BACKGROUND Criteria pollutants have been associated with exacerbation of children's asthma, but the role of air toxics in relation to asthma is less clear. Our objective was to evaluate whether exposure to outdoor air toxics in early childhood increased asthma risk or severity. METHODS Air toxics exposure was estimated using the 2002 National Air toxics Assessment (NATA) and linked to longitu...

Asthma is a respiratory disease whose prevalence has been increasing since the mid 1970s and that affects more than 14.6 million residents of the United States. Environmental triggers of asthma include air pollutants that are respiratory irritants. Air toxics emitted into the ambient air are listed in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments as hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) if they can adversely aff...

BACKGROUND Ambient measurements of hazardous air pollutants (air toxics) have been used to validate model-predicted concentrations of air toxics but have not been used to perform risk screening at the national level. OBJECTIVES We used ambient concentrations of routinely measured air toxics to determine the relative importance of individual air toxics for chronic cancer and noncancer exposure...

Research Center is to develop and support research that will yield a better understanding of the potential risks posed to human health by exposure to air toxics. The Center's research program, developed col-laboratively by scientific experts from academia, industry and government , seeks to fill the gaps in scientific data that are required to make sound environmental health public policy decis...

Public health protection from air pollution can be achieved more effectively by shifting from a single-pollutant approach to a multi-pollutant approach. To develop such multi-pollutant approaches, identifying which air pollutants are present most frequently is essential. This study aims to determine the frequently found carcinogenic air toxics or hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) combinations acr...

a two-week tunnel study was conducted in monterrey, mexico during june 2009 to characterizevolatile organic compound (voc) emissions from the local vehicle fleet and estimate the correspondingemission factors (efs). the loma larga tunnel (llt), a 532 meter-long structure that is mainly used by lightduty gasoline-powered vehicles was used as the experimental set-up. ambient air samples (2-hour a...

a two-week tunnel study was conducted in monterrey, mexico during june 2009 to characterizevolatile organic compound (voc) emissions from the local vehicle fleet and estimate the correspondingemission factors (efs). the loma larga tunnel (llt), a 532 meter-long structure that is mainly used by lightduty gasoline-powered vehicles was used as the experimental set-up. ambient air samples (2-hour a...

The National Urban Air Toxics Research Center (NUATRC) hosted a medical/scientific workshop focused on possible asthma/air toxics relationships, with the results of the NUATRC's first research contract with the University of Cincinnati as the point of discussion. The workshop was held at the Texas Medical Center on 4 February 1994 and featured presentations by distinguished academic, government...

BACKGROUND Quantifying the benefits of reducing hazardous air pollutants (HAPs, or air toxics) has been limited by gaps in toxicological data, uncertainties in extrapolating results from high-dose animal experiments to estimate human effects at lower doses, limited ambient and personal exposure monitoring data, and insufficient economic research to support valuation of the health impacts often ...

Asthma is a disease characterized by intermittent bronchoconstriction due to increased airway reactivity to both allergic and nonallergic stimuli. Most asthma exacerbations that result in hospitalization are associated with viral upper respiratory tract infections. Such infections typically induce T-helper type 1 (T(H)1) responses in the airway, involving activation of nuclear factor-kappaB (NF...