Children’s Lung Health Improves as Air Pollution Is Reduced, Study Says
This is a delayed post since I missed this important article when it first appeared. It’s about a study confirming that reductions in air pollution improve children’s health. Of the things moms worry about in our modern society their efforts are still best focused on reducing water and air pollution.
For the first time, researchers have shown that reducing air pollution leads to improved respiratory function in children ages 11 to 15, a critical period of lung development.
Scientists have long known that air pollution is linked to smaller lung capacity and compromised breathing in children. But it had not been clear whether, and to what extent, a reduction in air pollution over the years might prevent these problems.
Environmentalists have maintained that federal emission standards are not stringent enough to safeguard health, while some conservatives criticize the regulations as overly restrictive and expensive. The new study, conducted in Southern California and published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, provides evidence that better air quality, a result of stricter regulation, improved health among children, experts said.
The larger implication, he said, was that the latest group of children may have a jump-start on longevity compared with children who grew up breathing more polluted air. Absent factors such as smoking or asthma, normal lung function slowly begins to decrease in early adulthood.Morton Lippmann, a professor of environmental medicine at New York University School of Medicine, said the research would be influential and predicted that within the next few years, when federal emission standards are due for review, “this kind of information will play a major role.”
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