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Low level Ozone has both respiratory and systemic effects in African-American adolescents with asthma despite asthma controller therapy
Citation:
Hernandez, M., R. Dhingra, A. Burbank, K. Todorich, C. Loughlin, M. Frye, K. Duncan, C. Robinette, K. Mills, R. Devlin, D. Peden, AND D. Diaz-Sanchez. Low level Ozone has both respiratory and systemic effects in African-American adolescents with asthma despite asthma controller therapy. JOURNAL OF ALLERGY AND CLINICAL IMMUNOLOGY. Journal of Allergy Clinical Immunology, 142(6):1974-1944, (2018). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaci.2018.08.003
Impact/Purpose:
We report that increases even at very low levels of ambient ozone concentrations are associated with both respiratory and systemic changes in a potential at-risk group: African American children with difficult to treat asthma. Previous studies in asthmatic children have shown associations between ozone and lung function but few have been performed in low ozone environments. Here we show that these effects are evident even when ozone levels throughout the period of studies never exceeded the current NAAQS standard (70 ppb over an 8-hr period). Furthermore, we demonstrate that ozone is associated with systemic changes in blood lymphocyte numbers and blood lipid levels, a finding previously only observed in adults.
Description:
To the Editor: Short-term exposure to ambient air ozone has long been recognized to have adverse respiratory effects, leading the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to lower the 8-hour National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) to 70 parts per billion (ppb) in 2015 (1). Although short-term ozone exposure has been shown to affect respiratory outcomes, recent murine and human studies in adults have also suggested that ozone has systemic effects, including altered low-density lipoproteins (LDL)(2). Minorities often live in low-income, urban housing in areas with increased exposure to both indoor and outdoor pollution, increasing their risk for pollutant-induced disease. In this report, we examined the respiratory and systemic response of African-American adolescents with persistent asthma, a high-risk group for pollutant-related asthma morbidity (3), to changes in ambient air ozone at levels below the NAAQS.
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DOI: Low level Ozone has both respiratory and systemic effects in African-American adolescents with asthma despite asthma controller therapy