By
age 8, children living close to major roadways have decreased lung function.
According to new research led by Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) pulmonologist and critical care
physician Mary B. Rice, MD, MPH, improved air quality in U.S. cities since the
1990s may not be enough to ensure normal lung function in children. The
findings were recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory and
Critical Care, a journal of the American Thoracic Society.
Rice and colleagues
found that children exposed to higher levels of air pollution, including fine
particulate matter (PM2.5) and soot (black carbon), had worse lung function
than those living in less polluted areas. By age eight, children living within
100 meters of a major roadway had lung function that was on average 6 percent
lower than that of children living 400 meters or more away.
The researchers studied
614 children born to mothers who enrolled in Project Viva, a long-term study of
women's and children's health in eastern Massachusetts, between 1999 and 2002.
The authors determined the distance from each child's home to the nearest major
highway. Using satellite measurements of PM2.5 and a model of black carbon
using 148 monitoring stations, they then estimated the children's exposure to
both PM2.5 and black carbon in the first year of life, over their lifetime and
in the year preceding lung function testing.
"The federal
government implemented strict air quality regulations in the 1990s, but we
wanted to know if they were enough to protect lung function in children,"
said Rice, who is also an instructor at Harvard Medical School. "Fine
particulate matter levels in Boston declined more than 30 percent between 1996
and 2006, but we still found that children who were more heavily exposed to
PM2.5 had lower lung function on average and higher risk of clinically reduced
lung function."
At the age of eight,
study participants underwent lung function tests. The researchers found that
children living the closest to major highways, and those with higher exposure
to PM2.5 or black carbon had lower lung function than those who were less
heavily exposed to pollution. In addition, children who experienced greater
improvements in air quality after the first year of life, either due to a move
or changes in local pollution, had better lung function compared to those whose
air quality did not improve as much.
"These important
findings are from a novel study combining modern modeling of exposures to air
pollution with robust measurements of lung function, conducted in a community
with pollutant levels now under EPA standards," wrote Cora S. Sack, MD,
and Joel D. Kaufman, MD, MPH, of the University of Washington in an
accompanying editorial in The American Journal of Respiratory and Critical
Care. "This adds to the urgency for more work to understand the impacts of
these low-level exposures on human health."
Rice and her colleagues
plan to continue their research and will follow study participants into
adolescence. "We plan to evaluate if the benefits of cleaner air endure by
investigating whether children with the greatest improvements in air quality
continue to have better lung function than their peers in the teen years,"
Rice said.
Source:
sciencedaily
No comments:
Post a Comment