Women exposed to air pollution during pregnancy are more likely to give birth to children with heart defects, researchers reported on Saturday. They said their study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, is the first definitively to link air pollution with birth defects.   

    周六，有研究人員報告，接觸污染空氣的孕婦很可能生下患有心臟缺陷的孩子。他們說，這項刊登在《美國流行病學雜志》上的研究首次明確地提出空氣污染與出生缺陷有關。 

    “THERE SEEMS to be something in the air that can harm developing fetuses,”Beate Ritz, an epidemiologist who headed the study, said in a statement.     

    領導這項研究的流行病學家Beate Ritz在一次聲明中說：“空氣中似乎有某種東西會傷害正在發育的胎兒。” 

    The team, at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Public Health and the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program, said the two pollutants they measured were carbon monoxide and ozone - produced by the city’s well-known traffic jams.     

    洛杉磯加尼福尼亞大學公共衛生學院和加州出生缺陷監測計劃的研究小組說，他們測定的兩種污染物是一氧化碳和臭氧，城市中人人皆知的塞車生產生了這兩種污染物。 

    “The greater a woman’s exposure to one of these two pollutants in the critical second month of pregnancy, the greater the chance that her child would have one of these serious cardiac birth defects,” Ritz said.     

    Ritz說：“在妊娠關鍵的第二個月，孕婦接觸到這兩種污染物的任一種越多，她孩子出生后患某種嚴重先天心臟缺陷的機率就越高。” 

    “More research needs to be done, but these results present the first compelling evidence that air pollution may play a role in causing some birth defects.”    

     “雖然還需要做更多的研究，但這些研究結果首次提供了令人信服的證據，表明空氣污染在造成某些出生缺陷時可能起了作用。 

    Ritz’s team compared air pollution monitoring data from the Environmental Protection Agency with information from the California Birth Defects Monitoring Program - a statewide database on birth defects.     

    Ritz的研究小組用環境保護局提供的污染監測數據，與加州出生缺陷監測計劃（一所全州范圍的出生缺陷數據庫）提供的信息相比較。 

    They looked at 9,000 babies born from 1987 to 1993. Pregnant women who were exposed to the highest levels of ozone and carbon monoxide because their homes were close to busy freeways were three times as likely to have a child with certain heart defects as women breathing the cleanest air.    

     他們觀察了1987年至1993年出生的9000名孩子，發現與呼吸最清潔空氣的婦女相比，住在車流如織的高速公路附近，并接觸最高濃度臭氧和一氧化碳的孕婦生下患有某種心臟缺陷孩子的可能性要高出3倍。 

    The researchers said it was not certain carbon monoxide and ozone that were directly causing the defects. They could be a “marker” - something associated with the real cause.     

    研究人員說，該研究不能確定是否一氧化碳和臭氧直接造成這種缺陷。它們可能是一種“標志物”--是某種與真正原因有關的東西)。 

    But she said they were unable to evaluate other potential risk factors for birth defects, including smoking, occupational exposures, vitamin supplement use, diet and obesity.     

    但是，她說她們沒能評價可能造成出生缺陷的其它危險因素，如吸煙、職業接觸、維生素攝入、膳食和肥胖。