Official study shows that air pollution causes the disease affecting 5m Britons - Asthma

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http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health/story.jsp?story=120497

Revealed: car fumes give children asthma

Exclusive Official study shows that air pollution causes the disease

affecting 5m Britons

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

17 February 2002

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Leading article: The Government must act now on air pollution

Pollution from car exhausts causes asthma, dramatic new official research

shows.

A massive study, backed by the Californian and US governments, has

demonstrated for the first time that ozone, the main component of smog, can

cause healthy children to develop the life-threatening condition. Top

British scientists believe it has provided the " smoking gun " that finally

links pollution to the disease.

The conclusion - which vindicates an Independent on Sunday campaign that

began more than eight years ago - is likely to have an explosive effect on

transport and health policy in Britain, which suffers from the highest

incidence of asthma in Europe.

It comes as the Government's own chief scientific adviser, Professor

King, calls for a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel, a measure that would

drastically reduce the pollutants that cause asthma and global warming. He

says announcing a ban to take effect some years in the future would force

companies to develop " green " cars running on electricity and hydrogen.

More than one in every seven children in the country now suffers from

asthma - six times as many as 25 years ago - and, in all, five million

Britons have the disease: 18,000 new cases are diagnosed each week, and

1,500 people die from it every year.

Yet the Government has done little to tackle the pollution now being

identified as one of the causes of the epidemic. Ozone is excluded from

national measures being implemented by local authorities to tackle

contaminated air.

Scientists have long agreed that ozone exacerbates the disease in those who

have it, and many have suspected that it causes it in the first place. But

in the absence of proof there has been little political interest in tackling

it. The new study breaks the impasse.

" We have known for some time that smog can trigger attacks in asthmatics, "

says Alan C Lloyd, California's top air pollution official. " This study has

shown that ozone can cause asthma as well. "

Professor Rob McConnell of the University of Southern California, the

leading author of the study, and his colleagues made the connection by

mounting the first study of its kind into the disease in children. They

identified 3,535 children aged nine and over, with no history of asthma,

living in both smoggy and relatively unpolluted towns and suburbs, and

recorded what happen to them over the next five years.

Uniquely, they took particular notice of how much sport the children played.

Sporty children are exposed to more air pollution, both because they spend

more time outdoors and because vigorous exercise makes them breathe 17 times

faster, and draws air deeper into the lungs.

They found that children who played three or more sports in smoggy areas

were more than three times more likely to get asthma than equally active

children in relatively unpolluted ones. Less sporty children in polluted

towns and suburbs were also more likely to get the disease, though not to

the same extent.

Top British experts last week hailed the study as a breakthrough. " It is

very, very important - the first paper I know of that suggests that

pollution may cause asthma, " said Dr Ayres, professor of respiratory

medicine at the University of Birmingham.

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