A novel hypothesis to explain traffic-related nocturnal cough
- School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104-4283, USA; joseph{at}rad.upenn.edu
- Accepted 24 January 2008
I am writing to comment on the paper entitled “Respiratory health and individual estimated exposure to traffic-related air pollutants in a cohort of young children” (Occup Environ Med 2007;64:8–16). The paper looked at the health effects of various components of air pollution as they depended on distance from major traffic arteries in and around Munich, Germany.
The key finding I want to examine is the observed association of ambient nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels and nocturnal cough in very young children.
Morgenstern’s Table 4 shows that NO2 concentrations varied from 19.4 to 71.7 μg/m3, with a mean of 35.4. Those concentrations are much lower than those that have been demonstrated to have …
