A study published recently by researchers at Columbia University and Beth Israel Medical Center has unearthed some significant findings about babies born to mothers who were pregnant and lived near the site of the World Trade Center at the time of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The babies, they discovered, were on average smaller, and were born earlier, than babies born to mothers living further from the site of the attacks.
The study was a cooperative effort led by Sally Ann Lederman at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health. Lederman and her team looked at birth weight, length and gestation periods (the length of time a pregnancy lasts) for a group of 300 full-term babies born at one of three large hospitals in Lower Manhattan to moms who were pregnant on September 11th.
The researchers found that babies born to mothers living within a 2-mile radius of ground zero at the time of the attack were on average 5.3 ounces lighter and a third of an inch shorter. Also, the babies were born an average of 3.6 days earlier than babies born to moms living further from the site of the attack.
Doctors and researchers did not know for sure the cause of the differences between “ground zero babies” and their counterparts from more distant areas. However, they speculated that the pregnancies were affected by higher-than-usual amounts of toxins in the area or the unusual amount of psychological stress their mothers experienced during pregnancy as a result of the attack. Both stress and chemical factors are accepted by doctors as potential influences on birth weight, size, and gestation periods.
Chemicals released in the form of dust or smoke at the time of the buildings’ collapse included a number of chemicals—including lead, toxic hydrocarbons known as PAHs, and polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, which are released from old electrical transformers—that are known to cause genetic damage and interfere with the growth and neurological development of infants. It is also true that when pollutants are airborne, they tend to have the strongest effect on fetuses, because their systems are less well able to filter them out than those of adults.
The study, published in the online journal Environmental Health Perspectives, will fuel the claims of concerned residents, activists, and others who fear that debris and chemicals set loose by the burning and collapse of the World Trade Center may have affected the health of people in the area. While physicians found no clearly related health problems in any of the babies, they noted that the findings of the study do suggest that the terrorist attacks had a negative effect on fetuses.
