Parental Exposure to Pollution Harmful for Kids with Asthma
Written By Petra Rattue
Published in Medical News Today
Created on 5/23/12
Summary: Asthma is now commonly being discovered in mothers and
young children ages 6-15 because of their mother’s exposure to air pollution
during pregnancy. Pollutants found included gases like carbon monoxide and
nitrogen dioxide. After running experiments they discovered that in both boys
and girls that they had a low volume of air that can be exhaled in one second
after a full inhalation, and a low speed of the air that is exhaled immediately
after being inhaled. After these findings, scientists are convinced that air
pollution is only creating more health problems for humans, even before birth.
Who knows how far the pollution will go so it needs to be stopped immediately.
Reflection: This is a very important topic, but it does not
shock me. The items you put into your body while you are pregnant all affect
the unborn child during all stages of development, weather it is food, drugs,
or alcohol, they can be harmful. My mom said she drank Ice Tea all through her
pregnancy with me and now I love Ice Tea. What the mother does with her health
while pregnant affects your health. Air
pollution is another one of those things that is ingested by the mother that
can harm the baby. Unfortunately they do not have a choice if they want to
inhale air pollution or not. This article reminds me of in class when we
watched Gasland and the people had asthma from the air pollution caused from
fracking. It’s a terrible thing that can affect many people in the future.
Questions:
1: What can be done to help soon to be mothers?
2: What should be done about air quality all together?
3: If this problem persists, most people will be born with asthma,
and may eventually become immune to it. Should this be considered a form of
natural selection? Why or why not?
4: What could our future with air pollution look like?
5: Where do you think the majority of our air pollution
comes from? How could we stop it?
I think this is a very sad story. These babies have not even been born yet, and they are still being harmed! If we don't stop people from polluting now, there could potentially be so many more dangerous effects on people and developing babies. This should be a moral concern to transportation companies and industries, because they can hurt or kill babies.
ReplyDeleteTo answer number three, I don't think it would be a form of natural selection. Most people with asthma use inhalers, so they would still survive and be able to reproduce and create more people prone to asthma.
I know that there have been an increasing amount of birth defects, and this is probably one of the main causes. Babies are so vounerable while in their mothers, and they could be harmed or even killed. I once knew someone who became pregnant, and the baby died before it was born. That peson lives in the city, and the pollution could have been one of the reasons for the death of the baby. If these types of companies don't start to change their ways of thinking, putting babies in front of profits, they should be shut down and sued.
DeleteQuestion 2 (disregard answer to 3 please): There is very much that can be done to help combat air pollution. One thing people could do is start producing/buying electric cars. This would greatly help with the oil problem and the oil exhaust would not get in the air. Along with the electric cars, the electric companies should find alternate ways of producing energy, such as wind and hydro-electric. The alternative energy business would thrive and create thousands or millions of jobs.
This story is very eyeopening to the causes of problems among newborn babies. I think that it is partically the mothers faualt if their child is exposed to toxins during pregnancy. Hopefully, no mom would walk and have a picnic or something down by a farm that has pesticides in the air, or by a nuculear power plant while shes pregnant. Shes in complete control of her child, and it should be the parents job to care for the unborn child while it is still growing. This is why you dont see many to be mothers at bars comsuming large amounts of alcohol. Smoking also can cause many birth defects as well. Our family has lots of get togethers over hollidays and such. While my mother was pregnant with my brother, she refused to drink any beverage that contained alcohol and tried to stay away from enhailing the smoke comming from my family members that smoked. This was somewhat hard for her because usually at these parties she likes to relax and have a drink or two, but shes a nurse and has seen what things like this do, and she chose the right decision. Now I have a loving, caring brother that is healthy and quickly becoming a pest.
ReplyDeleteTo answer number 4, In the future, I think our sitiuation on air pollution would become better as we get greener and greener and find alternative ways to create energy. Also now that we know that smoking is very bad for your health this will hopefully decrease the amount of smokers that we have amoung us. In return this will hopefully decrease the amount of children that are affected by the pollutants that their mothers breath in while pregnant.
This story really shows how bad the air quality is, and it is affecting babies. That isn't good that we can't create babies without birth defects. I mean some pregnaut women will do anything for their unborn child, but how do you avoid breathing.
ReplyDeleteQuestion 1: I believe the only thing to do for mothers to be is to move some where where the air quality is better like in the suburbs, or away from the city.
The article can tell people in the world that don't care about global warming to care because if this keeps on going the majority of the population can get asthma. Imagine the death rate because of asthma attacks now since babies, children, and pregnant women are getting asthma from the polluted air.
ReplyDeleteQuestion: I will be answering question 4 and I think that the air pollution is going to be a lot worst from today because I think it's impossible to get almost everyone to stop polluting the air.
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