So polluted air causes more respiratory infections, more cough, more sinus, more asthma and more deaths in the first year of life. The deaths are due to pneumonia but also to the increase in premature births directly related to air pollution because we now know that the pollution in the atmosphere affects pregnant women and their developing foetuses. The risk of all of these childhood illnesses especially increases with the increase of traffic pollution and T&T has the highest motorisation level amongst the countries of South America, Central America and the Caribbean and it is worsening with every change of the alphabet. The next time your child gets sick with a cough and it lingers and lingers, consider that it might be something in the air that is causing it.