More children in Delhi have cancers than any other Indian city; is air pollution to blame?

Subject : Science and Tech

Section: Health

Context:

India’s capital Delhi was the worst-affected among all places that have a cancer registry in the country, according to the latest available data by the National Cancer Registry Programme from 2012 to 2016.

Details:

In children between the ages of 0 and 14 years, the proportion of childhood cancers relative to cancers in all age groups varied between 0.7 per cent and 3.7 per cent.
There is enough evidence to show that exposure to air pollution can lead to cancer in adults. However, this correlation is not studied much in children.
For all countries included in the study, Delhi has the sixth-highest number of cancer cases for boys and tenth highest in cases of girls.
Boys in Delhi have the highest cases of cancer per million, followed by China’s Jianmeng among Asian countries.
Regions in India affected by air pollution-borne cancer: Delhi, Punjab, Mumbai, Manipur, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh among others.

Air pollution’s Health impact on children:

Children would be more at risk as they breathe more rapidly than adults, absorb more pollutants, and live closer to the ground, where pollutants tend to accumulate.
As many as 203.1 boys per million are affected by all the broad kinds of cancers in Delhi, compared to just 12.2 per million in Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh.
Pollutants such as benzene, NOx and particulate matter are responsible for non-Hodgkins lymphomas in children.
Exposure to air pollution is linked to acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Overall health impacts of air pollution:

Both short- and long-term exposure to air pollution can lead to a wide range of diseases, including stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, trachea, bronchus and lung cancers, aggravated asthma and lower respiratory infections.
The World Health Organization (WHO) provides evidence of links between exposure to air pollution and type 2 diabetes, obesity, systemic inflammation, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified air pollution, in particular PM2.5, as a leading cause of cancer.
Chronic exposure can affect every organ in the body, complicating and exacerbating existing health conditions.

Source of the article: Down To Earth