Every year, 4 million children are asthmatic by breathing the vapors of the traffic – Quartz

According to a study published on April 10, 4 million children suffer from asthma every year in the world.

And almost every one of these cases – 92%, to be precise – occur in areas technically compliant with the World Health Organization guidelines regarding nitrogen dioxide (NO2) in the air or 21 parts per billion or less.

The research, published in The Lancet, used NO2 as an indirect indicator of traffic pollution exposure. NO2 is an important part of the gas mixture emitted by the vehicle's exhaust pipes and is itself harmful to human health. The same is true of other contaminants, such as fine particles called PM2.5, which can penetrate deeply into the lungs, causing respiratory diseases and even slipping into the bloodstream, which can significantly affect health. physical and cognitive children.

Many studies have shown that children who live or go to school in highly polluted areas are less successful in cognitive tests, for example. In the Netherlands, a recent study of 783 children aged 6 to 10 years found that exposure to high levels of PM2.5 in the uterus was "likely to cause structural alterations of the cortex "brain region" responsible for the pulse control.

The Lancet paper team at George Washington University used 2015 data on the incidence of childhood asthma in 194 countries, as well as data on metropolitan areas of 125 cities, collected by Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. a research institute of the University of Washington. They then superimposed them with a global dataset of NO2 levels, developed by a number of researchers in 2017.

According to Susan Anenberg, author of the study and badociate professor at George Washington, the results suggest that millions of these asthma cases could be prevented. "Improving access to public transit that does not rely on a combustion engine, such as electrified transit, electric cars and bicycles, would significantly reduce the risk of NO2 exposure for children" she said in a press release.

In 2015, the rate of new asthma cases attributable to road traffic ranged from city to city, and it was highest in Shanghai, China, where researchers estimated that 48% of new asthma cases infant came from inhalation of traffic vapors. Bogota, Columbia and Lima, Peru, were the second and third cities most affected by new traffic-related childhood asthma cases.