A new study has found that the more pollution a child is around, the more of a greater risk for them developing asthma.
Asthma is an illness linked to breathing. It can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be. There are plenty of medications out on the market today that can help to control symptoms and special inhalers to be used if the onset of an attack happens. It can come in varying strengths. But a new study has found that the more pollution that a child is around during their lifetime, the greater the risk of them developing first-time asthma.
From 1997 to 2014, researchers looked at approximately 780,000 Danish children born between those years. After that, they had looked up records to see if any of the children had developed asthma or persistent wheezing between the ages of one and fifteen. The researchers noticed that those children whose parents had asthma had a higher risk of developing it; also, those whose mothers smoked while they were pregnant with their children had a higher chance.
Even though they adjusted for these specific factors, the researchers found that when exposed to small particle pollution and nitrate pollution in higher levels, they were more likely to develop wheezing and asthma as compared to those children who were not exposed to these types of pollution.
The study itself has limits, though, since researchers could only look at a model and couldn’t find out exactly to what kind of pollution each child was exposed. Since it did lack information on individual children, there also could have been other risk factors that may have also caused asthma.
Particle pollution can get trapped in the bloodstream and cause inflammation. It comes from various sources. Cars, power plants, fires, farms, and construction, all can cause particle pollution to be released into the air. It doesn’t get breathed out, but travels to the bloodstream. Air pollution, in and of itself, is thought to reduce life expectancy in children by 20 months on an average. Being in a polluted area also increases the risks of other problems like cancer, heart issues, and premature death.
The “2020 State of the Air” report from the American Lung Association learned that those living in the United States saw more than 46% of people lived in areas impacted with high pollution in the air. That is higher than previously seen in past reports. Scientists and researchers believe that the current climate crisis that our Earth is experiencing is adding to the issue of trying to protect our health. This is because warmer temperatures can cause air pollution to be a much larger problem.
Article Credit: moms