Ambient Air Toxics and Asthma Prevalence among a Representative Sample of US Kindergarten-Age Children

Alexis M Stoner, Sarah E Anderson and Timothy J Buckley

PLOS ONE, 2013, vol. 8, issue 9, 1-

Abstract: Background: Criteria pollutants have been associated with exacerbation of children’s asthma, but the role of air toxics in relation to asthma is less clear. Our objective was to evaluate whether exposure to outdoor air toxics in early childhood increased asthma risk or severity. Methods: Air toxics exposure was estimated using the 2002 National Air toxics Assessment (NATA) and linked to longitudinal data (n=6950) from a representative sample of US children born in 2001 and followed through kindergarten-age in the Early Child Longitudinal Study - Birth Cohort (ECLS-B). Results: Overall, 17.7% of 5.5 year-olds had ever been told by a healthcare professional they had asthma, and 6.8% had been hospitalized or visited an emergency room for an asthma attack. Higher rates of asthma were observed among boys (20.1%), low-income (24.8%), and non-Hispanic black children (30.0%) (p≤0.05). Air toxics exposure was greater for minority race/ethnicity (p 0.05). In adjusted logistic regression models, children exposed to the highest respiratory hazard index were not more likely to have asthma compared to those exposed to the lowest respiratory hazard index of total, onroad sources, or diesel PM. Conclusions: Early childhood exposure to outdoor air toxics in a national sample has not previously been studied relative to children’s asthma. Within the constraints of the study, we found no evidence that early childhood exposure to outdoor air toxics increased risk for asthma. As has been previously reported, it is evident that there are environmental justice and disparity concerns for exposure to air toxics and asthma prevalence in US children.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0075176 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 75176&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0075176

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0075176

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().