A new study reports that inner-city children with asthma may be particularly vulnerable to air pollution at levels below current air quality standards.
The study, available online, analyzes the short-term effects of outdoor pollution levels on asthma symptoms and lung function in children. The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Using data collected from the NIAID Inner-City Asthma Study (ICAS), researchers examined 861 children with persistent asthma, aged 5 to 12 years, living in low-income areas in seven U.S. inner-city communities: Boston, the Bronx, Chicago, Dallas, New York City, Seattle and Tucson. Over two years, the researchers regularly monitored the children's asthma symptoms, breathing function, and school absences, and obtained daily outdoor pollution measurements from the EPA's Aerometric Information Retrieval System. Every six months, they tested lung function twice-daily over a two-week period. They also asked the children's parents for their observations of their children's symptoms.