Children who live in stressful environment are more prone to develop lung cancer from the traffic pollution

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Children who live in stressful environment are more prone to develop lung cancer from the traffic pollution

Children who lived in a very stressful environment have always been thought as problematic when it came to serious conditions, but now it seems that they are also more prone to develop lung cancer due to pollution.

A new study shows that children who live in very stressful environment are more likely than others to develop lung damage from traffic pollution. A group of researchers at University of Southern California surveyed the parents of almost 1,400 children for this study. The parents were asked to answer some questions related to the amount of stress to which their children were being submitted to. All the children whose parents were involved in the study were aged 10 to 12 and they had all been previously assessed lung problems and respiratory issues. The amount of traffic-related pollutants to which these children were exposed was then measured, taking into account the quantity of nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide and total oxides of nitrogen. According to the lead researcher Dr. Talat Islam, this is the first study to look so deep into this problem and to try to asses how much children who lived in stressful environment were exposed to traffic pollution.

What the researchers led by Dr. Islam discovered was that socio-demography had a lot to do with the amount of stress children were exposed to. For instance, Asian and Hispanic parents had higher levels of perceived stress in comparison to white parents. Furthermore, the socioeconomic status also accounted for higher levels of stress in children and so did a low education of the parents, the lack of an air conditioner at their home and the lack of health insurance. Furthermore, it seems that the more stressed out the children were, the higher the amount of traffic-related pollutants affected them, and their lung capacity was severely decreased. However, this has not been noticed in children who came from low-stress environments. Moreover, what the researchers also discovered was that the decrease in the lung capacity of these children also was related to exposure that happened both at home and at school. According to Islam, there is one possible explanation for this: “Like air pollution, stress has been linked to both inflammation and oxidative damage at the cellular level, so this may explain the association,” he said. Islam concluded by saying that further studies were needed on the issue, but his study has clearly shown that children who come from stressful environment are more likely to develop lung conditions due to the traffic pollution.

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