USC study finds big air pollution impacts on local communities

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/uosc-usf110409.php

Public release date: 4-Nov-2009

Contact: Meghan Lewit
[e-mail]
323-442-3941
http://www.usc.edu/">University of Southern California

USC study finds big air pollution impacts on local communities

Traffic corridors in Long Beach and Riverside are a major contributor to illness from childhood asthma

Heavy traffic corridors in the cities of Long Beach and Riverside are responsible for a significant proportion of preventable childhood asthma, and the true impact of air pollution and ship emissions on the disease has likely been underestimated, according to researchers at the University of Southern California (USC).

The study, which appears in an online edition of the American Journal of Public Health, estimated that nine percent of all childhood asthma cases in Long Beach and six percent in Riverside were attributable to traffic proximity.

The study also found that ship emissions from the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex contributed to the exacerbation of asthma. For example, approximately 1,400 yearly episodes of asthma-related bronchitis episodes in Long Beach (21 percent of the total) were caused by the contribution of ship emissions to nitrogen dioxide levels in the city.

Although there has been extensive research on the effects of traffic proximity on asthma risk, this study is one of the few that has estimated the number of cases—or "burden of disease"—associated with traffic in specific high risk communities, says principal investigator Rob McConnell, M.D., professor of preventive medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and deputy director of the Children's Environmental Health Center at USC.

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