Asthma epidemics and air pollution

Asthma and air pollution

During the last decades research all over the world has highlighted the deleterious effects of pollution on respiratory health of adults and children. Nevertheless, air pollution still represents a significant threat to health. Children are more sensitive than adults to pollutants for several factors: increased respiration relative to body size; physiologic immaturity of respiratory and immunol...

Air pollution, epigenetics, and asthma

Exposure to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) has been implicated in asthma development, persistence, and exacerbation. This exposure is highly significant as large segments of the global population resides in zones that are most impacted by TRAP and schools are often located in high TRAP exposure areas. Recent findings shed new light on the epigenetic mechanisms by which exposure to traffic...

Air pollution and childhood asthma.

Asthma and ambient air pollution in Helsinki.

OBJECTIVE To study whether ambient air levels of sulphur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), total suspended particulates (TSP), and ozone (O3) affect the number of hospital admissions for asthma. DESIGN The associations between the daily number of admissions and air pollutants were analysed with Poisson regression, taking into account potential confounding factors by using the standardise...

Asthma severity and susceptibility to air pollution.

Exacerbations of asthma have been associated with exposure to ozone or particles with a 50% cut-off aerodynamic diameter of 10 microm (PM10). We postulated in this study that the association of summertime air pollution (i.e. ozone and PM10) with acute respiratory symptoms, medication use and peak expiratory flow differs among patients grouped according to asthma severity. During the summer of 1...