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Preterm Births Linked To Air Pollution Cost Billions In The US (time.com)
mdsolar quotes a report from TIME: Air pollution leads to 16,000 premature births in the United States each year, leading to billions of dollars in economic costs, according to new research. Researchers behind the study, published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, found that preterm births associated with particulate matter -- a type of pollutant -- led to more than $4 billion in economic costs in 2010 due to medical care and lost productivity that results from disability. And, like many other public health issues, affected populations tend to be concentrated in low-income areas home to large numbers of minorities. "This is another piece of the evidentiary pie about why we should really be doing something about air pollution," says Tracey Woodruff, a professor who studies reproductive health and the environment at the University of California, San Francisco. "When you reduce air pollution you get lots of different health benefits." Countless studies have shown the effect of air pollution on cardiovascular and respiratory health -- killing millions each year. Air pollution leads to inflammation in blood vessels and contributes to lung cancer, asthma and a slew of other disorders. The effect on pregnancy may in some ways be an extension of those effects as air pollution disrupts the way a pregnant woman delivers oxygen to the fetus. Air pollution may also disrupt the endocrine system, keeping women from producing a protein needed to regulate pregnancy, researchers say.
Why is it concentrated in low-income areas. Wouldn't densely populated rich Urban areas like Manhattan be at high risk from Air pollution?
The study makes a lot of assumptions, and 'concludes' there is a correlation but I don't see the data behind that part. The cost includes a lot of interesting components, including lifetime productivity loss for the PTB individual. They include any economic loss they can count, but they don't offset with the jobs created by caring for some of the individuals, which sounds cold but it should be factored in as well.
Regardless, this study seems to have a very wide margin of error associated with it.
there are over 500,000 pre-term births in the USA, so 15,000 are due to particulate air pollution eh?
This little slice from the paper says it all, i.e., their claim is an ass-pull
Though uncertainty remains about the contribution of specific outdoor
air pollutants and
windows of vulnerability, multiple observational studies of prenatal exposure have associated
among other pollutants with adverse birth
outcomes, most especially LBW and PTB (Darrow et al. 2009; Kloog et al. 2012; Laurent et al.
2016), although some studies did not report this association (Johnson et al. 2016). In addition,
one quasi-experimental study identified reductions in PTB and LBW in association with
electronic toll collection, which also reduced traffic congestion and vehicle emissions
.
Further support for the notion that outdoor air pollution exposure may contribute to adverse
birth outcomes is provided by laboratory experiments that document oxidant stress, inflammation
and placental insufficiency as mechanisms by which air pollutants
can contribute to early
delivery (Institute of Medicine 2007; USEPA 2013; Woodruff et al. 2009).
I'm here because they said something about an open bar.
They pulled me in with a promise of "Nudes for Nerds" . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Hypothesis: noise pollution leads to bad sleeping habits in a pregnant mother which negatively impact the health of a baby.
It would be interesting to see a study mapping noise pollution (high-density fire and ambulance all night, nearby night clubs or bars, etc...) with health of the child.
You forgot the Kardashians. They had to have caused some of those PTBs...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Back when you and I first joined Slashdot, its motto was, "News for nerds; stuff that matters." I'd like to think that an article about how air pollution is causing more preterm births is something that matters, even to nerds.
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