ArticlePublic health2023
Breathing in the future: prenatal exposure to air pollution and infants' health outcomes in the USA.
Article in Public health, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gestational Hypertension as a Mediator of Prenatal Ozone Exposure and Term Low Birth Weight: Birth Cohort Study.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Article
- Fetal rights from Islamic and contemporary legal perspectives: a scoping review.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- Neonatal intensive care admissions and exposure to satellite-derived air pollutants in the United States, 2018.Scientific reports · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesThis study aimed to investigate the impact of air pollution on birth outcomes in the USA over several decades. STUDY
designApproximately 70 million birth records were assessed for the years 1980-2020. This study focussed on seven measures of birth outcomes, including birth weight, low birth weight, very low birth weight, full-term birth weight, foetal growth, gestational age and very premature birth.
methodsAn instrumental variable identification strategy was used that exploited within county-month and within month-year of birth variations in exposure to precipitation-induced changes in air pollution.
resultsAir pollution was found to have negative and large effects on a wide range of birth outcomes. The study findings suggest that a one-standard-deviation increase in ozone was associated with a 6.4% and 12.8% increase (from the mean) in the proportion of low birth weight and very preterm birth infants, respectively. Further analyses suggest that these effects were heterogeneous across trimesters of pregnancy and reveal larger impacts during the second and third trimesters.
conclusionsThe results suggest that the ordinary least square estimates of previous studies considerably underestimate the true effects of pollution on birth outcomes. Policies that aim to improve the health capital of future generations should allocate more resources and initiatives to improving environmental air quality.
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Registered trials
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