Environmental Allergy Pathways: Urban Exposures, Biodiversity, and Childhood Respiratory Health

Childhood asthma and allergic diseases in urban settings are shaped by the environments in which children live, move, and grow. Rapid urbanisation, changing land use, traffic-related and industrial air pollution, indoor and residential contaminants, shifting pollen seasons under climate change, and reduced everyday contact with biodiverse, green, and blue spaces all act on the developing airway. These exposures rarely occur in isolation: children encounter them together, in combinations that vary by neighbourhood, season, and stage of development. Understanding how this urban environmental mixture drives, or protects against, respiratory and allergic disease is central to preventing it.Mechanistic and epidemiological evidence indicates that air pollution can promote airway inflammation, oxidative stress, epithelial-barrier disruption, allergic sensitisation, and asthma exacerbation. The picture for green space and biodiversity is more nuanced: benefits appear to depend on vegetation type, species richness, pollen burden, accessibility, and the surrounding urban context, and can be offset where greenness raises aeroallergen exposure. Birth cohorts, geospatial analyses, personal and wearable exposure monitoring, and environmental exposome approaches are sharpening these estimates, yet findings remain heterogeneous. Key uncertainties persist around cumulative and combined exposures, the timing of susceptible windows from the prenatal period onward, the role of the indoor and residential environment, early respiratory infections, everyday micro-environments such as schools, and how diet and behaviour interact with the external environment — especially in the most exposed populations.This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of the environmental pathways that link the urban exposome and biodiversity to childhood asthma and allergic disease. It seeks work that clarifies how environmental and biodiversity-related exposures influence disease onset, progression, exacerbation, symptom severity, and respiratory trajectories; that identifies susceptible periods and settings; and that resolves the biological, behavioural, and environmental mechanisms modifying these associations. A particular priority is evidence that can be translated into preventive action — urban and green-space planning, exposure reduction, nature-based interventions, and environmental policies that give all children more equitable access to health-protective environments.Scope for AuthorsTo gather further insights into the relationships between urban environments, biodiversity, and childhood respiratory health, we welcome articles addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:• Outdoor and indoor air pollution and childhood asthma or allergic disease• Traffic-related pollution, particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide, and ozone• Green space, blue space, land use, and residential environmental exposures• Biodiversity, microbial and environmental diversity, and immune development• Pollen, aeroallergens, climate change, and seasonal patterns of disease• Indoor and residential environments — dampness, mould, and household exposures• Prenatal, early-life, and cumulative environmental exposure pathways and susceptible windows• Early respiratory infections, the school environment, and other everyday micro-environments• Interactions among air pollution, greenness, biodiversity, diet, and lifestyle• Environmental exposome, microbiome, and epithelial-barrier approaches to exposure biology• Geospatial modelling, remote sensing, personal exposure monitoring, and wearable technologies• Spatial and environmental inequalities in the distribution of harmful and protective exposures• Longitudinal birth cohorts and life-course environmental epidemiology• Urban planning, green-space design, and nature-based interventions for allergy and asthma prevention• Translation of environmental evidence into clinical practice and public-health policyChildhood asthma, allergic disease, environmental exposures, air pollution, green space, biodiversity, urbanisation, land use, indoor air quality, aeroallergens, environmental exposome, environmental epidemiology, respiratory health, climate change, nature-based interventions, life-course health Topic editors: Inês Paciência, Aino K Rantala, Isabella Annesi-Maesano Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/86329/environmental-allergy-pathways-urban-exposures-biodiversity-and-childhood-respiratory-health