Air Pollution and Respiratory Infection in Children

The children whose respiratory illnesses are described in this paper were all born during the first week of March, 1946, and have been reported on at intervals by health visitors, school nurses, school doctors, and teachers. A full description of the survey will be found elsewhere (Douglas, 1964). In 1961, when the children were 15 years old, 4,592 of the original survey sample (5,362) were living in Great Britain and information on air pollution is available for 3,866 of them. The object of this analysis is to examine the relationship between respiratory infections and prolonged sojourn in areas of high or low pollution. The effects of sudden increases in air pollution, such as occurred, for example, in the London fog of 1952. are not under discussion; they are known to be associated with a heavy toll of deaths in infancy as well as in middle or old age. The effects of prolonged exposure to polluted air, which are the subject of this paper, are less clear.