Birth Cohort Studies of Long-Term Exposure to Ambient Air Pollution in Early Life and Development of Asthma in Children and Adolescents from Denmark

This report, available for downloading below, presents a study led by Marie Pedersen of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Pedersen and colleagues examined children’s asthma in four Danish cohorts and focused on exposure to an array of air pollutants, including fine particulate matter, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and combinations of those pollutants.

Key takeaways:

• The investigators found that air pollutant exposures were generally associated with increased risk of developing childhood asthma but were less consistently associated with asthma-related immune mediators and with lung function.
• They also found that both prenatal and postnatal periods are important windows of exposure for asthma development.
• The study underscores the importance of health outcome assessment methods in better understanding asthma risk factors and prevalence.