If breathing polluted air is not pleasant or healthy for anyone, it will be less for a woman waiting for a baby. I wish we could get away from "bad fumes" easily ... A recent study has shown that breathing contaminated air during pregnancy can affect the psychomotor development of the child.
The research has been carried out by the research center of the Institute of Global Health of Barcelona in order to assess whether exposure to air pollution during pregnancy affects psychomotor and cognitive development in the first years of life of children.
Data have been collected from different European countries between 1997 and 2008, a large sample that estimated levels of air pollution in women's homes during their exact period of pregnancy. We also know that pollution, especially nitrogen dioxide, came primarily from traffic.
The study, published in the journal "Epidemiology", evaluates the psychomotor development, as well as the general cognitive and language development of almost 9,500 boys and girls between one and six years of age.
In this way, they observed that air pollution during pregnancy was negatively associated with psychomotor development, which decreased globally 0.68 points for each increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of nitrogen dioxide.
If we can comfort ourselves for something, it is because no association was found between exposure to air pollution during pregnancy and general cognitive and language development. But to the proven relationship between pollution and low birth weight this new pernicious effect of "bad fumes" is added.
But we can already avoid air pollution during pregnancy so that there is no delay in the psychomotor development of children, although it is a question about which political leaders and society in general have much to say. Or is it not everyone's job to take care of the air we breathe, our children breathe and our grandchildren will breathe?
