Declining ambient air pollution and lung function improvement in Austrian children
Introduction
With the improved sensitivity of exposure and health indicators, lower levels of air pollution can be linked to adverse health effects. Increasing costs of control raise the question if there is still a health benefit from reduction of indicator pollutants, as assessed by monitoring networks.
Air pollution, as documented by data on nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), and total suspended particles (TSP), markedly decreased in Austria in the 1980s. Especially Linz, the county capital of Upper Austria, in these years changed from a heavily polluted industrial town to a modern urban city. Nevertheless, studies on lung function of school children in Linz (Neuberger et al., 1995a) still detected health effects attributable to local air pollution levels. The above-mentioned nagging question prompted us to reanalyse previously published data on 15 045 school children and perform a follow up of lung functions.
Section snippets
Persons and methods
Children examined and methods used have been described previously, together with cross-sectional results (Neuberger et al (1995a), Neuberger et al (1995b)). In short, 15 045 (85%) of all elementary and high school children participated 1985–90 in screening examinations including standardized spirometry. TSP, SO2, NO2 and O3 concentration isolines for winters and summers were calculated for all schools from data of 9 monitoring stations. Austrian law requires residents to use the nearest primary
Results and discussion
While SO2 and TSP levels decreased fairly uniformly in all districts of Linz (annual mean SO2 in 1985: 40 μg/m3 compared to about 10 μg/m3 in the 1990s) this was not the case with NO2. In the districts where NO2 reductions from industry and car technology were counterbalanced by the increase in motor traffic, ambient concentrations stayed nearly unchanged while other districts showed a pronounced decrease (Fig. 1). In the previous cross-sectional study (Neuberger et al., 1995a), endexspiratory
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Municipality of Linz (Departments of Health and Environment) for providing valuable data and support.
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