How Air Quality Can Impact Your Child's Health
Poor air quality negatively affects everyone’s health, but the effects can be especially detrimental for children. Because children breathe more rapidly than adults, they have the potential to absorb more pollutants. Furthermore, children’s bodies are less capable of effectively detoxifying, metabolizing, and excreting the toxins in air pollution. As such, children are acutely susceptible to the negative effects of poor air quality, which may be particularly detrimental during such a critical stage in their growth and development. To better understand how air quality can impact your child’s health, continue reading.
Impaired neurodevelopment
Poor air quality can impact your child’s health by significantly impairing their neurodevelopment. Because children’s brains are still developing, exposure to neurotoxic compounds in polluted air is especially harmful. If children are consistently breathing in poor-quality air, their cognitive development may be impaired, resulting in a reduced ability to develop skills, knowledge, and problem-solving capabilities.
Stunted lung growth
Breathing in poor-quality air can disrupt children’s lung development in a particularly critical stage of the process. Disrupting the developmental process of children’s lungs can affect their health later in life, as the lungs of people who were exposed to poor air quality during childhood may never recover to full capacity. Long-term effects of stunted lung growth may include reduced lung function as well as an increased risk of asthma, lung disease, and early death.
Altered immune system development
Similar to our lungs and brains, our immune systems go through a critical stage in their development during childhood. Exposure to harmful toxins found in poor-quality air could impair the body’s ability to fight diseases by potentially altering cellular and humoral immunity in children. Because a strong immune system is necessary to fight diseases as well as to down-regulate immune responses against harmless triggers, the effects of breathing in poor-quality air during childhood could have significant, lasting results on one’s health.
Children are currently spending an increased amount of time indoors, so finding ways to improve indoor air quality in order to protect their health is essential. An effective way to rid your home of harmful toxins is to invest in an effective ventilation system. At The Pioneer Mini Split Store, we sell a wide variety of high-quality HVAC systems, including wall-mounted, ceiling cassette, and multi-zone mini-split systems. Our systems are simple to install, energy-efficient, and minimally invasive. To create a safer and healthier environment for your children, install a mini-split HVAC system in your home today.
