Women Near Twin Towers Had Smaller Babies, Study Finds

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-babies9sep09.story
THE NATION
Women Near Twin Towers Had Smaller Babies, Study Finds
By Marla Cone
Times Staff Writer

September 9, 2004

Babies born to women who were pregnant and living near the World Trade Center when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred were smaller and had shorter gestation periods than those whose mothers lived elsewhere in New York, according to a study published Wednesday.

Physicians theorized that the newborns were affected in the womb by exposure to toxic dust and fumes wafting from ground zero, by their mothers' psychological stress, or perhaps a combination of the two.

The study, paid for by privately funded charities and federal grants, confirmed the fears of community activists concerned that contaminants unleashed by the attack and cleanup had harmed people living nearby.

Researchers from Columbia University and Beth Israel Medical Center studied the full-term babies of 300 women who were pregnant on Sept. 11, 2001, and gave birth at three large hospitals in Lower Manhattan.

The children born to women living within a two-mile radius of ground zero "showed significant decrements in term birth weight and birth length" compared with infants born to women who lived farther away, according to the study published online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

On average, the babies weighed 5.3 ounces less and measured one-third of an inch shorter.

In addition, women in the first trimester at the time delivered their babies earlier, by 3.6 days on average, than women who were in later stages of pregnancy — regardless of how far they lived or worked from the World Trade Center. The babies also had slightly smaller head circumferences, a result of their shorter gestation.<snip>