Pregnancy exposure to pollution linked to asthma in infants
By Tsai Shu-yuan
and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer
A study by China Medical University and the Academia Sinica Research Center for Environmental Changes suggests that babies born to women who were exposed to aerial heavy metal pollution during pregnancy might develop asthma.
The study was published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology in December last year.
Researchers tracked the health records of 171,281 children born from 2004 to 2011 in Taichung, and correlated the data to a model reconstruction of heavy metal pollution consisting of fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5).