Listen to this article

On Tuesday, the world leaders will turn their focus to gender at the UN global climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said women are globally more vulnerable to the effects of climate change than men. They make up a majority of the world’s poor and depend most on natural resources. One group of pregnant women in the US is at risk. Increasing global temperatures and emissions impact of climate change reflect negative effects on public health. Point to be noted that more pollutants from automobiles, fossil fuel plants, and smoke from wildfires degrades air quality. It clearly indicates a large number of populations are at risk, such as pregnant women and developing fetuses. They are more likely to suffer from cardiac disease, respiratory disease, and puts stress on mental health.

A 2020 JAMA Network review assessed more than 32 million US births and said that climate-related exacerbation of air pollution and heat exposure significantly increases the risk to maternal, fetal, and infant health. Researchers found consistent evidence for the first time in the US. The head of the air and climate epidemiology section of the California Environmental Protection Agency and co-author of the JAMA study, Rupa Basu said that pollution in the air and heat affects pregnancy outcomes including stillbirth, low birth weight, and preterm delivery rates. Microscopic air pollutants have the ability to go deep into a mother’s lungs, threatening her pulmonary health. Pollutants can cross into the placenta, leading to inflammation that can cause gestational diabetes or preeclampsia. Extreme heat can stress the mother and trigger reactions from dizziness to cardiac arrest.

However, the review also confirmed that mothers most threatened are those with asthma and minorities, especially Black women. The chief of birth equity innovation at the National Birth Equity Collaborative, Kelly Davis said, “Pregnancy is a natural stress test. So if folks are already stressed through environmental racism, environmental injustice. Their stress is only exacerbated during the very fragile time of pregnancy and childbirth”. She added, “Oftentimes, climate change [goals are] so lofty and all of these things are important, but they erase the emergency and environmental concerns that Black women and pregnant people are facing every day”. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Black and Indigenous women in the US are 2 to 3 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women. There is more public information about protecting pets from extreme heat than there is about pregnant women.