While in France, three in four children are exposed to toxic air daily, a new study published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health this Thursday April 11 reveals that four million new cases of childhood asthma each year are linked to road pollution. That’s no less than 11,000 every day. Globally, this represents 13% of diagnoses in children. A proportion which even climbs to 31% in South Korea, or to 30% in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
At the city level, it is Shanghai (China) which concentrates the most diagnoses of the pathology due to road traffic, with 48% of cases linked to it. Eight other Chinese cities follow the world’s largest megalopolis in the ranking, to which is added Moscow (Russia) and Seoul (South Korea). Paris is in 21st place, with a third of childhood asthma cases due to this pollution.
Standards that do not protect against asthma
Unicef recalled in its report of April 4, young people are more exposed than their parents to air pollution, because of their still developing organism and a 1.5 times higher breathing frequency. The United Nations Children’s Fund also pointed out that “Their small size brings them closer than adults to exhaust pipes, especially when they are in strollers or on foot along narrow streets”.
According to this new research, conducted by researchers at George Washington University (United States) using data from 194 countries and 125 cities in 2015, almost all (92%) of young people who develop respiratory system disorders because of road pollution, however, live “In regions which respect the recommended levels” pollutants set by the World Health Organization (WHO), in particular the annual average concentration of nitrogen dioxide (NO2).
“It has been known for a long time that outdoor air pollution can lead to a worsening of asthma, but it is only recently that it has been pointed out as a cause of the appearance of new cases”, Explain Quoted by France Info Stephen Holgate, professor of immunopharmacology at the University of Southampton (UK) who was not involved in the study.
“By relating health data to pollution modeling, the authors provide a solid demonstration that, at levels below WHO recommendations, exposure to NO2 is linked to new cases of asthma ‘, he continued. In view of these results, scientists suggest that the standards be tightened in terms of pollution. According to WHO estimates, 235 million people have asthma worldwide. 400,000 die from it each year. It is also the most common chronic disease in children.
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