Children With Asthma Likely Born In Toronto Area With High Air Pollution, Says Study

A new study conducted by scientists reveals that children who develop asthma in Toronto are more likely to have been born in a neighborhood that has a high level of traffic-related air pollution.

Lead author Dr. Ketan Shankardass, a social epidemiologist with the Centre for Research on Inner City Health of St. Michael's Hospital said "Such clusters support the notion that early life factors at the neighborhood level are relevant to the development of childhood asthma."

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It's a lung condition characterized by inflammation of the bronchi and constriction of the airways that result in coughing, wheezing or breathlessness. Allergy and other airway irritants can trigger it

Shankardass said 70 percent of the children involved in the study had moved from their birth neighborhood, further suggesting the air pollution during pregnancy and shortly after birth was related to developing asthma later in childhood.

While exposure to traffic-related air pollution helped explain some of these clusters, Shankardass said air pollution isn't necessarily acting alone in causing childhood asthma, or else they would have found similar clusters along all the main thoroughfares in Toronto.

His study was published online today in the journal Health & Place.

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Nearly 2.4 million deaths every year are attributable to air pollution. Air pollutants may be solid particles, liquid droplets or gases. Proper planning methods should be adopted to reduce air pollution.

Shankardass said other risk factors that could be associated with childhood asthma include the relatively low socioeconomic status in Parkdale-Little Portugal and Scarborough, which have average median incomes of $51,767 and $52,944, respectively, compared to $65,047 in the rest of the greater Toronto area.

In addition, there may be persistent air pollution in Scarborough from sources other than traffic, such as factories. In 2006, the average area of industrial land-use in Scarborough (62,715 square metres) was far higher than the rest of the GTA.

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The Parkdale and Little Portugal neighborhoods also contain some of the city's oldest housing stock (the average percentage of pre-1946 housing in Parkdale-Little Portugal is 55 percent, compared to 4 percent in Scarborough and 19 percent in the rest of the GTA). That includes many large homes that have been converted into small, crowded apartment buildings and that are poorly maintained, meaning there might be indoor environmental hazards that were not completely accounted for in the study, such as cockroaches and mold.

Shankardass is also an assistant professor in health sciences at Wilfrid Laurier University.

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This study was funded by Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research.

Source-Eurekalert