The infamous smog that permeates the air of Beijing however, spells out another story; with a grey veil of thick mist in the city’s busy streets – and yet this is still not the strangest circumstance that can happen.
In a ten-year study, the puzzling discovery that the condition known as asthma is far more prevalent in English-speaking countries, spanning from Britain to the far coasts of clear-aired Australia. Compared to European and Mediterranean countries, the rates in which non-English speaking countries suffer from the disease was significantly lower than those of English-speaking ones.
The study of 140,000 people in 22 different countries revealed that developing symptoms of asthma were developing faster in English-speaking countries than any other, with asthma rates in Germany, Italy, Spain, Iceland, India and Algeria, far lower in comparison.
Prof Christer Janson, of the University of Uppsala, Sweden, who presented the findings at the European Respiratory Society congress in Berlin in 2001, said that, “This suggests that the differences are probably not related to genetic differences, but environmental factors. Not only pollution, but also food and lifestyles.”
So, is it a case of nurture over nature? What this suggests is that the condition may be caused by environmental issues, rather than inheritance or, that the environment serves as an encouragement for ailments that may otherwise remain dormant.
Why this happens is an environmental mystery – even in the wide and wild plains of Australia or the open and adventurous desert of America, there is a growing risk of your child developing asthma in later life.
With technology’s advancement, however, it can at least help to stop the symptoms from becoming problematic before it becomes an issue in daily life.