The closer people live to a main road, the more likely they are to
suffer from respiratory symptoms such as breathlessness and wheezing, a
new study from Switzerland shows.
"These findings from a general population provide strong confirmation
that living near busy streets leads to adverse respiratory health
effects," Dr. Lucy Bayer-Oglesby, of the University of Basel, and
colleagues write in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
While outdoor air pollution -- especially tiny particles that can be
breathed deep into the lungs--is known to be hazardous to people's
health, to date no researchers have looked at how proximity to main
roads affects respiratory symptoms in a general population,
Bayer-Oglesby and her team note.
To investigate, they looked at data from a two-part study of air
pollution and lung disease. It involved 9,651 randomly selected men and
women aged 18 to 60 who enrolled in the study in 1991, 8,047 of whom
re-enrolled for the second phase of the study in 2002.
People's risk of having attacks of breathlessness increased by 13% for
every 500-meter segments of main street located within 200 meters of
their home. The risk of such attacks among people who had never smoked
fell by 12% for each additional 100 meters between their homes and a
main street.
Individuals whose homes were within 20 meters of a busy road were 15%
more likely to regularly have phlegm in their breathing passages, while
they were 34% more likely to have wheezing with breathing problems.
The effects of traffic on respiratory health were stronger for men and
for people who had never smoked.
The effects of living near main streets were weaker in 2002 than in
1991, which may have been due to stricter requirements on auto
emissions, the researchers note.
"Living close to main streets or in a dense street network increases the
risks for certain respiratory symptoms in adults, particularly for
asthma-related symptoms such as attacks of breathlessness and wheezing
and for bronchitic symptoms such as regular cough and phlegm," they
conclude.
(
Planet Ark, com informações do American Journal of
Epidemiology, 28/12/2006)