March 14, 2022

The role of air pollution in the climate crisis is a far-reaching one, with some pollutants such as black carbon and ozone increasing warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere, and others such as sulfur dioxide forming light-reflecting particles and having a cooling effect on the climate.

However, a recent study has revealed that babies have a 25% higher chance of low birth weight if they are born in areas with high air pollution.

The peer-reviewed Israeli research which has been published in the journal Environmental Research was based on 381,000 births and according to the authors, the research gives a rare glimpse into the effects of pollution on fetuses, and may well forecast other health impacts.

The data is based on personal anonymized data on the mothers, including the area where they lived and the weight of their babies at birth, provided by Maccabi Health Services, and was cross-referenced with information on daily air pollutant concentration over each square kilometer of Israel, derived from satellite data by Ben Gurion University.

“The literature until now was not clear, but we’ve now shown in a large study a clear association between exposure of the mother to air pollution and low birth weight,” epidemiologist Prof. Hagai Levine of the Hebrew University said.

He further said that the research was important especially as low birth weight is a significant indicator of potential health problems later in life.

According to Levine, who also conducted the study with his doctoral student Wiessam Abu Ahmad, Israel was perfectly placed for such a study because of the country’s fully digitized medical records, relatively high pollution levels, and high child-birth rate.

He believes that the finding would impact health policy around the world and therefore, should receive much attention, asserting that governments rarely consider the impact of air pollution on fetuses when making policy.

“Governments should put effort into doing exactly what we did — tracking correlations between pollution and birth weight on a large scale. It’s important for the health of babies, but it’s actually also a broader indicator of the impact of pollution.

“That’s because many health outcomes take a long time to see — for example, if you want to correlate pollution with cancer you need to wait many years. But the correlation with birth weight is seen very quickly — and it’s a factor that is known to influence future health.

“This study should encourage monitoring of health data against pollution in other areas beyond baby weight. In short, it’s now clear that governments need to set up the infrastructure to integrate environmental and health data at the personal level.

Courtesy: Climateaction.africa