The relation between urban industrial air pollution and ill-health, particularly in highly economically developed cities, has been recognized for years now; yet severe urban contamination continues to cause damage particularly to children’s health. Plausible evidence is provided in this paper that changes in both the quality of natural environments and the status of residents’ health is strongl...

During the winter of 1994, the association between daily changes in air pollution and in the respiratory health of children 7 to 12 yr of age were studied in Kuopio, Finland. Seventy-four children with asthmatic symptoms and 95 children with cough only, living either in urban or suburban areas, were followed for 3 mo. During the study period, the mean daily concentration of particulate air poll...

This study aimed to quantify air pollution impact on morbidity and mortality in the Brazilian urban population using locally generated impact factors. Concentration-response coefficients were used to estimate the number of hospitalizations and deaths attributable to air pollution in seven Brazilian cities. Poisson regression coefficients (beta) were obtained from time-series studies conducted i...

In response to the facts that some Asian developing countries were experiencing the fastest rate of industrialisation and urbanisation, several international initiatives called for a better and ‘sustainable’ urban management. Development of management tools including strategic environmental assessment (SEA), life cycle assessment (LCA), cost benefit analysis (CBA), and environmental managemen...

Millions of children in polluted cities are showing brain detrimental effects. Urban children exhibit brain structural and volumetric abnormalities, systemic inflammation, olfactory, auditory, vestibular and cognitive deficits v low-pollution controls. Neuroinflammation and blood-brain-barrier (BBB) breakdown target the olfactory bulb, prefrontal cortex and brainstem, but are diffusely present ...

A study was carried out to investigate the effects of meteorological conditions on atmospheric pollutant concentrations in a complex area. In general serious pollution episodes in the urban and suburban environment are not directly caused by sudden increases in the emission of pollutants but results from unfavorable meteorological conditions, These unfavorable conditions may reduce the ability ...

Air pollution concentrations in urban areas vary in both time and space (Munn, 1981). Time variations are strongly influenced by changes in human activities. Several activities occur repeatedly at regular intervals thus producing cycles in air pollution changes, like daily variations in CO concentration due to the change in traffic density or seasonal variations in air pollution (e.g., from hea...

BACKGROUND The built environment may influence health in part through the promotion of physical activity and exposure to pollution. To date, no studies have explored interactions between neighborhood walkability and air pollution exposure. METHODS We estimated concentrations of nitric oxide (NO), a marker for direct vehicle emissions), and ozone (O(3)) and a neighborhood walkability score, fo...

Air pollution has been recognized as a human carcinogen. Children living in urban areas are a high-risk group, because genetic damage occurring early in life is considered able to increase the risk of carcinogenesis in adulthood. This study aimed to investigate micronuclei (MN) frequency, as a biomarker of DNA damage, in exfoliated buccal cells of pre-school children living in a town with high ...