Grant: Team Grant: Lung Health - Climate, Air Quality and Lung Health

Climate change is among the biggest threats to human existence. Canadians see more wildfire smoke yearly, which creates air pollution that harms lung health. The harms of air pollution are worse for children because they are growing, active, and spend more time outdoors. Pollutants like wildfire smoke trigger dangerous asthma attacks and worsen sleep. About one in ten Canadian children has asthma. In addition to becoming dangerous medical emergencies, asthma attacks can keep children out of school, parents from work, and cost Canadians more than a billion healthcare dollars a year. Children with asthma are more likely to get sick from air pollution than children without asthma. Staying indoors is one way that people can protect themselves from wildfire smoke, but only if indoor air is clean. Indoor air chemicals come from outside air and from household sources like vacuuming, cooking, scented products, and gas appliances. This research project will look how air pollution affects children and what we can do about it. Part one will examine how air quality, smoke, and other exposures coincide with asthma attacks to help us understand environmental factors that make them better (being near to green spaces) and worse (being near smoke or heavy traffic). Part two looks at how the air chemicals children breathe are absorbed by their body (measured by checking for these chemicals in their urine), what the effects are on their lung function, and if cleaning air in children's bedrooms changes the chemicals we see in their urine. Part three will look at whether air purifiers help take worrisome chemicals out of school air, and if using these air purifiers long-term is feasible for teachers and schools. Children who are exposed to pollution are at risk of lifelong health damage, and the risk of these exposures will only get worse with continued climate change. We need to know how to protect our indoor air in ways that protect children's health.