Air Pollution Linked to Low Birth Weights: Study

A large international study sends out a warning to pregnant women: greater exposure to outdoor pollution increases the risk of bearing children with low birth weight.

Researchers from UC San Francisco and National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came up with this conclusion after analyzing data that was collected from more than three million pregnancies and births, making it the largest study of its kind. The data was taken from nine nations at 14 sites in North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

They analyzed the data from the research centers in International Collaboration on Air Pollution and Pregnancy Outcomes, and noticed that the sites that had a higher pollution rate had a greater number of low birth weights. The data they worked on was collected during the mid-1990s to the late 2000s.

According to the lead author Payam Dadvand, M.D., Ph.D., of the Centre for Research in Environmental Epidemiology (CREAL) in Barcelona, Spain, infants with low birth weight that is below 5.5 pounds are prone to serious health complications like increased risk of postnatal morbidity, and mortality followed by chronic health problems in later life.

According to Tracey J. Woodruff, the co-principal investigator, microscopic particles that are smaller than the width of the hair is in the air that we breathe. 

The particulates present in the air pollution are measured in size and weight. According to the U.S. federal regulation, the average concentration in the air should not be more than 12 µg/m3 of particles measuring less than 2.5 microns, reports Medicalxpress.

"We would like policy makers to use the results of this study to inform decisions on whether the permitted levels of air pollution should be changed," professor Tanja Pless-Mulloli, who led the U.K. study at Newcastle University, was quoted as saying in Health Canal. "We would urge countries considering reviewing their air pollution standards to include estimates of the growth of newborns as a measure of air quality standards."

The study was published in the journal Environmental Health Perspective.