Researchers in Austria have followed almost a thousand school children from 8 communities for 3 years, with lung function measurements taken in the winter and summer.
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A study followed 1,600 Southern California children enrolled as fourth graders in 1996 for four years.
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Women in Southern California who are exposed to high concentrations of ozone and carbon monoxide may be at increased risk of giving birth to babies with serious heart defects, including holes in the heart, arterial defects, or pervasively malformed hearts, according to a study by UCLA researchers.

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A study of 1,000 patients over 14 years old in Barcelona, Spain was conducted to assess the relationship between acute exposure to air pollution, pollen, and mold spores in a cohort of patients that had previously been admitted to an emergency room for an asthma exacerbation.
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Very few panel studies of adults with severe or moderately severe asthma have been conducted. Most previous studies have been of children. Desquoroux and colleagues designed a study with stringent criteria for inclusion, rigorous medical surveillance, and a long period of observation.
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Air pollution may play a part in the causation of strokes, one of the leading causes of death and long-term disability, according to a team of researchers from four research centers in Korea and the Harvard School of Public Health.
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Particulate air pollution has been associated with decreased heart rate variability, increased clotting risk factors, and increases in systemic markers of inflammation.
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Studies of acute effects of particulate matter air pollution show variability in the exposure-response relationships between cities. This study explored whether differences in the prevalence of air conditioning and different sources of PM could partially explain the regional heterogeneity.
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Some have argued that the short-term increases in mortality associated with air pollution represent a “harvesting” effect, that is, the advancement of death by a few days in very frail people. This theory of mortality displacement has been dispelled by analyses of single-city mortality studies.
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In May 2002, researchers reported an error in the default assumptions in the software used to analyze the National Morbidity, Mortality and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS). The researchers concluded that a refined analysis changes the quantitative estimates of risk, but the major conclusions remain the same.
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