Health Issues Involving 9/11 Babies

Doctors know that low birth weight can lead to developmental problems, and that low birth weight can arise from a pregnant mother's exposure to air pollution. Researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center, both located in New York City, tracked pregnant women who were around the World Trade Center during and after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks that destroyed the center's Twin Towers.

Woman with Children Living in Poverty

The researchers compared 187 pregnant women who were near the World Trade Center either on the day of the attacks or at some point during the following three weeks with another 2,300 pregnant women from other parts of New York City, which covers 301 square miles. The women in the study were at least 30 years old, mostly white, with partners, and college-educated. The researchers controlled for differences in age, smoking habits, post-traumatic stress and other factors. The only way in which proximity to the World Trade Center was found to make a difference, according to Philip Landrigan, lead author of the study, was that 8.2% of the babies in the World Trade Center group were in the lowest 10% of birth weights for their gestational age (the time from conception to birth), compared to only 3.9% in the control group.

To find out whether the pollution will have long-term effects, the researchers plan to monitor the children's development using IQ and other markers. Beate Ritz of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) says that the study shows "a strong effect" for such a small sample of women. However, she cautions that the study is both preliminary and inherently flawed. She points out that the study subjects chose to participate in the study-that is, they weren't randomly selected. There may be some unknown factor, related to the women's desire to take part in the study, that contributed to the study's results. And, most of the women were over 30, an age at which adverse birth outcomes are more likely, and women are more susceptible to environmental hazards; hence, the effects attributed to air pollution may be partly the result of the participants' ages. There may not have been such a difference in birth weight if the study subjects had been younger women.

Sources

"A Pregnant Mother's Diet May Turn the Genes Around." Sandra Blakeslee. New York Times , October 7, 2003, page F1.

"Transposable Elements: Targets for Early Nutritional Effects on Epigenetic Gene Regulation." Robert Waterland and Randy Jirtle. Molecular and Cell Biology, August 2003, page 5293.

"Exposure at Ground Zero Is Linked to Smaller Babies." Patricia Callahan. Wall Street Journal, August 6, 2003, page D3.