Three years ago I told you about the pregnant woman who became famous by worrying about the noise of the works for her fetus, while he held a cigar in his hand. Many of us agree that the worst thing for your baby was probably not noise, but tobacco.
Now, what would happen if you complained about a high level of pollution? Perhaps then the cigar would be just another element, also harmful to the baby, but who knows if less than the environment. And I say this because today many children have learning and development problems, and it seems that pollution He is very guilty.
Up to two months of cognitive retardation
Two months of our life is very little time. Two months of a child's life, much more. As we read in El País, researchers from the Institute of Global Health of Barcelona (ISGlobal) have found a relationship between the concentration of certain pollutants in the environment and the attention span of children at 4-5 years of age.
The study, published in the magazine Enviroment International, and in which they have had a sample of almost 1,300 children from different regions of Spain, concludes that exposure during pregnancy to nitrogen dioxide can reach delay children's cognitive development up to two months.
More studies with similar conclusions
The study is part of a project called INMA, and is not the first. In previous research you have already seen that pollution damages children's cognitive ability, and that on the days of greatest pollution, children can see their learning speed diminished in up to a month.
In the current study they also wanted to see how it could affect them before they were born, because they suspected that even during pregnancy there could be consequences.
In the words of Monica Guxens, coordinator of the study, to El País:
We wanted to see if children exposed to more pollution had worse attention span and we were right. Air pollution was measured at home and on the street during pregnancy and in the postnatal stage.
To reach these conclusions they made relatively long tests, which required a high level of concentration and attention for eight minutes in a row. Thus, they saw that children aged 4-5 years who had been more exposed to contamination during pregnancy, and especially the agents that caused the traffic, had this delay of up to two months of age in their capacities.
Again, according to Guxens, talking about the fetus in pregnancy:
The brain is developing, it has great plasticity in the prenatal stage, and if there is any damage it cannot be repaired.
But it is not the only cause
Of course not. Developmental disorders have to do with many factors: pollution, feeding of the mother and then the baby and child, weeks of gestation at birth, the type of relationship with the parents and the environment, socio-economic status and a long etcetera are many of them.
The important thing, in any case, is to know which ones affect more so that the health professionals can influence as much as we can in the recommendations, and the mothers and fathers in what is in their hand. It is much easier to change eating habits, for example, than to live in a place where there is no contamination.
But it may be worthwhile, in any case, to be aware that we are breathing an air not recommended for anyone, and assess what we can do to avoid it.
