Pollution in India Shrink Newborns

The UK study at Newcastle University was led by Professor Tanja Pless Mulloli, he said, “As air pollution increases we can see that more babies are smaller at birth which in turn puts them at risk of poor health later in life. These microscopic particles, five times smaller than the width of a human hair, are part of the air we breathe every day. What we have shown definitively is that these levels are already having an effect on pregnant mothers,” as reported by TNN.

A senior lecturer in environmental epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Dr Tony Fletcher claimed that this new study is useful in establishing yet another impact of air pollution on health. He also said that as the average effect of pollution is quite small, it requires enormous multi-country studies like this to quantify the effect.

The records from the city, used by the UK researchers for the analysis went way back over 50 years. Considering the socio-economic status and occupation of the pregnant mothers, they could correlate the amount of particles in the outdoor air to the birth weight of children.

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