Opravy

Abstract Since air pollution is one of the most dangerous health problems, and China measures noticeably high levels of particulate matter, it is necessary to raise the issue if increased exposure to these pollutants could affect prenatal development.

In order to confirm or deny the hypothesis, derived material from credible sources, such as independent company news, has been assembled.

Higher concentrations of particulate matter during pregnancy give rise to higher risk of Autism Spectrum Disorder and Neural Tube Defect in newborns.

During an active reduction of air pollution for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, average birth weight of babies increased.

The result itself has high believability, but it is neither comprehensive nor categorized.

More potential fetal development defects need to be identified through additional natural experiments.

Introduction Background Air pollution is claimed to be the new pandemic.

It is actually more dangerous than poor diet, bad shape, lack of exercise or high blood pressure.

A normal person breaths around twenty kilograms of air daily.

Air, which is polluted, may contain volatile organic compounds, ozone gas, nitrogen oxides and particle matter.

In 2014, half of the world’s population where living in conurbations and the numbers have constantly been growing.

Even though air pollution is one of the most dangerous health problems, it is on the other hand the largest preventable health risk.

(Lacombe, 2015) James Fallows, a correspondent at The Atlantic, has published a summary article of e-mails he has received from readers.

One e-mail is written by a reader from the United States who claims to be working with international adoption.

The reader says that he or she has seen that the amount of children with identified medical needs, such as missing body parts or malformed organs, has risen expeditiously.

“While any other country with a population as large as China’s will have some number of children born with birth defects, there are persistent rumors that the horrendous pollution in China has led to a huge increase such births in China”, the reader says.

(Fallows, 2013) World Health Organization (WHO) has constructed an interactive world map which visualizes Global ambient air pollution.

The map is based on information from WHO Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database.

A color shade scale shows the annual mean ambient PM2.5 (particulate matter of a diameter of less than 2.5 μm) in the unit μm/m3.

The PM2.5 guideline value from WHO is 10 μm/m3.

As shown on the map, great parts of China have a PM2.5 over 36 μm/m3.

Large areas along the coast, and in western China, reach even higher values, from 70 μm/m3.

In 2014, WHO measured a PM2.5 value of 85 μm/m3 in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

Several other regions of the country have proven to attain to even higher values.

(Global ambient air pollution, n.d.) Hypothesis The massive air pollution in China gives rise to adverse fetal development in pregnant women living in affected areas.

Method This scientific report is a compilation of current and evidence-based research previously conducted in the area.

In order to answer the question, material is derived from highly credible sources, including official and international authorities.

Since China is not the only country on earth that is highly air polluted, some general research on air pollution have been used in this report.

This is supported by the fact that air pollution is measured in the same manner and with the same units all over the earth.

The report deals with fetal development in correlation with air pollution and the idea is that foreign research results could be applied to China, just as Chinese studies could be applied elsewhere.

To find the results of this report, there have been internet searches with keywords such as "air pollution", "air pollution in China", "Chinese studies on air pollution and pregnancy", "global map of air pollution", "fetal development risks of air pollution" and "air pollutants affecting fetal development".

Among the search results, news articles have been prioritized.

To be able to qualify further in the search process the selected articles must have been published in recent years, distributed by credible and to the greatest extent independent news companies, and referring to scientific research.

Hence news articles have been used as secondary sources and research papers/official information pages as primary sources, see the following list.