Levels of pollutants in indoor air and respiratory health in preschool children: A systematic review

Abstract

The aim of this paper is thus to identify, evaluate, and summarize in a systematic fashion all the epidemiological studies that have analyzed the association between exposure to specific indoor air pollutants and respiratory disease among children under the age of five. A search was carried out in the main biomedical bibliographic sources in December 2006 and updated in February 2008. The study period covered 12 years (1996-2007). All the selected papers were carefully read. We focused on studies that analyzed at least one indicator of respiratory health and which included one or more indoor air pollutants in relation to the respiratory health of children under the age of 5. Studies that analyzed passive smoking as the sole source of indoor air pollution were not included. Fourteen studies were considered to be relevant. The most analyzed pollutant was nitrogen dioxide, followed by volatile organic compounds, airborne particulates and other pollutants; phthalates and CO(2). The literature reviewed within our criteria seems to indicate that several indoor pollutants, even at the moderate levels found in the developed countries, could be harmful to the respiratory health of very young children. Future research should focus on conducting more studies, preferably making use of cohorts, with adequate techniques for measuring indoor pollution levels.

Effects of parental smoking and indoor tobacco smoke exposure on respiratory outcomes in children

“…Our previous study in Nanjing provided the associations between dry cough and sensation of stuffy odor, unpleasant odor, pungent odor, moldy odor, humid air, and dry air (P < 0.05) 37 . Environmental tobacco smoke exposure has been reported to be associated with cough 38 , but some studies found no relation between dry night cough and smoke exposure 39,40 . However, a pooled analysis of 53 879 children from 12 cross-sectional studies found strong evidence linking nocturnal cough to smoking during pregnancy, smoking during the first two years and parental current smoking 1 .…”

Volatile organic compounds and risk of asthma and allergy: a systematic review

“…We note that the existing quality assessment tools do not incorporate assessment of the quality of the exposure information; consequently, studies rated as strong methodologically could have weak methods of quantifying personal VOC exposures. We believe this systematic review to have been more rigorous than the previous, frequently cited, systematic review [76], critical analysis [77] and literature review [78], which notably did not critically appraise study quality using validated tools or distinguish between studies investigating aetiology and those investigating established disease.…”

Respiratory health status of children from two different air pollution exposure settings of Sri Lanka: A cross‐sectional study

“…For example, the prevalence of wheezing was 7.4% among 10 to 12 year-old children in central Taiwan [Liao et al, 2009], 25.6% among 7 to 15 year-old children in a industrial area of India [Kumar et al, 2007], 8.4% among 11 to 15 year- old Chinese children [Zhao et al, 2008] and 12.6% among 13–15 year-old children in Poland [Kasznia-Kocot et al, 2010]. Most epidemiological studies have assessed the association of indoor unclean cooking fuel exposure and respiratory health or outdoor traffic-related air pollution and respiratory health separately [Rehfuess et al, 2009; Weinmayr et al, 2010; Andersson et al, 2011] Further, studies on exposure to biomass fuel use and respiratory health studies have mostly been conducted among preschool children [Dherani et al, 2008; Fuentes-Leonarte et al, 2009]. Studies comparing respiratory health of school age children living in households using unclean cooking fuel in different outdoor air pollution settings are limited.…”