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SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY 1: Air Pollution Damages Teen Lungs

A long-term study on the effects of air pollution on children’s lungs has concluded that polluted air stunts the growth of teens' lungs and could cause health problems when they are adults.

Researchers followed 1,759 children in 12 southern California communities. The study began when the children were 10 years old, just before their lungs started the maturation spurt, and ended when they turned 18.

According to James Gauderman of the University of Southern California, he and his colleagues found that 7.9 percent of the 18-year-olds they tested from the highest pollution areas of California had less than 80 percent of the lung capacity they should have at that age. Only 1.6 percent of those tested from areas with the least pollution had low lung capacity.

“This is some of the most convincing evidence that air pollution has chronic effects,” Gauderman said. “We see the effects in all kids. And it’s an unavoidable exposure. It’s not like smoking, where you can advise people to stop. This is a day-in-day-out kind of exposure.”

Gauderman said that the damage to the lungs from the pollution can be permanent as well.

“By the time they reach their late teens,” he said, “their lung development pretty much stopped.”

This study is the first long-term study on children and was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

--Written by Katie Denbo

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