Air Pollution Causing Major Harms to Children and Pregnant Women: WHO

Guwahati: Pollution in Air causing serious health hazard to children and pregnant women A news report by World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday has stated that every day about 93% of the world’s children under the age of 15 (1.8 billion children) are exposed to polluted air bringing serious threat to their health and development,

Every year many of these children die, with as many as six lakh estimated death in 2016 alone due to complications from acute lower respiratory infections because of their exposure to dirty air, the report said.

WHO has released this report on air pollution and child health on the eve of its first-ever global conference on Air Pollution and Health on Tuesday. The report further reveals that women who are exposed to polluted air during their pregnancy are more likely to give birth prematurely, and have small, low birth-weight children.

Air pollution also impacts neurodevelopment and cognitive ability and can trigger asthma, and childhood cancer. Children exposed to high levels of air pollution may be at greater risk for chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease later in life, the WHO said.

Expressing his concern over how polluted air is bringing serious threats to the health of the millions of children and hampering their growth and development, WHO’s Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said, “This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfil their full potential.”

One of the main reason why children are particularly vulnerable to the ill effects of air pollution is that they breathe more rapidly than adults and so absorb more pollutants. In addition, newborns and small children are often at home. If the family is burning fuels like wood and kerosene for cooking, heating and lighting, they would be exposed to higher levels of pollution.

“Air pollution is stunting our children’s brains, affecting their health in more ways than we suspected,” Dr Maria Neira, director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health at WHO, said in a release accompanying the report.

“WHO is supporting the implementation of health-wise policy measures like accelerating the switch to clean cooking and heating fuels and technologies, promoting the use of cleaner transport, energy-efficient housing and urban planning. We are preparing the ground for low emission power generation, cleaner, safer industrial technologies and better municipal waste management,’’ Dr Neira added.

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