Breathtaking: New Air Pollution Studies
March 04, 2005 - By Green Guide Institute
NEW YORK, NY-You are what you eat, so they say. According to a number
of new studies, however, you are also what you breathe-and even what
your mother breathed. Recent research shows that air pollution of
various kinds can stunt fetal development and contribute to asthma
and other lung problems, as well as to premature deaths nationwide.
City dwellers suffer most, and babies and children, with their
developing lungs, hearts and brains, are particularly at risk. What's
most alarming is that these negative effects are being found even at
levels of pollution that do not exceed current federal safety
standards.
A study published in Pediatrics in January 2005 linked mothers'
exposure to fine particulate air pollution-including soot and ashes
released by motor vehicles and power plants-to lowered birth weights
in babies. Jointly researched by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
the study found that mothers exposed to high levels of fine
particulates gave birth to babies weighing on average 30
grams-slightly over an ounce-less than those exposed to low levels.
Other combustion by-products found in traffic and industrial exhaust,
known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), were examined,
along with tobacco smoke, in a study by the Columbia Center for
Children's Environmental Health (CCEH). The researchers found that
children exposed prenatally to PAHs and in infancy to environmental
tobacco smoke (ETS) had a higher risk of coughing and wheezing at
their first birthday, and of difficulty breathing and asthma symptoms
at two years of age. Rachel Miller, M.D., an assistant professor at
Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and lead
author of the article in the October 2004 Chest, told The Green Guide
that the study was unique because it found that the combined effects
of PAHs and ETS exposure can be significantly more harmful than those
caused by either pollutant on its own.
Earlier last year, CCEH also measured PAHs in the air that pregnant
women breathed by having them carry backpacks equipped with monitors.
Samples of the babies' umbilical-cord blood taken after birth showed
comparable DNA damage to that found in the mothers, even though the
fetuses had been exposed at tenfold lower levels. These studies
"raise concerns that we're not adequately protecting children,
particularly in large urban areas, where we know there are particular
'hot spots' of air toxins," Dr. Miller says.
Among older children, an eight-year study published in the September
2004 New England Journal of Medicine suggests that exposure to a
range of air pollutants, including particulate matter and nitrogen
dioxide, produces long-term lung damage. Conducted by a team of
researchers from the University of Southern California, the study
examined the lungs of 1,759 schoolchildren in 12 downstate
communities from fourth grade through high school. The teens who had
grown up in areas with the foulest air were up to five times as
likely to have reduced lung function as were those living in
communities with the cleanest air.
And research published in the November 2004 Journal of the American
Medical Association links short-term exposure to ozone to 3,767
deaths per year, including 319 in New York City. Described as a
"large and well-designed study" by the American Lung Association
(ALA), it examined patterns of death due to respiratory and
cardiovascular illness in 95 U.S. cities between 1987 and 2000, and
found an association with short-term exposures to high levels of
ozone-the most common air pollutant in the United States, according
to the ALA. The association held up "even after eliminating ozone
levels above the current U.S. standard, which is an important
public-health policy finding," says Ron White, M.S.T., associate
scientist at the Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health.
The weight of evidence may have prompted a declaration by the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), in the December 2004 issue of
Pediatrics, that current federal air-quality laws may not be adequate
to protect children, who are vulnerable to adverse health effects
near or even below current standards.
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