Children dying from air pollution
Children in Mexico are being hospitalised and even dying because of pollution levels, prompting calls for a revision of air quality standards.
A study on the population of the border town of Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, found that children are suffering even when pollution levels fell within the country’s air quality standard requirements.
The Commission for Environmental Cooperation found that between 1997 and 2001, respiratory distress prompted over 36,000 emergency hospital visits by children under five years of age. But Mexico’s health standard for ozone, which mandates the government to take action to improve air quality, was only exceeded 14 times.
The study also found a correlation between diesel emissions and child mortality. Of nearly 700 children aged between one month and one year who died during the five-year study, a third had respiratory illness. Again the ‘norm’ levels for particulate matter were only exceeded on a handful of occasions.
Poverty and malnutrition leave poor children particularly vulnerable to the effects of diesel emissions, according to Dr Matiana Ramirez Aguilar, a co-investigator in the study from the National Institute of Public Health in Mexico City.
But ozone seems to affect all children. Dr Ramirez explains: ‘Children were being rushed to the hospital on days when no air quality alarms were sounding. This suggests that lower levels of ozone affect children’s respiratory health and that action should be taken to revise Mexico’s standards.’
The impact of the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement has also been implicated in this deadly problem, as it has led to an increase in truck traffic at border points in Mexico, Canada and the United States.
Further studies have shown children at schools near major roads in the area have increased airway inflammation. CEC air quality program coordinator Paul Miller notes that the results are not unique to Ciudad Juarez.
