At least six new studies published in a special issue of the journal, Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, have found that the climate crisis is damaging the health of foetuses, babies and infants across the world.
In the studies, which spanned the globe from the US to Denmark, Israel and Australia, Scientists discovered that increased heat was linked to fast weight gain in babies, which increases the risk of obesity in later life.
Higher temperatures were also linked to premature birth, which can have lifelong health effects, and to increased hospital admissions of young children.
Reduced fertility has also been found to be linked to air pollution from fossil fuel burning, even at low levels. This is even as other studies found exposure to smoke from wildfires doubled the risk of a severe birth defect.
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Prof Gregory Wellenius, who edited the issue with Amelia Wesselink, both at the Boston University school of public health, in the US, said that “from the very beginning, from preconception, through early childhood into adolescence, we’re starting to see important impacts of climate hazards on health”.
Speaking further, he said “This is a problem that affects everybody, everywhere,” he said. “These extreme events are going to become even more likely and more severe with continued climate change and this research shows why they’re important to us, not in the future, but today.”
Scientists in Israel who analysed 200,000 births, found that babies exposed to the highest 20% of night-time temperatures had a 5% higher risk of fast weight gain. They also found a link between heat and rapid weight gain in the first year of life.
The researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem said that the work has “important implications for both climate change and the obesity epidemic” because infancy is critical in determining adult weight and because obese people may suffer more in extreme heat.
Globally, over 18% of children are either overweight or obese and a possible mechanism for the rapid infant weight gain is that less fat is burned to maintain body temperature when the ambient temperature is higher.
According to a California study, a mother’s exposure to wildfires in the month before conception doubled the risk of a birth defect called gastroschisis, where a baby’s intestines and sometimes other organs protrude out of the body through a small hole in the skin.
The scientists also examined two million births, 40% of them to mothers living within 15 miles of a wildfire and the resulting air pollution, which was already known to be harmful to pregnant women and their foetuses.
Additionally, they found a 28% rise in the risk of birth defect in mothers living close to wildfires in the first trimester of pregnancy.
