SALT LAKE CITY — A study published last month from the University of Utah states that ozone pollution could be having a harmful effect on the development of unborn children in the Beehive State.
Research from the peer-reviewed study found there was a strong link between a pregnant mother's ozone exposure and increases in the chance the baby develops an intellectual disability.
FOX 13 News spoke with Dr. Brian Moench, the president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment about what the study found.
"Those kinds of disabilities can be things like autism, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities of any kind, but this dovetails very nicely into literally hundreds of other research papers that have been able to establish that air pollution of all types, particulate matter and ozone, are a significant risk factor for impaired organ development across the board," said Moench.
According to the university, researchers from the study discovered the second trimester of pregnancy was the most critical period for ozone exposure. They went on to say that exposures in all pregnancy stages corresponded with an elevated risk of intellectual disabilities.
"At that stage, where researchers found the most effect during the 2nd trimester, the fetus is developing or adding 250,000 brain cells per minute, reaching a total of about 100 billion, so if there's any sort of interruption or impaired vascular delivery of nutrition from the mother to the fetus, you can see that there could be potentially some developmental problems," said Moench.
According to the university, the team of researchers made use of in-depth information from the Utah Population database, which is maintained by the University of Utah's Huntsman Cancer Institute.
The study also used data linked to children born with intellectual disabilities from 2003 through 2014, as well as their siblings and population control.
