DEVELOPMENT OF DE NOVO ASTHMA SYMPTOMS AMONG CHILDREN VARIES BY THE DISTANCE OF HOME FROM THE MAJOR ROAD

Abstract

Asthma among children has increased over three folds during the last 20 years in Korea. In this study, development of new asthma symptoms among symptom free children was investigated in relation to the residence area to assess the impact of ambient air pollutions from the traffics. We have followed 4-year old children attending nursery school over 1 year, and assessed their symptoms. Among those 1478 children who were enrolled in this study at the beginning, 877 children were followed after 1 year. The change of asthma symptoms were ascertained together with the distance of the residential house from the main traffic road. There were no significant differences between those who were followed up and those who had dropped. When development of new asthma symptoms were analyzed against the distance of house from the main road, those who were residing within 100m from the main traffic road had 4 or more risk of having new wheezing symptom than those who were not. This difference was significant even after controlling other risk factors such as low birth weight, past infection history, and past allergy history. In this study, to characterize the exposures from the main traffic road, bus and taxi drivers were investigated as for their exposures to fine particulate, metals, NO2, CO, and HCHO. When the exposure level of those drivers were compared with the air pollution standards, the particulate exposures such as PM2.5 were more than 4 times higher than the annual standards, and other exposure levels were also much higher than the recommended standards.