New multidisciplinary project examining how heat and air pollution cause asthma in children in Europe
Three experts on air pollution from Utrecht University and Texas A&M University are spearheading a $3.4 million, four-year program to study how air pollution and heat cause asthma and other harm to children’s lungs.
Haneen Khreis, PhD, with the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and the Texas A&M School of Public Health, Natalie Johnson, PhD, with the Texas A&M School of Public Health, and Ulrike Gehring, PhD, with Utrecht University in the Netherlands, are the leader and two co-leaders of the program.
The project will involve laboratory studies at Texas A&M to uncover the underlying biological mechanisms of the harm and working with stakeholders to co-design and quantitively evaluate the impact of solutions and policies to curb both air pollution and extreme heat.
Khreis will provide overall direction and scientific leadership, in addition to integrating discoveries from epidemiology and toxicology into evidence-based, actionable health solutions through work with stakeholders and policymakers. Johnson will lead the toxicology research, and Gehring will lead the epidemiology research.
“Global warming and air pollution are among our most pressing—indeed, existential—threats and require coordinated, evidence-based policies that maximize benefits while avoiding unintended adverse consequences,” said Khreis, who is also with the University of Cambridge and serves on the United Kingdom’s Committee on the Medical Effects of Air Pollutants.
Fighting the most common chronic disease in children
“Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children, and one-third of new childhood asthma cases in Europe are caused by air pollution.” said Gehring .“The extent to which exposure to heat might worsen the effects of exposure to air pollution is unclear, however.”
Johnson noted that while people experience air pollution and heat together, the two typically are studied separately. She added that the need for a better understanding of how these exposures interact is urgent.
“Communities around the world are already experiencing hotter temperatures and changing patterns of air pollution,” she said. “Our goal is to generate the scientific evidence needed now so policymakers can make informed decisions.”
Through the Wellcome Trust funding, the program leaders put together a team of scientists, postdoctoral researchers and PhD students from the United States, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain and England, as well as an advisory committee with representatives from four universities in the United States, one in Denmark and one in Germany. Its members include medical doctors, epidemiologists, environmental scientists, climate scientists, toxicologists, chemists and data analysts with decades of experience in data tracking, modeling and policy development.
The problem: Fast-acting super pollutants interact with heat to damage lungs
“Our goal is to answer the question of how the combination of heat and air pollution worsens the effects of air pollution,” Gehring said. “It’s also part of the growing recognition by scientists, policymakers and funding agencies around the world that extreme heat, air pollution and health must be addressed together.”
To better understand how these pollutants and heat affect respiratory health, Gehring’s team will pool data from four studies of more than 24,000 participants in Sweden, the United Kingdom, Spain and the Netherlands who were followed from birth to age 25. The team will use the participants’ residential histories to map annual exposure to multiple air pollutants, including short-lived climate forcers, as well as extreme heat.
Johnson and her team at Texas A&M then will recreate the pollution mixtures identified in those studies in their lab to determine how the complex mixtures affect lung development, immune function and the mitochondria—tiny, energy-producing structures inside cells that may play a key role in early-life respiratory disease.
The solution: Bringing scientific findings to the affected communities
Finally, Khreis and her team will work with communities, patients, clinicians, planners and policymakers to co-design and evaluate practical solutions for reducing air pollution, heat and their combined impact on children’s health. These could include clean air zones, low-emission zones, investments in mass transit infrastructure and shifts to active transportation modes. These solutions will also assess how changes in one pollutant may affect others, helping cities anticipate unintended consequences and design more effective heat and air quality strategies.
The team will also pursue high-level scenarios such as achieving World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guideline values across Europe. The project team is deeply grateful to the Wellcome Trust for enabling this cutting-edge research at the intersection of environmental change, human health and health solutions at this pivotal time.