‘Landmark’ study links air pollution to unborn baby growth

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

A new study from scientists at the University of Aberdeen has revealed that exposure to air pollution is linked to babies’ growth during pregnancy

The study analysed over a decade’s worth of research evidence from around the world to establish the extent to which mothers’ exposures to air pollution, diet, alcohol and chemicals affects fetal growth.

While there was surprisingly insufficient evidence that poor diet, alcohol or chemicals were factors, the study found evidence that exposure to nitrogen dioxide resulted in smaller fetal head size, particularly in the last three months of pregnancy.

The nitrogen dioxide referred to in the research is primarily generated by vehicle traffic, but can be present in the home from cigarette smoke, or butane and kerosene heaters and stoves.

Professor Steve Turner, who led the study, said: “What was unique about our review of the literature is that we looked at unborn babies to see if mothers’ exposures to these factors affected fetal development. We used medical literature dating back 13 years, when the first studies linking exposure to fetal measurements was first published.

“The seven studies where air pollution was measured and linked to fetal size were from different geographical areas of the world, including Australia, the USA and several countries in Europe. However in all of the studies the evidence was clear that in the third trimester in particular, exposure to nitrogen dioxide reduced fetal growth.”

Previous research has shown that being small – for gestational age – at birth is associated with increased risk for conditions that include coronary artery disease, type II diabetes and asthma, meaning that a baby subject to air pollution in the womb is more likely to develop one of these later in life.

Professor Turner continued that: “public health measures are urgently required to minimise pregnant mothers’ exposures to nitrogen dioxide.”

via ‘Landmark’ study links air pollution to unborn baby growth – PharmaTimes

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Millions more Americans breathing dirty air as planet warms – report

Posted on April 24, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Forty-three percent of Americans live in places where they’re breathing unsafe air, according to American Lung Association

An increasing number of Americans live in places with unhealthy levels of smog or particulate air pollution – both of which are being made worse by climate change, according to a new report.

Air quality in the US has been improving since the 1970s, but that progress may be backsliding and 43% of Americans are now living in places where they are breathing unsafe air, according to the American Lung Association report.

As temperatures rise, wildfires are getting worse and spewing smoke across the west. And more smog, or ozone, is forming on warmer days.

For the three hottest years on record, 2015 through 2017, about 141 million people lived in US counties that saw unhealthy levels of particle pollution, either in a single 24-hour period or over a year, or unhealthy levels of smog. That is seven million more people than in the group’s last report.

“We’re seeing in this year’s report the impacts of climate change on air quality in really stunning terms,” said Paul Billings, a vice president for the association.

via Millions more Americans breathing dirty air as planet warms – report | Environment | The Guardian

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Air Pollution Is Killing More People Than Smoking—and Fossil Fuels Are Largely to Blame

Posted on April 18, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Air pollution causes up to 8.8 million premature deaths each year around the globe, surpassing worldwide deaths from smoking. A new study, published late last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that about 65 percent of those deaths are caused by emissions from fossil fuel-related activities, and that we can prevent about 3.6 million premature deaths every year if we phase out fossil fuels.

The study’s authors make use of epidemiological studies that follow cohorts of people around the world to model causes of mortality and thereby calculate the role of fossil fuel-caused air pollution. If we reduced the impact of all sources of anthropogenic pollution (including things like agriculture), the researchers calculate, the number of deaths prevented per year would jump to 5.6 million.

“Considering that this is a factor of 3 higher than the mortality rate from other avoidable environmental risks such as unsafe water, sanitation, and hygiene, reducing air pollution is clearly an effective and urgent health intervention,” the authors write. They find that, in particular, rapidly reducing fine particulate matter in the atmosphere could greatly reduce health impacts of exposure to air pollution, which include cardiovascular disease, asthma, and lung cancer.

The study also finds implications for the climate when fossil fuel emissions are ramped down thanks to a decrease in the use of aerosols. “By removing aerosol pollution, we find substantial regional invigoration of the hydrologic cycle,” leading to an increase in precipitation, they write.

This “invigoration” would have an especially significant impact in areas like northern China and Mexico, where record-setting droughts caused by climate change have been devastating agricultural productivity.

While aerosols have interrupted the Earth’s hydrologic cycles, they’ve also had a cooling effect on the planet. Those particles in the atmosphere reflect sunlight back into space, reducing the amount that is absorbed by the oceans and surfaces of Earth.

The study finds that aerosols have masked (that is, dampened the effect of) global warming by about 0.5 degrees Celsius. That effect has been particularly pronounced in areas of North America and northeast Asia, where researchers find that up to two degrees of warming has been masked. While carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are warming up the atmosphere, those aerosols have also been forestalling some of the worst impacts.

Aerosols have a shorter lifespan in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, so “overall, the warming effect dominates,” says lead author Jos Lelieveld of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany. “But in some areas which are very polluted, the cooling effect can be quite substantial.”

“The bottom line of this study is that we really need to do something quickly, especially if you want to meet these targets that we have all agreed upon at the Paris Agreement,” Lelieveld says. Signatories to the Paris Agreement have pledged to keep warming below two degrees Celsius by 2100, which, the study’s authors say—optimistically—could be possible.

If “within the next decade or so, say by mid-century,” we stop emitting greenhouse gases, Leliveld says, “it would still be possible to meet the two-degree target.”

via Air Pollution Is Killing More People Than Smoking—and Fossil Fuels Are Largely to Blame – Pacific Standard

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Counties Where Traffic Air Pollution Hurts Children Most

Posted on April 16, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

A first-of-its-kind county-by-county heat map details the distribution of childhood asthma due to nitrogen dioxide across the U.S.

IN THE U.S., over 6 million children had ongoing asthma in 2016. Globally, asthma kills around 1,000 people every day – and its prevalence is rising.

This condition has a high economic cost. Each year in the U.S., more than $80 billion is lost because of asthma. This is mainly due to premature deaths, medical payments and missed work and school days. The burden is higher for families with asthmatic children, who, on average, spend $1,700 more on health care than families with healthy children.

One major environmental factor that might contribute to the development of asthma is air pollution from traffic. In our study, published on April 3, our team mapped where in the U.S. children are most at risk for developing asthma from this type of pollution.

Traffic and Asthma

Asthma is likely the most common chronic disease in childhood, according to the World Health Organization.

Asthma presents as episodes of wheezing, coughing and shortness of breath due to the reversible, or partially reversible, obstruction of airflow. Six in 10 of children with asthma worldwide had a form of persistent asthma, meaning that either they were on long-term medication or their condition could not be controlled even with medication.

Traffic pollution contains a mixture of harmful pollutants like nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, benzene and sulfur. These pollutants are known to harm health in many ways, causing a number of cardiovascular, respiratory and neurological diseases.

One 2013 review suggested that long-term exposure to common traffic-related air pollutants is linked to the development of asthma in children and adults.

A much larger meta-analysis in 2017, which focused on children and included more recently published studies, found consistent connections between this type of pollution and childhood asthma development. The researchers concluded that there is now sufficient evidence showing a relationship between this type of pollution and the onset of childhood asthma.

Studies from the nonprofit research group Health Effects Institute and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have concluded along these lines.

Mapping the Problem

Despite this emerging evidence, the burden of childhood asthma due to traffic-related air pollution is poorly documented. Very few studies explore the geographic and spatial variations.

My research team wanted to quantify the connection between exposure to traffic pollution and the onset of childhood asthma across 48 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. We also wanted to make these data open to the public.

In our analysis, we looked at 70 million kids and conducted all calculations at the census block level, the smallest available geographical unit for census data. We collaborated with researchers from the University of Washington, who modeled the concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, a strong sign of traffic-related air pollution, using satellite imagery combined with environmental ground monitoring data.

We then took data extracted from surveys by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimating childhood asthma incidence in the U.S. Alongside data from our air pollution models, we used these data to estimate the number of childhood asthma cases caused by exposure to traffic pollution.

We then created a first-of-its-kind, county-by-county interactive heat map and city-by-city table detailing the distribution of childhood asthma due to nitrogen dioxide across the U.S. in both 2000 and 2010. Each county is represented, and users can explore the data to see the findings for a particular county.

A Win for Public Health
Our analysis found that childhood asthma cases attributable to traffic pollution across the U.S. decreased, on average, by 33% between 2000 and 2010. In 2000, we estimated that 209,100 childhood asthma cases could be attributed to traffic pollution, while this number dropped to 141,900 cases in 2010. That’s a major win for public health.
What caused the decline in traffic-related asthma cases? There may be multiple causes, including more fuel-efficient vehicles, more stringent regulation on nitrogen oxide emissions and, potentially, reductions in total vehicle miles traveled due to the recession.
Despite this encouraging decrease in air pollution and its associated health burden, there were 141,900 childhood asthma cases due to traffic-related air pollution in the U.S. That’s 18% of all childhood asthma cases.
Moreover, we found that children living in urban areas had twice the percentage of asthma cases attributable to nitrogen dioxide exposures as compared to children living in rural areas.
Our estimates underline an urgent need to reduce children’s exposure to air pollution. We hope that our analyses and heat maps will better inform policymakers, transportation agencies, medical associations and anyone else interested in learning more about the burden of childhood asthma due to air pollution.

via Counties Where Traffic Air Pollution Hurts Children Most | Healthiest Communities | US News

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High-emission Vehicles to be Restricted from Downtown Seoul

Posted on April 15, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

High-emission vehicles will be restricted from the center of Seoul beginning in July this year, as part of the municipal government’s new policy measures to reduce fine dust pollution in the capital, it was announced Monday.

Grade 5 emission vehicles, mostly diesel cars, will be barred from entering Seoul’s Green Transport Promotion Zone, a 16.7-square-kilometer downtown area designated within the Joseon Dynasty fortress walls, the government said.

After a five-month grace period, violators will be fined 250,000 won (US$220), beginning Dec. 1.

The stringent driving restrictions will be applied to the 2.45 million vehicles that are classified by the Ministry of Environment as grade 5 emission cars out of the 23 million vehicles registered in the nation.

Municipal officials said grade 5 emission vehicles will likely be banned from entering the green promotion zone from 6 a.m. to 7 or 9 p.m. in consideration of logistics movement and other factors. At present, about 20,000 to 30,000 grade 5 emission cars are estimated to pass through the zone a day.

All owners of grade 5 emission cars will be individually notified of the Seoul government’s new driving restrictions by mail.

The latest policy measures came after the average concentration of harmful ultra fine particles in the air of Seoul reached the highest level last month since record-keeping began in 2015.

The government of Seoul also said it will cooperate with private businesses to gradually replace about 100,000 delivery motorcycles with eco-friendly electric motorcycles by 2025. Diesel-powered delivery motorcycles are known to emit at least six times more air pollutants than small passenger cars.

This year, it aims to distribute 1,000 electric motorcycles to franchise and delivery companies.

In addition, the municipal government will replace about 450 diesel-powered village buses with electric buses from next year in cooperation with the central government.

The Seoul government will install a total of 2,500 air quality monitors throughout the city by 2022 and put large-scale construction sites, gas stations, printing factories and other heavy emitters of fine dust under special supervision.

Idling police buses and auto repair shops will be regulated more stringently starting this year, it said.

“Fine dust is a pain in people’s lives and a national disaster that threatens the lives of citizens,” Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said. “Citizens, as both the biggest victims of fine dust and the subjects of policies, should be prepared to accept lifestyle changes.”

via High-emission Vehicles to be Restricted from Downtown Seoul | Be Korea-savvy

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Millions of child asthma cases linked to traffic pollution every year

Posted on April 11, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Four million cases of childhood asthma globally could be attributable to nitrogen dioxide from traffic pollution every year.

Pollution from vehicles may damage airways, leading to inflammation and the development of asthma in children who are genetically predisposed to the condition. Although it isn’t certain which pollutant is responsible, previous research has suggested that exposure to NO2 is key – and traffic emissions can contribute up to 80 per cent of ambient NO2 in cities.

Ploy Achakulwisut at George Washington University in Washington DC looked at global data on NO2 concentration and asthma rates to estimate the number of new cases in children between the ages of 1 and 18 that could be related to traffic pollution.

Out of the 194 countries, they found that the UK had the 24th highest proportion of new childhood asthma cases that could be attributable to traffic pollution. This related to 23 per cent of cases in Manchester and 29 per cent in London.

South Korea topped the list, with nearly one-third of new diagnoses linked to NO2 exposure. The US was in 25th position and India was 58th.

The team found that 92 per cent of cases of childhood asthma attributable to exposure to traffic pollution occurred in areas with average NO2 concentrations below the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 21 parts per billion.

“Our findings suggest that the WHO guideline for annual average NO2 concentrations might need to be revisited, and that traffic emissions should be a target to mitigate exposure,” says team member Susan Anenberg at George Washington University.

Policy changes can help improve traffic-related air pollution, says Achakulwisut. “Recent examples include Shenzhen’s electrification of its entire bus fleet and London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone congestion charges,” she says.

via Millions of child asthma cases linked to traffic pollution every year | New Scientist

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Kids living near major roads at higher risk of developmental delays

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

Young children who live close to a major roadway are twice as likely to score lower on tests of communications skills, compared to those who live farther away from a major roadway, according to an analysis by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and the University of California, Merced. Moreover, children born to women exposed during pregnancy to higher-than-normal levels of traffic-related pollutants — ultra-fine airborne particles and ozone — had a small but significantly higher likelihood of developmental delays during infancy and early childhood. The study appears in Environmental Research.

“Our results suggest that it may be prudent to minimize exposure to air pollution during pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood — all key periods for brain development,” said Pauline Mendola, Ph.D., an investigator in the Division of Intramural Population Health Research at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the study’s senior author.

Previous studies have linked exposure to common air pollutants in pregnancy to low birthweight, preterm birth and stillbirth. A few studies have found a higher risk of autism and of lower cognitive functioning in children living near freeways, but results of studies about how prenatal and early childhood exposure to air pollution might affect development have been inconsistent.

Given that a large proportion of the U.S. population lives close to major roadways, which are major sources of air pollution, the researchers sought to determine if living near heavily traveled roads was linked to lower scores on developmental screens — questionnaires or checklists that indicate whether a child is developing normally or needs to be referred to a specialist for further testing.

The researchers analyzed data from the Upstate KIDS Study. They matched the addresses of 5,825 study participants to a roadway data set, calculating the distance of each address to the nearest major roadway. For each participant, they matched home address, mother’s work address during pregnancy, and address of the child’s day care location to an Environmental Protection Agency data set for estimating air pollution levels. From 8 months to 36 months of age, the children were screened every 4 to 6 months with the Ages and Stages Questionnaire, a validated screening measure evaluating five domains of child development: fine motor skills, large motor skills, communication, personal social functioning and problem-solving ability.

Compared to children living more than half a mile from a major roadway, children living from roughly 164 feet to .3 miles from a major roadway were twice as likely to have failed at least one screen of the communications domain.

The researchers also estimated exposures to ozone and fine inhalable particles (PM2.5), two pollutants produced by car traffic. Fine inhalable particles are 30 times smaller than the width of a human hair, can pass through the lungs’ defenses, and are absorbed directly into the bloodstream.

Prenatal exposure to elevated PM2.5 led to a 1.6 to 2.7 percent higher risk of failing any developmental domain, while higher ozone exposure led to a .7 to 1.7 percent higher risk of failing a developmental domain. In contrast, higher postnatal exposure to ozone was linked to a 3.3 percent higher risk of failing most domains of the developmental screen at 8 months, a 17.7 percent higher risk of overall screening failure at 24 months, and a 7.6 percent higher risk of overall screening failure at 30 months.

These results led the researchers to conclude that early childhood exposure to air pollutants may convey a higher risk for developmental delays, compared to similar exposures in the womb. The study is associational and so cannot prove cause and effect. The authors noted that larger studies are necessary to confirm these links.

“It is not clear why exposure to pollutants after birth is linked to a higher risk of developmental delay,” said Sandie Ha, Ph.D., of the Department of Public Health at the University of California, Merced, and lead author of the study. “However, unlike exposure during pregnancy, exposure during childhood is more direct and does not go through a pregnant woman’s defenses.”

Story Source:

Materials provided by NIH/Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

via Kids living near major roads at higher risk of developmental delays — ScienceDaily

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Damage estimates of particulate matter air pollution reported in study

Posted on April 10, 2019 by Respro® UK Ltd

A team of researchers including University of New Mexico economics professor Andrew Goodkind is addressing the deadly problem of particulate matter air pollution in the U.S. and how to best mitigate it.

Their article, titled “Fine-scale damage estimates of particulate matter air pollution reveal opportunities for location-specific mitigation of emissions,” is being published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It was co-authored by Christopher Tessum, University of Washington, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Jay Coggins, University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics; Jason Hill, University of Minnesota, Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering; and Julian Marshall, University of Washington, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

In 2011 alone, the authors say fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution was responsible for an estimated 107,000 premature deaths. The researchers approximate those deaths cost society around $886 billion, and more than half of them were at least partially the result of pollution caused by energy consumption (i.e. transportation, electricity generation).

PM2.5 are atmospheric particles that generally have a diameter of only 2.5 micrometers or smaller and are so tiny, they can only be seen with an electron microscope. For scale, that’s about 3 percent of the diameter of a single human hair. The particles often carry microscopic solid or liquid drops leftover from when they were formed during complex chemical reactions and can sometimes contain dangerous elements. Their small, light nature allows them to stay in the air longer than heavier particles, increasing the possibility of being inhaled and settling into the lungs or bloodstream.

“The impact of particulate matter air pollution is enormous even in countries with relatively good air quality like the U.S.,” Goodkind said. “There is still substantial room for improvement to the public health from reducing emissions, even though we have dramatically improved our air quality over the last 40 years.”

Researchers say health burdens of PM2.5 and its precursors vary widely depending on where emissions are released. Goodkind and his co-authors find that 33% of damages occur within 8 km of emission sources, but 25 percent occur more than 150 miles away. Those statistics emphasize the importance of tracking both local and long-range impacts, which is another element of what the paper addresses.

“Sources in the same urban area, releasing the same quantity of emissions, can have orders of magnitude difference in their impacts on health,” Goodkind said. “Identifying those sources with the largest impacts can help improve our decision making about how to reduce pollution.”

The team developed a model for calculating location-specific damages due to primary PM2.5 and PM2.5 precursor emissions. Based on the extensive modeling efforts, the researchers are able to rapidly identify the impact of releasing emissions from any location in the U.S. They then applied the tool to the U.S. emissions inventory to better understand the contribution of each economic sector on reduced air quality. Such information will be critical in assisting policymakers who are deciding how and where to prioritize pollution mitigation efforts.

Moving forward, the researchers want to focus more directly on certain sectors of the economy where emission reductions have been limited.

“Coal-fired electricity generation has, rightly, received substantial attention, and emissions have dropped substantially, but many people do not realize that agriculture is the source of a significant share of emissions,” Goodkind concluded. “We are looking into how and where we grow crops and raise livestock, what inputs are used, and how we can improve the system to continue to produce the food we need but with fewer environmental and health impacts.”

via Damage estimates of particulate matter air pollution reported in study

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