Exposure To Indoor Air Pollution Can Cause Poor Pregnancy Outcomes: Study

A team of researchers from King’s College London have found a link between the number of deaths caused by indoor household pollution and the rate of eclampsia. Eclampsia is a condition where, during pregnancy, a woman develops high blood pressure which can lead to life-threatening seizures. Indoor household pollution, on the other hand, refers to the toxic fumes released while cooking or heating with solid fuels like wood, charcoal, etc. This type of pollution is more common in low- and middle-income countries, and has been linked by previous studies to adverse birth outcomes like placental hypoxia.

The researchers studied more than 2,690 cases of eclampsia across Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. They not only found a significant correlation between deaths due to indoor household pollution and eclampsia rates, but also found that the correlation was even more prominent when the eclampsia occurred at home.

“In-house cooking and household pollution may increase the risk of seizures,” Professor Andrew Shennan, one of the lead authors of the study, says. “We believe that less oxygen will get to the mother’s brain, and this may trigger a fit in women who already have pre-eclampsia. We are lucky to have such a large dataset of women with eclampsia, as it only occurs in 1 per cent of women with pre-eclampsia. This has allowed us to uncover this new finding. This could help explain observed inequalities in maternal healthcare in low- and middle-income countries. The study has been published in the International Journal of Gynecology & Obstetrics.

Shennan also pointed out that knowing these details can help prevent severe outcomes in women and save lives across the world, “We have large programmes of work in India, Sierra Leone and Zambia where many women have complications related to high blood pressure,” he says. “Our current research is aimed at identifying the women at risk but now we are looking at ways to rduce risk, including earlier delivery. This data will help us to give advice about avoiding risk at home.” The researchers next hope to examine if climate change increases risks of eclampsia and deaths due to it.

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