Breathtaking: New Air Pollution Studies

You are what you eat, so they say. According to a number of new studies, however, you are also what you breathe—and even what your mother breathed. Recent research shows that air pollution of various kinds can stunt fetal development and contribute to asthma and other lung problems, as well as to premature deaths nationwide. City dwellers suffer most, and babies and children, with their developing lungs, hearts and brains, are particularly at risk. What's most alarming is that these negative effects are being found even at levels of pollution that do not exceed current federal safety standards.

A study published in Pediatrics in January 2005 linked mothers' exposure to fine particulate air pollution—including soot and ashes released by motor vehicles and power plants—to lowered birth weights in babies. Jointly researched by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the study found that mothers exposed to high levels of fine particulates gave birth to babies weighing on average 30 grams—slightly over an ounce—less than those exposed to low levels.

Other combustion by-products found in traffic and industrial exhaust, known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), were examined, along with tobacco smoke, in a study by the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCEH). The researchers found that children exposed prenatally to PAHs and in infancy to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) had a higher risk of coughing and wheezing at their first birthday, and of difficulty breathing and asthma symptoms at two years of age. Rachel Miller, M.D., an assistant professor at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons and lead author of the article in the October 2004 Chest, told The Green Guide that the study was unique because it found that the combined effects of PAHs and ETS exposure can be significantly more harmful than those caused by either pollutant on its own.