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If you are child growing up in India, especially in its teeming urban centres, you could die in the womb or as a newborn or have restricted development owing to the all-pervasive air pollution in the region, especially in the winter months.
That is because a pregnant woman exposed to air pollution can suffer from a variety of effects. These include low birthweight (LBW), preterm delivery, and stillbirth.
Down To Earth had analysed 25 research studies and papers published between 2018 and October 2023, all of which indicated the dangers to children due to air pollution.
For instance, one pan-India study, released in April 2022, found a strong correlation between infant death and exposure to dangerous PM2.5 levels during the third trimester.
Air pollution killed over 116,000 newborns in India in 2020 within 27 days of their birth according to the State of Global Air 2020. That means a newborn child in India dies due to air pollution once every five minutes.
Even more damaging are the effects on the body composition of children due to air pollution. Again, there are a number of studies available to prove this.
A study by researchers from Germany’s Heidelberg University and France’s University of Rennes published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management showed that air pollution has a negative impact on children’s development and is linked to stunting.
One 2018 study conducted in Tamil Nadu found that a 10-μg/m3 (microgram per cubic metre) increase in particulate matter (PM2.5) exposures during pregnancy was linked to a 4 gram drop in birthweight and a 2 per cent rise in the prevalence of LBW.
Indeed, research published in May 2022 showed that if average pollution levels were reduced to World Health Organization-recommended levels, the percentages of stunted and severely stunted children in India would drop by 10.4 and 5.17 percentage points, respectively.
A study published in the journal Nature on October 31, 2023, showed that anaemia, acute respiratory infection, and LBW prevalence increased by 10 per cent, 11 per cent and 5 per cent respectively, among children under five in India for every 10 μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 exposure.