These deaths are said to be due in part to the air that a newborn baby breathes in the first months of its life before dying, as well as the air that its mother breathed while she was pregnant.
-1603290721.jpg "Air pollution killed nearly 500,000 newborns in 2019")
- Air pollution is estimated to have killed nearly half a million children last year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
- This pollution is largely due to the cooking methods used for food, which is generally done with fuel oil.
- This pollution would make children more stunted and premature, which would increase their chances of dying in the first months of their life.
Air quality is everyone’s business. As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate at a dizzying rate in the atmosphere and global warming amplifies the phenomenon, a new study confirms the negative effects of air pollution on our lives. According to a study conducted by the Health Effects Institute (USA) and the Global Burden of Disease projectair pollution is estimated to have killed 476,000 newborns in 2019. The places where pollution has caused the most deaths are in India and sub-Saharan Africa.
Cooking combustion and harmful fumes
For the authors, air pollution is particularly felt in the growth of fetuses and infants in the first months of life. Thus, in regions where mothers were most exposed to pollution, cases of premature and/or undersized children are legion. The weaker a child is born, the greater the risk of infectious diseases if he survives. Unfortunately, according to researchers’ estimates, these conditions lead to the death of 1.8 million children during their first month of life.
This fragile health in the first months of life leads to health problems such as repeated respiratory infections, diarrhea, brain damage, blood diseases, inflammation or even jaundice.
Of the 476,000 deaths attributable to air pollution in 2019, nearly two-thirds (64%) were caused by ambient air pollution at home. These deaths occur mainly in countries where food is still cooked with fuel oil, such as in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In this region of the world, almost 80% of the 236,000 deaths of children during the first month of life are caused by the harmful fumes of cooking; this reason is responsible for 50% of the 186,000 child deaths in Southeast Asia.
Less healthy children
Before this study, scientists thought that air pollution only affected the airways of newborns. Thanks to these new data, they realized that poor air quality had an influence on two factors: the weight of the future baby and its date of delivery.
Other environmental factors may also explain these data, such as the socioeconomic conditions of the mother or the fact that she smoked during her pregnancy.
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