Exclusive: Impacts include premature births and birth defects and affect everybody, everywhere, say researchers
. They found a 28% rise in the risk of the birth defect in mothers living close to wildfires in the first trimester of pregnancy.Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images
“The risk of [premature] birth is likely to increase with the expected increase in global temperatures and heatwaves – this is a potentially serious concern,” said the researchers, led by Edward Jegasothy at the University of Sydney.analysed 200,000 births from 2007-2011 in Harris County, Texas – which includes Houston – where people are accustomed to heat. The period included Texas’s hottest summer on record in 2011.
Wellenius said: “Even moderate levels of heat can affect the developing foetus, pregnancy complications, and children and adolescents. Although the risk to an individual is modest, because so many people are exposed, the total number of excess events, whether they be premature births or deaths, is substantial.”increased the number of admissions of young children to emergency departments
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