Pollution Exposure During Pregnancy May Increase The Risk Of A Low Birth Weight Baby

New findings published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives show that exposure to high levels of pollution can adversely affect fetal growth and development.

Researchers at the University of Rochester discovered that women who were pregnant during the 2008 Beijing Olympics gave birth to healthier weight children due to a reduction in exposure to polluted areas.

"The results of this study demonstrate a clear association between changes in air pollutant concentrations and birth weight," David Q. Rich, lead author of the study and an epidemiologist with the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) Departments of Public Health Sciences, said in a news release. "These findings not only illustrate one of the many significant health consequences of pollution, but also demonstrate that this phenomenon can be reversed."

Months leading up to the end during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Paralympics, the Chiense government began a series of measures to improve the city's chronic and notoriously poor air quality, with work that included closing factories, halting construction projects, seeding clouds to induce rainfall and even implementing harsher restrictions on automobile use.

These measures helped to produce a drop in the concentrations of particulate matter and gaseous air pollution during week six and seven of the Olympic games with a 60 percent reduction in sulfur dioxide, a 48 percent reduction in carbon monoxide, a 43 percent reduction in nitrogen dioxide, and a reduction in particles smaller than 2.5 microns in diameter.

During the study, researchers put together information from close to 84,000 births in four urban Beijing districts working to compare birth weights for mothers whose eighth month of pregnancy occurred during the 2008 Olympics/Paralympics during the eighth month of pregnancy. At this time of the year, in the years before 2007 and after 2009 during the games when pollution levels were at normal levels were at their normally higher levels.

Findings revealed that babies born in 2008 were about 23 grams larger than those in 2007 and 2009, suggesting that pollution may interfer more with development than previously thought.