Urban air pollution is dangerous because it can provoke an increase in the number of asthma attacks in children and adolescents. This conclusion was reached by scientists of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the USA, who published an article in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health.
The specialists analysed data on 208 children aged 6 to 17 years, prone to asthma attacks and living in poor areas of one of nine US cities. The researchers later confirmed their findings on a second group of 189 people aged 6 to 20 living in low-income neighbourhoods in four US cities.
It turned out that 30 per cent of asthma attacks were caused by pollution rather than viruses, two to three times more than in children who did not live in urban areas.
