports.

As you might expect, both activities lower the Dane's risk of death during the 17-year study period.

But that effect held true even for Dane's exercising in the most polluted parts of Copenhagen, suggesting

that the short-term heavy intake of pollutants during exercise is just a small proportion

of their overall exposure to pollution and thus does not diminish the benefits of exercise.

The results are in the journal Environmental Health Prospectives.

Of course, Copenhagen has pretty clean air, even if... environmental health perspectives.

Of course, Copenhagen has pretty clean air,

even by European standards.

So these results might not translate to, say, Beijing.

And the researchers still advise exercising in green spaces, parks, and other road-free areas if possible.

But hey, I'd have to head all the way to Midtown Manhattan for that. Central Park.

Central Park.

...