Early-Life or Maternal Exposure to Environmental Factors and Health Risk in Children

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Air Quality and Human Health".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 May 2022) | Viewed by 2987

Special Issue Editors

School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Interests: environmental epidemiology; air pollution; climate; infectious diseases and chronic diseases

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Guest Editor
Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510300, China
Interests: environmental epidemiology; air pollution and chronic disease; children's healt
Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences (IRAS), Utrecht University, 3584 CS Utrecht, The Netherlands
Interests: air pollution; exposure assessment; environmental epidemiology

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Children and adolescents are suspected to suffer more than adults from the adverse effects of both air pollution and climate change. Childhood development has long-standing effects on adulthood or even lifelong health. The World Health Organization also provided a series of recommendations to improve early childhood development in 2014. Building comprehensive and systematic evidence for how childhood health is influenced and how it can be improved is of high importance to public awareness and policy making. Maternal or gestational exposure to the surrounding environment is an emerging issue that has been linked to the health developments of children and adolescents. However, research on this topic is still insufficient.

Atmosphere is hosting a Special Issue to assess the health effects of early-life or maternal exposure to the surrounding environment in children and adolescents. I invite global researchers to contribute novel original articles and reviews to this Special Issue to improve and supplement established knowledge and findings. Topics for this Special Issue include but are not limited to:

  • Health assessment of early-life or maternal exposure to ambient/household air pollution;
  • Health assessment of early-life or maternal exposure to climate change;
  • Health assessment of early-life or maternal exposure to meterological factors (such as temperature, humidity and sunshine etc.);
  • Health assessment of early-life or maternal exposure to other environmental factors (such as air purifiers, greeness, heavy metals and natural disasters);
  • New methodologies for exposure assessment of air pollution or meteorological factors;
  • New methodologies for the health assessment;
  • Political and economic interventions on environmental improvement.

Dr. Cui Guo
Dr. Zilong Zhang
Dr. Jie Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Atmosphere is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • air pollution
  • climate
  • meteorological factors
  • natural disaster
  • environmental epidemiology
  • health assessment
  • maternal exposure
  • early life exposure
  • children
  • policy

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

10 pages, 236 KiB  
Article
Effects of Indoor Air Pollution on the Development of Children under Five Years of Age in Sri Lanka
by Nayomi Ranathunga, Priyantha Perera, Sumal Nandasena, Nalini Sathiakumar, Anuradhani Kasturiratne and Rajitha Wickremasinghe
Atmosphere 2022, 13(4), 509; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos13040509 - 23 Mar 2022
Viewed by 2244
Abstract
Air pollution is a multifaceted environmental toxin affecting the Central Nervous System (CNS) through diverse pathways. The CNS of young children is particularly susceptible to the detrimental effects of toxins, as brain development continues postnatally with the formation of interneuronal connections, glial cell [...] Read more.
Air pollution is a multifaceted environmental toxin affecting the Central Nervous System (CNS) through diverse pathways. The CNS of young children is particularly susceptible to the detrimental effects of toxins, as brain development continues postnatally with the formation of interneuronal connections, glial cell proliferation and myelination of axons. Indoor air pollution (IAP) from solid fuel combustion is more harmful than outdoor air pollution. Numerous air pollutants hazardous to health are released during the burning of unprocessed biomass. The primary source of fuel in Sri Lanka for cooking is biomass, mainly wood. In this study, we evaluated the influence of IAP resulting from biomass combustion on the neurodevelopment of children. In a cohort of children under five years living in a semi-urban area of Sri Lanka, neurodevelopment was assessed using Denver II developmental screening test. Air quality levels were measured (Carbon Monoxide (CO) and Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM2.5)) in a subsample. There were significantly high levels of CO and PM2.5 in the ambient air of households using biomass as the primary fuel for cooking. Children living in these households had a significantly higher number of children with ‘suspect’ developmental assessment scores in the language, social behavior and play and gross motor development domains. Full article
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