Methods
In Portugal, there are a considerable number of children
attending nurseries. In fact, there are 276 125 children (2.26% of the
Portuguese population) attending a total of 6812 nurseries, 64.3% of
which are public. In the urban area of Porto city there are 161
nurseries of which 32.3% are public (PORDATA, 2013). This study
was carried out on three different nurseries (N_URB1, N_URB2 and
N_URB3), all located at urban sites influenced by traffic emissions in
Porto city, Portugal (Fig. 1). N_URB1 and N_URB2 buildings were
located in the same traffic busy street and their front facades were
directly facing this street. N_URB3 building was located in the same
area, although its front facade was not facing directly the street.
These three nurseries had different management models: i)
N_URB1 was a full private for-profit nursery; ii) N_URB2 was
managed by a private institution of social solidarity, non-profit and
with a mix of public and private funds; and iii) N_URB3was a public
nursery, entirely managed with public funds by the municipality
authorities and the Ministry of Education.