The Chinese government reduced pollution levels for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and women who were pregnant during that time gave birth to larger babies compared to those who were pregnant before or after the games.
“The results of this study demonstrate a clear association between changes in air pollutant concentrations and birth weight,” says David Q. Rich, an epidemiologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) departments of public health sciences and environmental medicine and lead author of the study.
