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Action on Smoking and Health
A National Legal-Action Antismoking Organization Entirely Supported by Tax-Deductible Contributions
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New Evidence that Babies Exposed to ETS have Lower Birth Weights [01/23-1]
Excerpts from: AIR POLLUTION WREAKS HAVOC ON CITY BABIES
By BARBARA HOFFMAN New York Post [01/22/04]
An alarming new medical study — the first of its kind — shows that air pollution and secondhand smoke deliver a devastating one-two punch to infants.
The report, released yesterday by the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health, tracked the children of 226 nonsmoking mothers from Washington Heights, Central Harlem and the South Bronx.
Those infants whose mothers lived with a smoker during pregnancy were shown to be smaller, on average, than those born to mothers who lived in the same area but were not subject to secondhand smoke.
Although the differences sound small — an average 7 percent reduction in birth weight and about a 3 percent reduction in head circumference — they are nonetheless statistically significant, researchers say.
This is one more good reason why the kind of smoke-free policies like the ones they have in New York are a very important contribution to public health."
Previous studies have shown that smoking stunts prenatal growth, but the new study shows that pollution — from car, truck or bus engines and residential heating — compounds the damage.
"What we found was that when these two exposures were combined, their effect was actually greater than the sum of their individual effects," Perera said.
The study, started in 1998, is part of a broader research project on maternal and child health in the city.
A separate report put out by UCSF yesterday recommends scrapping age limits for prenatal genetic testing for Down syndrome and other disorders.
Because of high costs, testing is currently conducted on women 35 years old and up who have a higher risk of having a child with a genetic abnormality.
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