Unborn babies absorb air pollution

It’s shocking how particles of pollution not only enter the body and end up in its finest recesses but they also find their way into unborn babies.

They have particles of black soot in their developing lungs and other vital organs as early as the first trimester of pregnancy (three months).

Previous studies have detected black carbon (soot) nanoparticles in the mother’s placenta, but for the first time researchers have shown they cross the placenta-foetus barrier into unborn babies.

Aberdeen University scientists examined 60 mothers and babies from Aberdeen and the Grampian region, as well as tissue samples from 36 foetuses, which had aborted at between seven and 20 weeks.

It’s worrying they found soot particles in all mothers and newborns, and in the livers, lungs and brains of the aborted foetuses, in amounts proportional to the mother’s exposure to pollution.

“We found that maternally inhaled carbonaceous air pollution particles can cross the placenta and then translocate into human foetal organs during gestation,” says the team’s report in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health.

“These findings are especially concerning because this window of exposure is key to organ development.”