Word: ageing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...emissions bad for the planet and for your lungs, but they may also harm your baby's developing brain. A new study published in the journal Pediatrics links mothers' exposure to high levels of environmental pollutants during pregnancy to a four-point drop in children's IQ scores by age...
...school success," says Frederica Perera, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health and lead author of the study. The effect is comparable, she says, to the damage seen in children exposed to low levels of the toxic metal lead. (See how to prevent illness at any age...
...children in the study are participants in a broader long-term research project, begun in 1998, that follows them from shortly before birth to age 11. To determine prenatal exposure to PAHs and other pollutants, mothers of these children wore special backpacks containing air-sampling equipment for 48 hours during their third trimester of pregnancy, capturing both indoor and outdoor air quality. Based on the results, they were divided into high-PAH-exposure and low-exposure groups. The mothers were healthy, nonsmoking black and Dominican-American women, ages 18 to 35, living in northern Manhattan and the South Bronx...
Earlier reports from Perera's group had found that higher prenatal exposure to PAHs is associated with lower weight and smaller head size at birth and developmental delays at age 3. Studies of children in China who live near coal-burning plants have found that PAH exposure is associated with delayed motor development. The current Pediatrics study, however, is the first to link exposure to reduced performance on IQ tests. Kids in the low-exposure group scored a mean IQ of 101.6, while the mean score in the high-exposure group...
...surprising that the effects [of prenatal exposure] are so persistent," says Kimberly Gray, an epidemiologist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Studies, which helped fund Perera's study. By following these children through age 11, she says, the Columbia team will be able to look for links to learning disorders and attention-deficit disorder...