December 17, 2001	Monday	Shawwal 1, 1422

LOS ANGELES: A growing body of research from around the world indicates that smog is exacting a much greater toll than previously known on infants and unborn babies. Scientists have long known that the extreme levels of air pollution found in the developing world can harm babies, and that lesser pollution in US cities can sicken or kill the elderly and infirm.

The new research shows that the harmful effects of dirty air can extend even into the womb. More than a dozen studies in the United States, Brazil, Europe, Mexico, South Korea and Taiwan have linked smog to low birth weight, premature births, still births and infant deaths. In the US, the research has documented ill effects on infants even in cities with modern pollution controls. The findings have helped prompt California officials to seek more stringent smog controls.

“Smog can harm the health of babies,” said Beate Ritz, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health. “This should make us pause. Air pollution doesn’t just impact asthmatics and old people at the end of life, but it can affect people at the beginning of their life, and that can disadvantage people throughout their life.”

A UCLA study conducted by Ritz, and scheduled for release on Dec 28, for the first time links air pollution and birth defects in Southern California. Other experts say that while the worldwide research shows a strong correlation between air quality and infant illnesses, it does not establish a conclusive cause-and-effect connection.

Most of the studies have been reviewed by disinterested scientists, a process called peer review, and have been published in leading journals, or will be soon. The studies differ on which pollutants are of most concern. Some implicate gases, others blame particles and some point to both.

Frederick W. Lipfert, a New York environmental consultant hired by auto makers, the steel industry, the US Energy Department and the Electric Power Research Institute to critique several of the studies, played down the findings. “These studies raise more suspicions than smoking guns,” he said.

Nonetheless, the research, especially the studies focusing on US cities where pollution levels have been declining, is regarded by health experts as troubling.

“We know there are serious health effects from low levels of air pollution,” said Aaron Cohen, an epidemiologist and principal scientist for the Health Effects Institute in Boston, a joint enterprise of the EPA and several pollution-generating industries, including oil companies and utilities.

In the latest research from UCLA, Beate Ritz and a team of researchers found that women exposed to high levels of ozone and carbon monoxide were three times more likely to have babies with cleft lips and palates and defective heart valves.

The researchers looked at thousands of pregnant women in Los Angeles from 1987 to 1993 and compared those living in areas with relatively dirty air to those living in cleaner areas. Virtually the entire study area met federal standards for carbon monoxide, and much of the region complies with ozone requirements.

The study found that the greatest risk occurs during the second month of pregnancy, when a fetus gains most of its organs and much of its facial structure.

In a separate study, a team of researchers from the United States and Sweden found that pregnant women in five US cities who were exposed to elevated levels of carbon monoxide during their third trimester were 31 per cent more likely to give birth to underweight babies. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times.