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，有研究人员报告，接触污染空气的孕妇很可能生下患有心脏缺陷的孩子。他们说，这项刊登在《美国流行病学杂志》上的研究首次明确地提出空气污染与出生缺陷有关。 

    “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.     

    领导这项研究的流行病学家Beate Ritz在一次声明中说：“空气中似乎有某种东西会伤害正在发育的胎儿。” 

    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.     

    洛杉矶加尼福尼亚大学公共卫生学院和加州出生缺陷监测计划的研究小组说，他们测定的两种污染物是一氧化碳和臭氧，城市中人人皆知的塞车生产生了这两种污染物。 

    “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说：“在妊娠关键的第二个月，孕妇接触到这两种污染物的任一种越多，她孩子出生后患某种严重先天心脏缺陷的机率就越高。” 

    “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.”    

     “虽然还需要做更多的研究，但这些研究结果首次提供了令人信服的证据，表明空气污染在造成某些出生缺陷时可能起了作用。 

    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的研究小组用环境保护局提供的污染监测数据，与加州出生缺陷监测计划（一所全州范围的出生缺陷数据库）提供的信息相比较。 

    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.    

     他们观察了1987年至1993年出生的9000名孩子，发现与呼吸最清洁空气的妇女相比，住在车流如织的高速公路附近，并接触最高浓度臭氧和一氧化碳的孕妇生下患有某种心脏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.     

    研究人员说，该研究不能确定是否一氧化碳和臭氧直接造成这种缺陷。它们可能是一种“标志物”--是某种与真正原因有关的东西)。 

    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，她说她们没能评价可能造成出生缺陷的其它危险因素，如吸烟、职业接触、维生素摄入、膳食和肥胖。