Women Close To Freeway 128% More Likely To Give Birth Prematurely
5 July 2009 - 7:00am
A new study from UC Irvine in Los Angeles concludes that women who live within 1.9 miles of a major roadway increase their risk of premature birth by 128%.
The report is one of several recent studies linking air pollution with pregnancy problems.
"A comparison of medical records from 81,186 single child births to air pollution levels in the area revealed that high pollution exposure raised the risk of a severely premature birth by 128 percent.
Moms-to-be were also between 33 and 42 percent more likely to develop preeclampsia, an affliction characterized by high blood pressure that often forces doctors to induce premature birth in order to save mothers' lives."
Full Story:
L.A. Traffic Causing Premature Births: Study
Source:
Treehugger, July 2, 2009
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confused by your 'clarification'
eclisham - help me out, but I find, "women who live within 1.9 miles of a major roadway increase their risk of premature birth by 128%. " to be basically the same as 'living near a major roadway presents an increased risk to pregnant women of premature birth."
I agree that folks living near freeways may do so primarily because rents/mortgages are cheaper in those locations - same holds true for high crime areas, I suppose.
My own question on this article is that it doesn't appear to indicate what the 'culprit pollutant is', e.g. diesel pm, ozone, NOx????
Irvin Dawid, Palo Alto, CA
Rephrasing
I think eclisham wants something like:
"Major roadways increase the risk for women living nearby..."
rather than
"Women increase their risk by living near major roadways..."
Phrase it to put the blame on the roads, not on the women.
Charles Siegel
As if
You write this summary as if women were the protagonists in this study, when the original article to which you link makes it clear that is not the case. Pregnant women do not "increase their risk" of giving birth prematurely by living close to a major roadway; rather, living near a major roadway presents an increased risk to pregnant women of premature birth.
This is important when thinking about planning equity, since it's reasonable to assume that women who live closer to major roadways do so out of economic necessity, not choice. Your phrasing suggests the opposite.