Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/LONDON: A research has suggested that cutting air pollution could improve lung function development in children and bring down the number of young people with significant pulmonary impairments.
According to Guardian, the impact of air pollution on health has become the topic of intense concern in recent years, with research suggesting it can affect every organ in the human body and the World Health Organization (WHO)` noting children’s developing organs and nervous systems are more susceptible to long-term damage.
The problem was thrown into the spotlight in 2020 after 9-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah became the first person in the United Kingdom to have air pollution listed as a cause of death on their death certificate.
Ella’s mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, is now the leading campaigner for cleaner air, advocating for Ella’s Law legislation to make clean air a human right.
Treasearcher has previously found that even low levels of air pollution can reduce lung function development from six to 15. the new study suggests that cleaning up the air can bring improvements.
Air pollution level
“That a strong message to policies makers and city planners that actions to reduce air pollution level and exposure would pay off in the long term, definitely, for the children and across the life course,” said Prof Erik Melén, pediatrician and professor the department of clinical research and education, Karolinska Institutet, who co-authored the fresh study.
Writing in European Respiratory Journal, Melén, and colleagues note that lung function typically grows rapidly during adolescence before reaching a peak by the early 20s. People experiencing reduced growth are potentially at risk of developing the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease as adults.
Melén and colleagues analyzed information collected as part of a wider study in which the cohort of children in Stockholm born between 1994 and 1996 was followed up from birth at the age of 24, with measurements of lung function collected at age eight, 16, and 24. Crucially, said Melén, the research didn’t focus on particular populations, such as those with asthma or who only lived in highly polluted places. He said that “This is real-life data,”.
The team could way their lung function development by analyzing the measurements of 1,509 participants for which lung function data were available at eight years old and at least one subsequent time point. They then used participants’ addresses to estimate their exposure to air pollution over time, including particulate matter known as PM2.5 and PM10 and black carbon and nitrogen oxides.
