Abstract

Children and adolescents have been considered more susceptible to the effects of air pollution than adults. In order to investigate the responses of children of different ages to air pollution exposure, daily records of hospital admissions for children in five age groups (equal or less than 2 years of age, 3–5, 6–13, 14–19, and all ages together, i.e., from 0–19 years of age) were obtained from January 1993 to November 1997 in São Paulo, Brazil, and were compared to daily records of PM₁₀, O₃, SO₂, CO and NO₂ concentrations in ambient air.