Toxic air in India and other South Asian countries could be causing large numbers of miscarriages and stillbirths, scientists said on Thursday.
A study in The Lancet medical journal estimated that nearly 350,000 pregnancy losses a year in South Asia were linked to high pollution levels, accounting for 7 percent of annual pregnancy loss in the region from 2000 to 2016.
South Asia has the highest rate of pregnancy loss globally and some of the worst air pollution in the world.
“Our findings ... [provide] further justification for urgent action to tackle dangerous levels of pollution,” lead author Tao Xue (濤薛) of Peking University said in a statement.
The study follows a Lancet report last month that linked India’s bad air quality to 1.67 million deaths, or 18 percent of all its deaths in 2019, up from 1.24 million deaths in 2017.
The analysis found that pollution led to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory infections, lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, neonatal disorders and cataracts.
In Thursday’s study, the Chinese research team looked at data for 34,197 mothers in South Asia who had had at least one miscarriage or stillbirth, and one or more live births.
More than three-quarters of the women were from India, with the rest split between Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The scientists estimated that the mothers’ exposure during pregnancy to concentrations of PM2.5. They calculated that 7.1 percent of annual pregnancy losses were attributable to pollution above India’s air quality standard of 40 micrograms per cubic meter (mcg/m3), and 29.7 percent to pollution above the WHO guideline of 10mcg/m3.
Coauthor Guan Tianjia of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences said that pregnancy loss had mental, physical and economic effects on women, and that reducing miscarriages and stillbirths might lead to knock-on improvements in gender equality.
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