Environmental Pollution And Its Effects on Health and Nature

Children and Air Pollution | : Children breathe more air per pound of body weight, so their exposure to air pollution is much greater than adults.  Children’s organs, including their lungs, develop until they reach their late teens, usually around the age of 18.  Studies show that developing organs are sensitive to the toxic effects of air pollutants and environmental toxins, and that children absorb pollutants more readily than adults and retain them in the body for longer periods of time.*  According to the World Resources Institute, “Because they breathe at a higher rate than adults, children are exposed to greater levels of pollution relative to their smaller body weight and are generally more sensitive to their effects on a pound-for-pound basis.”

Air pollutants linked to higher risk of birth defects, researchers find | News Center | Stanford Medicine : "Breathing traffic pollution in early pregnancy is linked to a higher risk for certain serious birth defects, according to new research from the Stanford University School of Medicine. The finding comes from a study examining air quality and birth-defect data for women living in California’s San Joaquin Valley, one of the smoggiest regions of the country. “We found an association between specific traffic-related air pollutants and neural tube defects, which are malformations of the brain and spine,” said the study’s lead author, Amy Padula, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in pediatrics. The research appears online today in the American Journal of Epidemiology.