Sending a Skull Ring to the Kids in Illness

Maybe a title like this is a little absurd, but it is true. And this is a long will from a kid in lung cancer, who caused by the air quality. He’s going to die, before that, he just wants a skull ring.

From the study, we know that dirty air can reduce lung development. Researchers at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles published their work in the New England Journal of Medicine. About one thousand seven hundred children from different communities in Southern California took part in the study. The scientists tested the children every year for eight years, starting at age ten. They say this is the longest study ever done on air pollution and the health of children. And that’s why the little kid was attacked by the lung cancer.

The scientists found that children who lived in areas with the dirtiest air were five times more likely to grow up with weak lungs. Many were using less than eighty percent of normal lung strength to breathe. The damage from dirty air was as bad as that found in children with parents who smoke. Children with reduced lung power may suffer more severe effects from a common cold, for example. But the researchers express greater concerns about long-term effects. They say adults normally begin to lose one percent of their lung power each year after age twenty. The doctors note that weak lung activity is the second leading cause of early deaths among adults. The first is smoking.

By the time people are eighteen, their lungs are fully developed, or close to it. The doctors say it is impossible to recover from any damage. Researchers say they are still not sure how air pollution affects lung development. They believe that pollution affects the tiny air spaces where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged.

Arden Pope is an economics professor at Brigham Young University in Prove, Utah. Professor Pope wrote a commentary about the study. He noted that air quality in Southern California has improved since the study began in the early nineteen-nineties. Clean-air laws have reduced pollution from vehicles, industry and other causes. But dirty air is still a problem in areas of California and other places. Professor Pope says continued efforts to improve air quality are likely to provide additional improvements in health. Just wish the kid can have his own skull ring in heaven.