ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Children and Health
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1575950
The role of antioxidant nutrients in mitigating PM2.5-related health risks in young Indian children
Provisionally accepted
Franciosalgeo George1
Ekta Chaudhary2
Sagnik Dey3
Tinku Thomas4
Harshpal Singh Sachdev5
Anura Kurpad6
Santu Ghosh4*- 1St. John's Research Institute, Bangalore, India
- 2Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
- 3Centre for Atmospheric Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, Delhi, India
- 4Department of Biostatistics, St John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India
- 5Department of Pediatrics and Clinical Epidemiology, Sitaram Bhartia Institute of Science and Research, New Delhi, India
- 6Department of Physiology, St John’s Medical College, Bengaluru, India
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Introduction: Pollution (PM2.5) exposure can result in acute respiratory illness (ARI) and anaemia in children. We aimed to investigate if antioxidant nutrient intakes could mitigate the impact of PM2.5 on child health outcomes on a national scale in India.Methods: We triangulated satellite-derived PM2.5 exposure data at the primary sampling unit level, with ARI and anaemia prevalence data from national district-level survey, and antioxidant nutrient intakes from household food expenditure survey. Logistic mixed effects regression model was used to estimate the effect of PM2.5 at different levels of nutrient intake.Results: This study included 208,782 children with valid ARI and 197,289 children with valid haemoglobin measurements. The prevalence of ARI and anaemia were 2.8% (95% CI: 2.3, 3.2) and 57.6% (95% CI: 57.2, 57.9) respectively. The intake of selected antioxidant nutrients such as vitamin C, D, and selenium, when higher than their estimated average requirement (EAR), lowered the risk of ARI associated with high PM2.5 exposure, while intakes higher than the EAR of vitamins A, C, D, zinc, and selenium similarly lowered the risk of anaemia. In terms of foods, similar benefits were observed with daily consumption of small amounts of fruits and vegetables. Conclusion: The result of this study highlights the importance of antioxidant rich balance diet for neutralizing adverse health effects of air pollution exposure to some extent till the environmental policy of the country could reduce emission of hazardous pollutants below safe level for human health.
Keywords: PM2.5 exposure, Acute respiratory illness (ARI), Anaemia, Antioxidant Nutrient Intake, Air Pollution, Child Health
Received: 13 Feb 2025; Accepted: 22 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 George, Chaudhary, Dey, Thomas, Singh Sachdev, Kurpad and Ghosh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Santu Ghosh, Department of Biostatistics, St John’s Medical College, Bangalore, India
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