Reuters: Air pollution may double the risk that an elderly person will be hospitalized for pneumonia, according to a new study. “We have shown that air pollution exerts a strong effect on hospital admissions for pneumonia,” Michael Jerrett, of the University of California, Berkeley, who was involved in the study, noted in an interview with Reuters Health. About 600,000 people are hospitalized for pneumonia in the United States each year. Pneumonia is the leading cause of death in the …