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Babies and toddlers exposed to air pollution are more likely than others to quickly develop asthma, according to research by US-based doctors and scientists.
“Mean fine particulate matter and mean nitrogen dioxide air pollution during the first 3 years of life were associated both with asthma incidence by early and by middle childhood,” the team said, in work published by the American Medical Association (AMA).
The researchers, from institutions including Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, said infants in “minoritzed families” seemed to face a higher risk, which they put down to them having less access to clean air.
Babies from “densely populated communities characterized by fewer opportunities and resources and multiple environmental coexposures” seemed to be more likely to become asthmatic later, they concluded, recommending not only greater efforts in reducing air pollution but the “creation of greater environmental, educational, and health equity at a community level.”
Other researchers have recently posited links between growing antimicrobial resistance and air pollution, which has separately been shown to affect drivers and passengers sitting in their cars to a greater extent than previously estimated.
And while around two-thirds of the world’s annual air pollution-related deaths have been in Asia in recent years, levels of air pollution in Europe and North America remain above levels deemed healthy, according to other work published in 2023.
