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‘Day-to-day’ symptom of harmful emissions, which in turn can disrupt sleep, can be overlooked, say researchers
Increased air pollution linked to more night-time coughing, UK-led study finds ‘Day-to-day’ symptom of harmful emissions, which in turn can disrupt sleep, can be overlooked, say researchers New research has found that increased air pollution is associated with more night-time coughing, leading to disturbed sleep.
Most air pollution research looks at symptoms that are severe enough for people to seek medical help, but day-to-day symptoms can be overlooked. Prof Cecilia Mascolo, who ledfrom the University of Cambridge, said: “I come from an area in Italy with very high pollution and I am very aware of its not-talked-about effects. ”The researchers looked at data from a commonly used sleep app.
For 18 months they collected anonymised data from 32 cities in 12 countries, an average of 98,000 people a night.. About half of the people coughed during the night, with 1% coughing more than 10 times. The greatest frequency of coughing was recorded in Milan and around Monza, both cities in north Italy’sA look at the data for Los Angeles and London shows that people cough more in cold weather and there are more coughs recorded when flu is circulating.
Mascolo said: “The hardest part was understanding if what we were seeing in the cough peaks was really affected by pollution or rather by viruses/flu trends as well as weather. ”“I thought that adding in the confounding factor of flu season would make the link in the data disappear, but it didn’t.
” High daily particle pollution was consistently associated with increased night-time coughing, but effects could also be seen at lower concentrations, well below the Mascolo said: “Even in cities with relatively low levels of air pollution, such as Melbourne and Sydney, we observed positive associations between particle pollution and increased coughing.were the clearest and most severe pollution spike in our study window. ” Night-time coughing increased by 13 % during the wildfire smoke, and some people experienced effects that were delayed by several days.
: “During the first week of November 2025, when influenza activity remained low, days with PM2.5 concentrations exceeding the WHO guideline became more frequent, accompanied by a noticeably higher cough rate than previous months.
“Emission sources, such as firework displays, may have contributed to episodic air pollution and subsequent airway irritation, although source-specific data are needed to substantiate this. ” Mascolo added: “These findings underscore the global health relevance of air pollution and suggest that the potential chronic health effects of long-term exposure to low concentrations of particle pollution warrant attention, even in comparatively less polluted cities. ”
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