With air pollution on the rise around the world, just breathing could put pregnant women at risk.

Most women realize that certain behaviors are bad for fetal health, so those who use cigarettes or drink regularly often stop during pregnancy. One thing pregnant women can’t stop doing though, is breathing, and according to a recent study about air pollution, that could increase their risk of developing deadly complications such as preeclampsia.

Researchers from the University of Florida found that pregnant women who endure constant exposure to air pollution are significantly more likely to develop a high blood pressure disorder during pregnancy, which causes big problems for mother and fetus.

There are very few places on Earth where air pollution isn’t an issue…even inside our homes. For many years, coal-fired power plants and fossil-fuel powered cars have been chugging air pollution into the atmosphere. This is bad news for any creature that breathes, but researchers found that heavy exposure to four of these air pollutants is especially bad for pregnant women.

“The pollutants include two specific types of fine and coarse particulate matter, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide. These inhalable particles are released from industries and forest fires and can form when gases react with each other in the air. Sulfur dioxide is emitted from power plants and industries. Most carbon monoxide is produced by car exhaust,” explains a University of Florida press release.

During the study, the researchers examined data from more than 22,000 women who gave birth in Jacksonville, Florida, between 2004 and 2005, along with environmental data from their communities. More than four percent of these women developed a hypertensive disorder during pregnancy, and even after controlling for factors like socioeconomic status, exposure to co-pollutants and smoking during pregnancy, exposure to air pollutants throughout the first two trimesters of pregnancy was found to increase risk of developing hypertensive disorders such as gestational hypertension, preeclampsia and the deadly condition it leads to, eclampsia.

On the basis of these findings, the researchers say more air pollution control is necessary to prevent dangerous complications in pregnant women and babies. Which makes it even more disheartening to learn that the U.S. Senate Committee on Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment recently killed a bill that would have allowed the Division of Air Quality to adopt rules that are more stringent than federal regulations.

Apparently when it comes to air pollution, our government thinks the status quo is good enough.

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There are times when watching what my husband calls “the idiot box” is the only option for kids who can’t jump on a bike and go exploring outdoors. But it is an option with more health consequences than we thought, according to a new study on 111 children ages 3 to 8 published in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.

We all know kids tend to become obese watching too much TV due to the tendency to snack mindlessly, but these results found the more kids watched, the higher their blood pressure, no matter the weight of the kid. In fact, of all forms of inactivity examined by researchers in the U.S. and Spain, being glued to the tube was the worst.

“These results show that sedentary behavior, and more specifically television-viewing, is related to blood pressure independent of body fat or obesity level,” says Dr. Joey Eisenmann, a kinesiologist at Michigan State University and one of the study’s co-authors.

During the course of one week, the children tested wore accelerometers, instruments that record the body’s acceleration in a vertical plane – sitting results in a score of zero, and walking and running produce progressively higher scores.

Anything under a score of 50 per day was listed as sedentary. The children were sedentary for five hours each day, and 1.5 of those hours were spent in front of a TV, computer or video game, on average.

Researchers found when they broke down screen time by activity, TV-viewing had the strongest connection with higher blood pressure. Kids watching from two to five hours of television each day had systolic and diastolic blood-pressure readings (the two numbers that indicate pressure caused by blood pumping from the top and bottom chambers of the heart, respectively) that were five to seven points higher than those of children watching less than half an hour of television a day.

“These results show that TV-viewing really is the worst of all possible sedentary activities,” says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, who was not part of the study. The American Academy of Pediatrics says children under two should not watch any television and that older children should limit their viewing to one to two hours per day.

So what makes TV less healthy than playing video games or surfing the Internet?

Among the explanations: children may be downing sweet and salty junk food while lying around and this can push up blood pressure readings; watching too close to bedtime can stimulate their brains, interfere with hormones and cause them to miss precious hours of sleep; missing sleep can lead to weight gain and hypertension because the metabolism doesn’t recharge and renew itself overnight; and content of commercials encourages overeating of the wrong types of food, which can be habit-forming throughout life.

In previous studies involving the same group of children, about 20% had developed prehypertension or hypertension – often because of weight gain.

So what is a healthy dose of television watching for children? Like everything else, moderation. One show after homework, a Saturday morning cartoon after a soccer game. And try to replace good movies with harmful commercial television packed with ads marketed to the most vulnerable viewers.

Image: Aaron Escobar

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