"In our study, wintertime air pollution had no significant effect on asthma exacerbations or lung function," said Nathan Rabinovitch, M.D., a lead author of the study and pediatric allergist at National Jewish Medical and Research Center. "Upper respiratory infections, however, doubled the chances that a child would suffer an asthma exacerbation and more than quadrupled the odds that a child would suffer asthma symptoms."
The study monitored 41, 63 and 43 elementary school children during three successive winters in Denver, Colorado, when particulate pollution is worst. The children, aged 6 to 12 years, were mostly urban minority children with moderate to severe asthma. Dr. Rabinovitch and co-investigator Erwin Gelfand, M.D., Chairman of Pediatrics at National Jewish, monitored several health outcomes in the children, including asthma exacerbations, visits to emergency rooms and hospitalizations. They also monitored the children's lung function, medication use, asthma symptoms, and whether they had upper respiratory infections. The researchers correlated those health measures with daily variations in six air pollutants: particulates less than 10 microns in diameter, particulates less than 2.5 microns diameter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and ozone. In general pollutants were comparable to levels found in most large American cities.
As expected, the raw data did show worse health associated with high pollution days. But when the researchers controlled for pot
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Contact: William Allstetter
allstetterw@njc.org
303-398-1002
National Jewish Medical and Research Center
9-Nov-2004