Surprise: Air pollution linked to fetal defects.

[NNadir]

Of course, we do NOT fear what we know, and everybody knows air pollution. So it is that air pollution is largely an ignored risk.

According to this news report from Scientific American, a correlation has been established between air pollution and fetal defects.

"Frederica P. Perera of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health and her colleagues studied 60 infants born in New York City to nonsmoking mothers who were participating in an ongoing study that started in 1998. The team analyzed exposure rates to airborne pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)--which are present in vehicle exhaust, power plant emissions and tobacco smoke--in three low-income areas. "Although the study was conducted in Manhattan neighborhoods, exhaust pollutants are prevalent in all urban areas, and therefore the study results are relevant to populations in other urban areas," Perera notes.

The mothers-to-be filled out questionnaires and wore a portable air monitor for 48 hours during their third trimester. After the women gave birth, the scientists analyzed samples of umbilical cord blood and tested for chromosomal abnormalities. The team found that exposure to combustion pollutants was positively linked to chromosomal abnormalities in fetal tissue: newborns in the low-exposure group exhibited 4.7 abnormalities per thousand white blood cells. Babies born to mothers in the highest exposure group had 7.2 abnormalities per thousand cells.

"This evidence that air pollutants can alter chromosomes in utero is troubling since other studies have validated this type of genetic alteration as a biomarker of cancer risk," Perera remarks. "While we can't estimate the precise increase in cancer risk, these findings underscore the need for policymakers at the federal, state and local levels to take appropriate steps to protect children from these avoidable exposures." The findings appear in the current issue of the journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention. --Sarah Graham"

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=00032537-679A-1212-A79A83414B7F0000

And here I was thinking that all birth defects were caused by tritiated fish and triated trees...

Jesus fucking christ...

[SnowGoose]

1. There's also reason to believe that it causes miscarriage too,

along with premature birth. It's kind of interesting, when you think about it, that the mother's body doesn't reject the fetus, which after all is a foreign body. It appears that the maternal immune system is 'turned down' a bit during pregnancy, an idea which is supported by the observation that women with auto-immune disorders frequently experience a lessening in severity of the disorder during pregnancy.

Many types of air pollution are pro-inflammatory, which may subvert the normal immune suppression that occurs during pregnancy.

Air pollution is not good.

[phantom power]

2. Super. Every day, I live in a sea of brown haze.

Our child spent her entire nine months in utero, in that same haze. Well, actually inside my wife, who was in the haze.

[bloom]

4. I remember

looking out the window of the hospital room when my daughter was born - 20 years ago - and seeing the brown hazy sunrise. Downtown Louisville.

We lived out a ways - but it was still hazy through the summers.

[arcane1]

3. and of course Repubes will still fight pollution controls

this will be one case where they don't give a shit about the fetus