Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Bose, Sonali

Titel

Air Pollution and Child Lung Health: Critical Thresholds at Critical Times

Ist Teil von

• Annals of the American Thoracic Society, 2022-05, Vol.19 (5), p.723-725

Ort / Verlag

United States: American Thoracic Society

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Bose discusses the study of Takebayashi and colleagues in which they investigated the association between concurrent exposure to low concentrations of PM2.5 and lung function growth over 4 years in a large cohort of 1,466 pre- and early adolescent school children across 10 cities in Japan. Despite its null findings, the study highlights an important paradigm of how environmental insults may alter the trajectory of human health and increase risk for future disease depending on the dose and timing of such exposures. Prior evidence for the presence of critical windows of susceptibility supports that, as early as the prenatal period, ambient air pollution exposures at specific weeks of gestation (with corresponding developmental milestones) have differential effects on lung function and respiratory disease risk during childhood (5-8). Takebayashi and colleagues present a unique snapshot of the impact of air pollutant exposures experienced at the verge of the accelerated lung growth of adolescence that ultimately contributes to the attainment of peak individual lung function in early adulthood.