United States: New research shows that eczema, a skin condition, seems to be more common in places with high air pollution. Studies have already shown that eczema rates go up in areas with more factories and pollution, and now, scientists from Yale University think that dirty air could be the reason why.
“Now that we found that US adults who are exposed to PM [in air] are more likely to have eczema, the findings shed further light on such critical and more general health effects of ambient air pollution,” researchers led by Yale School of Medicine’s Gloria Chen wrote.
Her team made the findings public in the journal PLOS ONE on November 13.
As reported by HealthDay, the National Eczema Association which actually estimates that more than 31 million Americans have the skin condition that is hereby characterized by inflammation of the skin and skin response to allergens that causes itching, dryness, rashes, scaly tissues, blisters and skin infections.
The causes for eczema are not known, however, it has been suggested that it may be precipitated by an abnormal functioning of the immune system in response to an environmental stimulus.
Is air pollution one of those that can trigger genes in the body?
To do this, the Yale team analyzed nearly 287000 Americans, of which 12,700 (4.4%) had diagnosed eczema.
To overcome this limitation, another study measured local eczema incidences against air pollution concentrations in zip codes of America.
Chen and his team concentrated their attention on so-called PM 2.5 — tiny pollutants that can enter the lungs as we breathe.
The result: The odds for eczema was found to double with every 10 micrograms increase in fine particulate matter per square meter of air in a ZIP Code studied by the Yale group.
Which hereby brings the pollution thing to the people, and which can make them feel cautious about the thing which are not meant to be there at the time where the things which are not in the zone of the people?
Even with that, the risk assessment remained high when the researchers included other possible causes such as smoking.
What is more, the study could not establish the direct link between variables; it could only establish correlations. However, the team referred to other result from other studies done in other countries such as Australia, Germany, and Taiwan.
In addition, the study authors point out that those individuals who [already] have eczema may experience an increased risk of disease deterioration and even acute flare-ups when local air quality is reduced.