Study Links Air Pollution, Defects
The Associated Press
Sunday, December 16, 2001; 4:24 AM
LOS ANGELES -- For years, scientists
have known of a correlation between air quality and
infant illnesses. Now for the first time a Southern
California study links air pollution and birth defects.
The University of California, Los Angeles study shows
that the harmful effects of dirty air can extend even
into the womb, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
"Smog can harm the health of babies," said
Beate Ritz, an epidemiologist at UCLA's Center for Occupational
and Environmental Health who conducted the study. "This
should make us pause. Air pollution doesn't just impact
asthmatics and old people at the end of life, but it
can affect people at the beginning of their life, and
that can disadvantage people throughout their life."
The study, to be published in the American Journal of
Epidemiology, is scheduled to be released Dec. 28. More
than a dozen studies in the United States, Brazil, Europe,
Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan have linked smog to low
birth weight, premature births, stillbirths and infant
deaths. But the latest research found that women exposed
to high levels of ozone and carbon monoxide were three
times more likely than others to have babies with cleft
lips and palates and defective heart valves. Researchers
looked at thousands of pregnant women in the Los Angeles
area from 1987 to 1993, and compared those living in
areas with relatively dirty air to those living in cleaner
areas. Virtually the entire study area, bounded roughly
by San Bernardino, Santa Ana and Santa Clarita, met
federal standards for carbon monoxide, and much of the
region complied with ozone requirements. Scientists
found that the greatest risk occurs during the second
month of pregnancy, when a fetus develops most of its
organs and much of its facial structure. Most of the
studies about smog and babies came after the Clinton
administration set new federal limits for ozone and
microscopic particles. Officials with the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency say that before those standards can
be strengthened, more research is needed to determine
which pollutants are most harmful and at what stage
of pregnancy they do the most damage.
