Prenatal exposure to air pollution increases the risk of severe respiratory distress in newborn babies, according to new research conducted at the Penn State College of Medicine in collaboration with the Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) Study led by Health Canada. The risk increases with exposure specifically to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which occur in wildfire and cigarette smoke and vehicle emissions, among other sources.
The findings, which published on Jan. 25 in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, reveal a better understanding of infant respiratory distress, the leading cause of admission in neonatal intensive care units and death among newborns worldwide.
“Mothers’ exposure to air pollution while pregnant is known to be associated with adverse long-term respiratory issues, such as asthma, in their children,” said Chintan K. Gandhi, assistant professor of pediatrics at Penn State and corresponding author of the paper. “However, what we didn’t know is that maternal exposure to air pollution could cause babies to suffer severe respiratory distress soon after birth.”
Read more at Penn State
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