RESEARCH REPORT

¹ Public Health Laboratory, School of Medicine, Nancy University, France
² Centre Scientifique et Technique du Bâtiment, Paris, France
³ Department of Paediatrics, Grenoble University Hospital, France
⁴ Public Health and Hygiene Laboratory, School of Pharmacy, Paris 5 University, France
⁵ Department of Paediatrics, Paris University Hospital of Trousseau, France
⁶ Hygiene Laboratory of the City of Paris, France
⁷ Department of Paediatrics, Toulouse University Hospital, France
⁸ Regional Health Observatory of Midi-Pyrénées, Toulouse, France
⁹ Department of Paediatrics, Nice University Hospital, France
¹⁰ INRETS, the French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research, Lyon, France
¹¹ Department of Paediatrics, Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital, France

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor D Zmirou
INSERM, Faculté de Médecine, 9 av de la Foret de Haye, BP 164-54505 Vandoeuvre-les-Nancy Cedex, France; denis.zmirou{at}nancy.inserm.fr

Study objective: The Vesta project aims to assess the role of traffic related air pollution in the occurrence of childhood asthma.

Design and setting: Case-control study conducted in five French metropolitan areas between 1998 and 2000. A set of 217 pairs of matched 4 to 14 years old cases and controls were investigated. An index of lifelong exposure to traffic exhausts was constructed, using retrospective information on traffic density close to all home and school addresses since birth; this index was also calculated for the 0–3 years age period to investigate the effect of early exposures.

Main results: Adjusted on environmental tobacco smoke, personal and parental allergy, and several confounders, lifelong exposure was not associated with asthma. In contrast, associations before age of 3 were significant: odds ratios for tertiles 2 and 3 of the exposure index, relative to tertile 1, exhibited a positive trend (1.48 (95%CI = 0.7 to 3.0) and 2.28 (1.1 to 4.6)), with greater odds ratios among subjects with positive skin prick tests.

Conclusions: These results suggest that traffic related pollutants might have contributed to the asthma epidemic that has taken place during the past decades among children.

Keywords: childhood asthma; air pollution; traffic; case-control study

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