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This section includes items that may be of interest to those involved in protecting the air environments that we live in. Items include:
Recent News, including information from the news wires:
THE PRENATAL EFFECT OF POLLUTANTS
A team of researchers says it has found evidence that pregnant women's exposure to ambient pollutants could prove harmful to the brains of their developing fetuses. Led by Columbia University environmental health scientist Frederica P. Perera, the study, which is to be published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, began by measuring pregnant women's exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, pollutants that come from fossil fuel combustion common to vehicles and power plants. The children's cognitive abilities were assessed each year through age 3, according to a summary of the study detailed in Science News on April 29. From the Science News article: "By that age, the 42 children whose mothers had been exposed to the most PAHs 'scored significantly less well on a test of cognitive development' than did the rest of the children in the group, Perera says. The youngsters of highly exposed mothers were more than twice as likely to be developmentally delayed, according to this test,' she adds."
Asthma hits N.E. hard, study finds, Boston Globe
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