Chinese babies born in low-smog Olympics year 23 grams heavier
Anti-smog drive by Beijing boosted the average weight by 23 grams, study finds
Beijing's tough air pollution reduction measures for the 2008 Olympics had an unintended benefit: heavier baby birth weights, a study has reported.
"These findings not only illustrate one of the many significant health consequences of pollution, but also demonstrate that this phenomenon can be reversed," said David Rich, the study's lead author and epidemiologist with New York's University of Rochester Medical Centre.
Babies born to mothers whose eighth month of pregnancy fell between August 8 and September 24, 2008, were an average 23 grams heavier than those born in the same period in the years before and after.
"Twenty-three grams doesn't seem big … but for a baby with already very low weight it's a big difference," said Duke University's Professor Jim Zhang Junfeng, who worked on the report.
The study, published in the journal , looked at birth data from 83,672 babies who were born full-term and whose mothers lived in the Xicheng, Haidian, Fengtai and Chaoyang districts of Beijing between 2007 and 2009.
For about 5,000 of these women, the last month of pregnancy coincided with the weeks of the Olympics. Similar numbers gave birth during the same period in 2007 and 2009 when there were no pollution reduction measures, said Zhang.
Babies born in 2008 had roughly an average weight of 3.4kg, Zhang added.
