Breathing air pollutants during pregnancy can damage child's brain: Study

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Sunday 29 Mar 2015 - 14:25 Makkah mean time-9-6-1436 Photo: Brighter Brain website New York (IINA) – U.S. Researchers at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health (CCCEH) and the University of Southern California have found a powerful relationship between prenatal exposure to air pollutants and changes in the child’s brain structure, cognitive and behavioral problems. Air pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), emitted from motor vehicles, oil and coal burning for home heating and power generation, tobacco smoke, and other combustion sources, are responsible for child’s brain damage during preganancy. The study was conducted by following over 600 mothers and children from pregnancy into the children’s adolescent years. For a period during pregnancy, the mothers, all nonsmokers, carried personal backpacks containing filters which provided researchers with a sample of the air that the mothers were breathing. By analyzing the filters for levels of PAH, the researchers concluded that prenatal exposure to airborne PAH during gestation was associated with development delay by age 3, reduced verbal IQ at age 5, and symptoms of anxiety and depression at age 7. According to the researchers, the findings suggested that air pollutants, specifically PAH, affect the developing mind and contribute to more severe behavioral problems, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and aggression, as well as other behavioral problems, due to the disruptive effects of the pollutants on early brain development. Postnatal PAH exposure (measured at age 5) was found to contribute to additional disturbances in development of white matter in the brain, which is associated with concentration, reasoning, judgment, and problem-solving ability. Results this study appeared in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. AB/IINA