Read full Air Pollution Impacts on Infants and Children Report Card article now

A growing body of evidence linking prenatal and postnatal air pollution exposure to premature birth, lower birth weight, birth defects and respiratory diseases in early life highlights the need to consider the special vulnerability of these developmental periods when formulating air quality regulations, according to UCLA Institute of the Environment researchers.

While commending significantly improved Southern California air quality resulting from increasingly stringent regulation in the past 30 years, the researchers noted in a Dec. 3 essay that the health effects of air pollution on pregnant women, infants and pre-school age children are currently not considered when state or federal regulators set clean air standards.

"To achieve air clean enough to have only negligible effects on pregnancy and infant's and young children's health will likely require drastic changes to motor vehicles and transportation systems, as well as industrial processes, all of which may take many years or decades," said Professor Beate Ritz, a UCLA School of Public Health epidemiologist affiliated with the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. "Until further policies are implemented, these vulnerable populations will continue to suffer from higher morbidity and mortality."

Ritz and Michelle Wilhelm, an assistant professor in residence in the School of Public Health, reviewed the state of epidemiologic air quality research in the quarterly Southern California Environmental Report Card, released Dec. 3 by the UCLA Institute of the Environment. The report card, the institute's signature publication previously released annually, is intended to analyze data in a format useful to the general public and policymakers and to stimulate debate on policies aimed at environmental protection.

"Few environmental challenges carry as much significance to the long-term future of Southern California as the effect of air pollution on the health of pregnant women, infants and young children," said Thomas B. Smith, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and acting director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment.

In the report card, Ritz and Wilhelm emphasized that the time between conception and birth, as well as early childhood are especially critical times of human biological development, when the environment may have both immediate and long-term consequences on health.

They said that their own previously-published research and that of other scientists provides growing evidence that air pollution exposures in pregnancy and early childhood put children at increased risk of adverse health outcomes. But it's a relatively new field, with the bulk of research conducted only within the past decade, Ritz and Wilhelm said.

The researchers said that little is known about exactly which compounds in the air most affect reproductive and young children's health or the biologic mechanisms by which the pollutants do damage. Thus, Ritz and Wilhelm urged additional research in the emerging field.

"In the meantime, there is certainly sufficient evidence to warrant consideration of the health of pregnant women, infants and small children when regulators develop clean-air standards," Ritz said.

The researchers gave a grade of "C" for Southern California's air pollution in relation to the health of pregnant women, infants and young children.

Related links:

• Full archive of Southern California Environmental Report Cards
• Study Shows Adverse Effects of Air Pollution on Births in Los Angeles County Aug. 22, 2007 news release
• Urban Air Pollution Linked to Birth Defects for First Time Dec. 31, 2001 news release

About the UCLA Institute of the Environment: 

The mission of the UCLA Institute of the Environment, founded in 1997, is to generate knowledge and provide solutions for regional and global environmental problems, and to educate the next generation of professional leadership committed to the health of our planet. It includes faculty multiple academic divisions and professional schools such as public health; engineering; management; atmospheric sciences; ecology and evolutionary biology; law, and urban planning. Through the institute and six academic departments, UCLA began offering an innovative multi-disciplinary environmental science major in fall 2006.

Published: Wednesday, December 03, 2008

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