Pollution and Infant Health

Pollution and Infant Health.

In this article, I review recent research showing that even relatively low levels of pollution can affect infants' health. This research attempts to go beyond documenting correlations by using sharp changes in pollution levels, carefully selecting control groups (including unexposed siblings as controls for exposed children), and considering behavioral responses to pollution such as maternal mo...

Caution, drivers! Children present: Traffic, pollution, and infant health

We show the effect of mobile source traffic pollution on infant mortality, both directly and through the channel of airborne particulate matter and carbon monoxide. We show higher levels of local traffic density lead to increased weekly infant mortality rates, and explore variation in effects by distance from traffic source, weather conditions, and infant subgroups. Direct effects of traffic ar...

Air pollution and infant health: Lessons from New Jersey.

We examine the impact of three "criteria" air pollutants on infant health in New Jersey in the 1990s by combining information about mother's residential location from birth certificates with information from air quality monitors. Our work offers three important innovations. First, we use the exact addresses of mothers to select those closest to air monitors to improve the accuracy of air qualit...

Particulate Air Pollution and Infant Mortality

Air pollution and sudden infant death syndrome.

BACKGROUND Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) affects approximately 1 in 1000 live births and is the most common cause of infant death after the perinatal period. OBJECTIVE To determine the influence of air pollution on the incidence of SIDS. METHODS Time-series analyses were performed to compare the daily mortality rates for SIDS and the daily air pollution concentrations in each of 12 Ca...