14 DAY TRIAL // A interesting connection has been discovered between children's risk of suffering from lung damage caused by pollution and the environment they are subjected to inside the family. Stressful surroundings make the young ones more likely to be affected by pollution.
The investigation, carried out by experts at the University of Southern California (USC), was conducted on about 1,400 participants, who were a part of the USC Children’s Health Study in Southern California.
Parents were given a validated stress questionnaire as their children were aged between 10 and 12. The young ones were analyzed by doctors, who surveyed their lung function, as well as other aspects related to their respiratory health.
For each of the participants, the team estimated the total amount of exposure to traffic-related pollutants (TRP) at school and at home. Exposure to nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and total oxides of nitrogen (NOX) was also calculated.
“This is the first study demonstrating that growing up in a stressful household was associated with larger traffic pollution-induced lung deficits in healthy children compared to low stress households,” explains Dr. Talat Islam, the lead researcher on the study.
Details of the work will appear in an upcoming online issue (ahead of print) of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, which is edited by the American Thoracic Society (ATS).
“Children in this age group spend almost one-third of their day-time hours at school so exposure at school is an important contributor to total exposure,” the investigator adds.
“Perhaps children maintain the chronic and systemic effect of stress from their home environments as they go to school, further modifying their response to traffic exposure,” the expert comments.
The work found that children of Hispanic and Asian parents were more likely to experience stressful situations at home than White children. People with income levels below $30,000 a year were also more likely to have children that were stressed in the household.
“Like air pollution, stress has been linked to both inflammation and oxidative damage at the cellular level, so this may explain the association,” Islam says, quoted by PsychCentral.
He believes that authorities should regulate pollution levels around residential homes and school districts a lot more drastically than in other parts of cities, especially in large metropolises.