Date published: 2007/08/26
The BBC says:
Traffic pollution may boost the risk of children getting asthma - if they have genes which make them vulnerable, a study says.
The University of Southern California team studied the health records and genetic profiles of 3,000 children.
Those with a gene variation were slightly more at risk but if they lived near a main road, the risk rose more, the Thorax journal reported.
But UK asthma experts said the link remained unclear.
...
There has been a long-running dispute about a link between asthma and exhaust fumes.And Leanne Male, Asthma UK's assistant director of research, said more work was needed.
"This study is very promising as it is one of the first to look specifically at how genetic susceptibility to respiratory disease and environmental traffic fumes can cause childhood asthma.
"People with asthma tell us that traffic fumes make their asthma worse and although this research only looks at individuals with a certain genetic make-up, we await further robust research in this new and exciting area to help us find better ways to treat asthma."
This is a classic case where one can confuse correlation and causation. People who are poorer, and so have worse health generally, are more likely to live near busy roads. So is the road causing asthma or is the asthma just more likely in the first place. The only thing that makes this sound like more than just a correlation (and correlations in general prove nothing) is that of course one would expect traffic fumes not to be good for people who have breathing difficulties, and indeed Male claims that "people with asthma tell us that traffic fumes make their asthma worse". Assuming that is not just anecdotal evidence (and since people believe traffic fumes are bad they would certainly be willing to point that out as a problem), then perhaps the researchers are onto an important piece of evidence.
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