ICREH - Impact of climate change on respiratory health over four decades

The occurrence of asthma and allergic diseases is increasing in Europe and in the Western world. Moreover, respiratory diseases represent a huge burden on society, causing about 1 million deaths per year. Growing urbanization and climate change-related exposures -air pollution, temperature, changes in land use, and loss of green spaces- are the main factors associated with such an increase in allergic diseases and asthma. Yet, most of the studies have assessed the effect of the environment at a single point in time, disregarding the cumulative lifetime exposure, or the associations at specific time periods over the life course, providing little insight to the lifetime development of allergic diseases and asthma. This project aims to evaluate the effects of short- and long-term climate change-related exposures and loss of biodiversity on allergic diseases and asthma, signalling critical periods of exposure; investigate the potential of land cover to reduce harm related to the effects of exposure to air pollution and temperature on the risk of developing allergic diseases and asthma; and to investigate whether residential mobility influences the progression and the development of allergic diseases and asthma. This project will include detailed clinical and environmental data longitudinally collected from three prospective Finnish population-based cohorts: ECS (n=2568), FEAS (n=1453) and NoFAS (n=1995). Under the background of climate change in an aging global population, we will conduct a follow-up survey for ECS, FEAS and NoFAS.