Air Pollution Harm To Unborn Babies May Be Global Health Catastrophe, Warn Doctors (theguardian.com)

Air pollution significantly increases the risk of low birth weight in babies, leading to lifelong damage to health, according to a large new study. From a report: The research was conducted in London, UK, but its implications for many millions of women in cities around the world with far worse air pollution are "something approaching a public health catastrophe," the doctors involved said. Globally, two billion children -- 90% of all children -- are exposed to air pollution above World Health Organization guidelines. A Unicef study also published on Wednesday found that 17 million babies suffer air six times more toxic than the guidelines. The team said that there are no reliable ways for women in cities to avoid chronic exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and called for urgent action from governments to cut pollution from vehicles and other sources.

Comments

Total malarkey

[Anonymous Coward]

The air has never been cleaner. 50 years ago there were noxious fuming automobiles and trucks. Factories spewed coal black smoke into the hazy gray skies. Half the population puffed on cigars and cigarettes, indoors, outdoors, even on airplanes, and in other public places -- even elevators. At least in America the problem has been solved.

So what if China doesn't care. That's their right. It's their country.

Is it really so bad

[tsa]

I keep wondering when I read things like this: is it really so much worse than it was in the 1970s? OK, some places where economic growth has exploded recently may be much much dirtier now than they were then. But I went to London a few times in the late 1980s, and back then the city stank of exhaust fumes. Nowadays that is not the case anymore. I live in the Netherlands and I saw the big rivers getting cleaner, sensitive animals like salmon and beaver being reintroduced successfully, and the air in Amsterdam definitely improved. So I wonder: how come we hear more and more warnings like this? I can think of a few causes: fearmongery, increased knowledge about the impact of exhaust gases on your health, or maybe the planet as a whole really got a lot dirtier. But what is it really?

Re: I'm committed to clean air and water

[bluefoxlucid]

A premature birth is only viable because it contains not only fully-formed organs, but a fully self-supporting system. That system may be insufficient and, depending on who you ask, viability may include viability if hooked up to a support machine rather than just viability to survive without care.

this is a blastocyst.

Generally, abortions occur prior to 9 weeks. Beyond 9 weeks, you need surgical abortion; up to that point, you can have a drug-induced abortion. At about 9 weeks, the heart finishes dividing into chambers; internal organs are roughed-out, but nowhere near developed. Even the neural tube has only just curled up to take the place of the brain and started differentiating into scaffolding, not yet becoming an actual brain.

Viability is generally agreed upon at 24 weeks, although the low-point number is 20 weeks. Interestingly enough, premature infants seem to not have active default-mode neural networks (basic brain function) until around 30 weeks. In simple terms, a fetus isn't capable of being aware until around 25-30 weeks, although we think they can respond to (but possibly not experience) pain around 20-24.

The 20-24 week delineation avoids the upper end of the extreme, landing before the brain is capable of maybe being aware. The 9-week medical abortion limit is well before brain formation.

Remember as well: you're a person, being a sum of your experiences and your ability to think, reason, and engage in self-preservation responses. A fetus doesn't have a stress response and so no display of self-preservation behavior. It's rather conservative to consider an infant a "person" even at birth; yet we have this wonderful option to identify a missed menstrual cycle (at 4 weeks), test for pregnancy, and perform a drug-induced abortion (by 9 weeks), far before one would seriously begin to wonder if it's perhaps a living being and not just a blob of tissue. 24-week abortions may be legal in many places, but they're horrendously-stressful on the mother (surgery) and generally-unpleasant, so it's easy to encourage people to make that decision early.

Depending on your mood, one lump of cells could either be dumpster fodder or a human child we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to save.

Surprisingly, my parents were vocally against abortion until my mom got pregnant again--then they had an abortion a few weeks later. They seem to have forgotten this since then. Mood seems to vary.