KARACHI, Feb 8: Kids who play outdoor sports in cities with high levels of pollution are more than three times as likely to develop asthma.
Asthma is the most common disease in childhood, according to researchers at the National Institute of Child Health. The frequency of asthma in children continues to rise, and pollution has been linked to asthma in medical studies.
Medical research has pointed to several possible reasons — early-life infections, diet, exposure to indoor allergy-causing substances, and indoor and outdoor pollution.
Pollution is known to make breathing more difficult in children with asthma. But whether pollution can actually cause asthma is not known. This is particularly important in kids exposed to high amounts of pollution, such as during outdoor sports.
According to researchers, more than 3,500 children were tried to figure out association between pollution, outdoor sports, and asthma. The kids, who did not have asthma at the start of the study, were from 12 different communities.
The children were followed for five years, and during that time 265 children developed asthma. Compared with the kids that did not play any outdoor sports, the kids that played three or more outdoor sports in communities with high amounts of ozone, a pollutant, were more than three times as likely to have asthma. In communities with low levels of ozone, sports had no effect on asthma.
Likewise, the more time spent outside in high “ozone communities”, the more likely the kids were to develop asthma. Time outside had no effect in the low-ozone communities.
Researchers conclude that the rising number of children with asthma is associated with heavy exercise in communities with high levels of ozone.
More studies are pointing to ever-increasing pollution as a prime contributor to the rise in asthma in Pakistan. The study suggests that it is reasonable to restrict outdoor activities of children to save them from asthma.
Though that may lessen breathing problems in kids, this will contribute to obesity in children.—PPI
