A new study by researchers at USC, including LA Fire HEALTH Study Consortium member, Rima Habre, has found that exposure to wildfire smoke and heat stress can negatively affect birth outcomes for women, especially in climate-vulnerable neighborhoods.
The investigation was led by USC postdoctoral researcher Roxana Khalili, PhD, and was published this week in Environmental Science & Technology. The paper is one of the first to show that living in areas more susceptible to the harmful effects of climate-related exposures can significantly alter the effects of heat stress on adverse birth outcomes, even among women exposed to these conditions in the month before becoming pregnant.
“We already know that poor air quality is associated with adverse health outcomes and that pregnant women and fetuses are especially vulnerable,” said Khalili, a researcher in the department of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and lead author of the study. “Our knowledge about the specific effects of wildfire smoke during pregnancy has been limited. We know even less about the impact of these hazards right around or before conception.”
Khalili worked alongside Rima Habre, director of USC’s CLIMA Center to explore the associations between exposure to wildfire smoke and heat stress on infant health. They used data from the MADRES cohort (Maternal and Developmental Risks from Environmental and Social Stressors), an ongoing study of pregnant women in Los Angeles.
“Where you live makes a difference in your health,” said Khalili. “So does the timing of your exposure during or immediately before pregnancy. We wanted to better understand how these risks might differ for women who lived in neighborhoods that experience more climate related stressors and have fewer resources to deal with them.”
“As the recent Los Angeles fires have demonstrated, infrastructure, socioeconomic, and health vulnerabilities can combine with excessive climate and environmental factors to magnify health risks,” said Habre. “It is only by looking at the cumulative impacts of burdens communities are facing, now and into the future, that we can start to truly quantify health risks of climate hazards and target interventions to strengthen community resilience.”
Read the press release about the study on the Keck School of Medicine of USC website.
Read the paper in. Environmental Science & Technology
About the study
The study was completed before the LA Fire HEALTH Study and was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, National Institutes of Health (NIH) [P50MD015705, P50ES026086, R01ES027409, P30ES007048], the Environmental Protection Agency [83615801], the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NIH) [P20HL176204] and the USC Provost Fund.