Household Air Cleaners Relieve Asthma Symptoms in Children
Even though air cleaners improved upon the overall air quality inside households, they didn’t lower air nicotine concentrations and also didn’t counter all ill side effects associated with second-hand smoke, the investigators warn.
Parents should be counseled in order to put into practice a complete ban on household cigarette smoking and make use of air cleaners merely as a short-term tool along the way to achieving a smoke-free home, say the researchers.
Air cleaners appear to be an excellent partial solution to improving air quality in homes of children living with a smoker but should not be viewed as a substitute for a smoke-free environment.
The investigators followed 115 young children for 6 months, age range 6 to 12 years, who resided within households in which more than one caregivers smoked cigarettes. All of 41 homes received two free-standing air cleaners plugged in to the bed room as well as living room. A further one-third of the households received air cleaners as well as at-home health instruction with a nurse about the dangers associated with second-hand smoke, and the other third received neither but received air cleaners at the end of the research. The investigators tested air nicotine concentrations and air particulate matter – microscopic bits of smoke, soil, pollen, dust and spores normally flying around in the air – before air cleaner installation and six months later. In addition, they compared asthma symptoms and cotinine (the biological marker of nicotine present in the urine) between children residing in households with and with out air cleaners.
The overall air quality within households having air cleaners demonstrated a almost 50-percent decrease in the concentrations of particulate matter, even though the air never reached the quality of smoke-free households. Households which acquired both air cleaners in addition to visits by health instructors didn’t attain improved air quality compared to households which received air cleaners only. The amount of air nicotine and urine cotinine stayed similar in all children, despite air cleaner use in the house.
The research also determined that children residing in households with air cleaners experienced significantly more days with no asthma symptoms in contrast to children residing in households with no air cleaners. According to the rate of asthma symptoms decline seen in this research, the investigators estimate that a child having asthma residing in a house with indoor air filtration would likely, on average, have 33 additional asthma symptoms free days a year in contrast to children residing in any cigarette smoking home with no indoor filtration. The amount of asthma symptoms free days made possible with the air cleaners appeared to be almost the same as the amount reached with the use of a type of anti-inflammatory asthma medication in a different study.
Due to the fact cigarette smoking is a key driver of household air pollution, the investigators suggest having air cleaners even in smoke-free households if they tend to be part of multi-family dwellings through which second-hand smoke can potentially seep in through surrounding units.
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