January 26, 2007

Children Living Near Freeways Risk Poor Lung Development

According to a report in the latest online edition of the Lancet, children who grow up near freeways and a large amount of car and truck exhaust not only have higher rates of asthma, but they may also suffer from underdeveloped lungs.

"Exposure from tailpipe emissions from motor vehicles potentially carries chronic health risks to children's lung development," said lead researcher W. James Gauderman, an assistant professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. "We found that kids who live closer to freeways had significantly less lung capacity, compared with kids who lived further from freeways."

Living Near Freeways Hurts Kids' Lungs

Posted on 2:43 PM | Comments (0)

July 18, 2006

Asthma in Children Linked to Indoor Swimming Pools

A study of 190,000 European teens suggests there may be a link between indoor swimming pools and asthma in children. Researchers at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels discovered that asthma rates were higher in countries where there were more indoor swimming pools.

Writing in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, they concluded that the rise of asthma in western Europe could at least be partly due to children being exposed to the byproducts of chlorine in the air and water of indoor pools.

Childhood asthma linked to chemicals in swimming pools

Posted on 12:30 PM | Comments (0)