Culture
With Less Pollution, L.A. Kids Are Growing Stronger Lungs
Millennial children have better respiratory health than did those in the smoggy '90s.
Here's some obvious but nonetheless cheering news from Southern California: Raising children in a place that's not awash with foul smog, it seems, is actually good for their long-term health.
That's according to researchers at the University of Southern California who spent 20 years following school kids in the L.A. Basin. They say children they monitored from 2007 to 2011—specifically those aged 11 to 15—have much better lung development than a similarly aged group did in the 1990s. And this physiological improvement corresponded with a period of better air quality, they write in the New England Journal of Medicine.