Back in 1992, there was a study regarding the impact of pollution on the health of children living in Southern California. The premise was that children would be more badly affected by pollution than adults because children got developing bodies, particularly respiratory systems and because they are likely to breathe faster and spend more time outdoors compared to an adult person. Twelve towns and communities got involved in the study, including 5,500 children with over two-thirds of them enrolled in the fourth grade at school.

The study gathered health information on children also monitored their exposure to airborne pollution, which include several other environmental factors, on a yearly basis all the way through to graduation from high school.

The concluding report of the Children’s Health Study is the collection of over ten years of data compilation on child health and ecological pollution factors. Specifically, community pollution measures got considered, and extensive pollution data got accumulated, and cross referenced to health data of the children concerned. Lung development, lung functionality, occurrence of asthma and bronchitis and acute respiratory conditions was all tracked and checked.

The health portion of the project got concluded, however, as a consequence of an added funding award by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the program is going to continue for extra three years. This is going to let monitoring work to continue in association with the Air Resources Board (ARB) in tandem with investigators and researchers from the Children’s Health Study. The ARB is accountable for setting California’s air quality standards for the security of residents, more than ever those people sensitive to airborne pollution, making the results of this study particularly significant as the results fed candidly into California’s air quality standards.

The twelve townships and neighborhood that got selected in the study got specially selected in order to provide a cross section of the Southern Californian population and geographical distribution. One issue was the level of four major pollutant groups:

• Ozone

• Nitrogen Dioxide

• Acid Rain (Acid Vapor)

• Particulate Matter (which is breathed deeply into the lungs)

The attentiveness of these four pollutants got closely checked in the twelve communities chosen. In addition to nonspecific sampling, the schools and homes of the study population got monitored several times. Pollution monitoring also agreed with health screening of the children who got tested every spring time. Additionally, a yearly survey got presented for each child which dealt with respiratory problems and indications, the incidence of coughing, bronchitis, asthma and other respiratory illness alongside the levels of exercise, time spent outdoors and other factors that include the incidence of smoking in the child’s home, existence of mold or pets.