Children Decreased growth through coal heating

Study: Coal heating reduces the growth of children

08/02/2011

According to a cooperation study by Czech and US researchers, children generally burn more slowly than their peers when parents heat their apartment with coal heating. On average, at the age of three, the children are about 1.3 centimeters smaller than their peers. This is due to pollutants that are produced when firing the furnace heating.

According to a study University of California in Davis, children grow overall worse and slower when the apartment is heated with coal. In the science magazine „Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine“ The researchers around Rakesh Ghosh describe their study results. The general conclusion: If parents heat their own home with fuel, it hurts „certainly the health of their children“, according to study author Sram from the Institute of Experimental Medicine in Prague. As part of a research work corresponding data were evaluated. For a total of ten years, doctors observed 1133 children from Czech born between 1994 and 1998. The subjects came from the Teplice and Prachatice regions.

Pollutants already harm children in the womb
Already before birth, the coal heating is noticeable. Toxic vapors have negative effects on the health of unborn children during pregnancy. According to the study data, the average birth weight was lower. In addition, the scientists were able to observe that the affected children, especially in preschool age, were more frequently affected by infectious diseases. „The children were significantly more ill in comparison“, said one of the study authors. The most common diseases were respiratory tract infections, inflammatory sites in the lungs and middle ear infections. These diseases were more common in the children observed than in their peers.

Toxic gases are carcinogenic
The reasons for this, the researchers see in the toxic fumes that emanate from a coal heating. The burning of solid fuels produces toxic gases that are carcinogenic. These outgoing vapors belong to the category of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. If these vapors are also bound to fine dust, they are absorbed by the lungs and filtered. At the same time hydrocarbons settle in an organism. These pollutants arise mainly in the incomplete combustion of wood, charcoal and commercial charcoal. Worse than coal, however, are other, inadequate fuels. Many people also burn household waste, according to the scientists. Due to the expensive charcoal burn many people who have a furnace, more and more inappropriate waste remnants. However, this also increases the health burden on children and adults. (Sb)

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Picture: Martin Büdenbender