Children’s Lung Health Improves as Air Pollution Is Reduced, Study Says.

Jack Kiefer 3/5/14

Core Chemistry Even D Mr. Ippolito

URL: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/04/childrens-lung-health-improves-as-air-pollution-is-reduced-study-says/?ref=science

Citation: Hoffman, Jan. "Children’s Lung Health Improves as Air Pollution Is Reduced, Study Says." New York Times 04 Mar. 2015: n. pag. Print.

The article that I read is called, “Children’s Lung Health Improves as Air Pollution is Reduced, Study Says”, by Jan Hoffman. It is about a study that was done on three groups of fifteen year-olds by scientists and professors from USC or University of Southern California. Altogether, there were 2120 children that the experiment was done on. The first group that the experiment was done on was from 1994 to 1998, the second was from 1997 to 2001, and the third was from 2007 to 2011. All of the students were taken from schools in the cities of Long Beach California and Mira Loma California. They were all asked to blow into an instrument called a spirometer, and the device measured how much air they could breathe out in one second and how much air they could breathe out completely. Since during these years, laws and regulations were put on that restricted the pollution put out by things like diesel consuming trucks, ships, trains, and refineries. Nitrogen dioxide levels fell by 35% and fine particulates levels had fallen by 50% when the studies were concluded by 2011. The children born in later years were, “More robust than those born earlier”. Their lung capacity was, “About ten percent greater than that of the fifeteen year-olds measured in 1998”. The article also talks about how the research that was found in the experiment was analyzed and what it will do for the population.

This experiment that was done has a massive effect and importance to the population of the world. The study concludes that the children who grew up breathing cleaner air will live longer than the children who were inhaling polluted oxygen. The children who were from earlier years are, “More susceptible to cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases”, which is why they might have a shorter life span. This is important to the world because health and being able to breathe strongly and fully are very important to humanity. When you are healthy, you feel better and have a better life. Morton Lippmann, a professor of environmental medicine, said, “The research would be influential and predicted that when federal emission standards are due for review, ‘This kind of information will play a major role.’”. It would be great to decrease the emission standards, as it would allow the future generations of children to grow up like the ones in the later groups of the study. This article is also specifically important to my classmates and I because we are around the age of fifteen also. The article says, “The children (who were fifteen) were in a period of pubertal growth during which lungs almost finished developing”. Also according to the article, the lungs that you acquire during this stage of life are the ones that you keep your whole life. I would like for my classmates and I to be part of a healthy generation that has full lung capacity.

This article overall was pretty well written, but it did have some flaws. I like how Hoffman laid out the scene and gave background information quickly that let us as the readers know what the article was going to be about. In the first couple paragraphs, she told us what was being studied and what that meant. However, after that, her writing was a little bit unorganized. She jumped around in her thoughts a lot. Another thing that wasn’t great was the fact that she didn’t explain what “fine particulates” were. They are pretty much just the particles in smoke and other pollutant materials. Hoffman also didn’t explain what the machine they used in the experiment was. She said it was a spirometer, but the reader most likely won’t know what that is so she should give a description or at least a picture. Although, her article had some minor problems, it was about an important topic and had many credible sources like professors and scientists, so it is a well written piece.