Cities are hotbeds of poor ecology, so it is not surprising that several scientists from Northwestern University, led by Dr. Gupta, announced that urban children are a risk group for the development of food and other types of allergies. Children permanently living in large cities, according to statistics, are more likely to suffer from various eating disorders than children living in rural areas. In particular, urban children are twice as likely to suffer from allergies to rachis and shellfish.
The higher the population density, the higher the opportunity to earn food allergies, says Dr. Gupta. The main factor, of course, is not the density of this population itself, but the poor environmental situation around the child. Similar trends have been observed with respect to asthma, as in urban settings there are about three times more asthmatic children than in rural areas. The study involved 38,465 children under 18 years of age, who made up a representative sample from across the United States. So, in rural areas, 6.2% of children have a food allergy compared to 9.8% of children living in large cities.
About 1.3% of children from villages are allergic to peanuts, and in urban conditions, about 2.8% suffer from it. Shellfish allergy occurs among urban children in 2.4% of cases, compared with 0.8% in rural environments. The severity of food allergies does not depend on the area in which the child lives – they are the same. And the saddest thing is that of all allergic children, 42% have already experienced life-threatening situations that provoked an allergic reaction to a particular product, although these children are not yet 18 years old. In the US, the most “allergic” states are Nevada, Florida, Alaska, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and the District of Columbia.