The research helped establish clean-air norms and inspired dozens of spinoff studies on air quality

mog’s harmful effect on health is widely understood. The noxious mixture of ozone, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter wreaks havoc on the entire body. Lung, brain and heart health suffer but it also has been linked to behavioral problems, Alzheimer’s disease and obesity.

However, none of this was established in 1992 when a team of USC public health researchers, led by the late John Peters, launched a long-term investigation into the effects of air pollution on children. More than 30 years later, the ongoing Southern California Children’s Health Study has changed the nation’s understanding of air pollution’s harms — and shown how clean-air standards can make a difference.

“Air pollution health effects research has matured. The initial thought was, ‘If you’re breathing it, it must be a lung effect,’” said Ed Avol, a professor of clinical population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and co-investigator on the study. “But then we came to appreciate that once it gets into the circulatory system [via the lungs], contaminants can travel to most any organ system.

“Now, we are seeing effects in the brain, in the heart and lungs, and in the metabolic system, affecting a whole number of health outcomes and diseases that we didn’t think initially were related to air pollution.”

The study’s significance is enormous. Seminal papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet led to policies resulting in cleaner air in L.A. and healthier lungs in children. Papers by Avol, William “Jim” Gauderman, Frank Gilliland and Rob McConnell have been cited in more than 16,300 articles by other researchers, according to data from the citation database Web of Science.

The work attracts top young researchers to USC’s Department of Population and Public Health Sciences and has inspired dozens of spinoff studies, including the latest funding award, USC’s designation as a Children’s Environmental Health Translation Center by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

“The Southern California Children’s Health Study greatly increased public understanding of the damages of poor air quality, and the importance of accelerating clean air progress to give our children’s health a fighting chance,” said William Barrett, national senior director of advocacy, clean air, for the American Lung Association. “This critical research continues to spur the fight for clean air for all children, and especially those most impacted by pollution today.”

Over the past three decades, the Children’s Health Study and associated research have been supported by roughly $35 million in federal funding. These studies have required the input from many experts in specialty fields. Contributors have included direct health data collectors, statewide air monitoring personnel, attendance office personnel at more than 50 different schools across the study communities, and a host of data analysts, biostatisticians, students and staff to manage, analyze and interpret the collected data.

“Easily hundreds, and more likely, a few thousand researchers have participated over the years,” Avol said.