Pollution link with infant mortality rate.
DEAR Editor, The link between air pollution and higher rates of infant deaths has been known by the Government for almost a century and yet I've been unable to find a newspaper report about it.Birmingham has been named (Post, t May 8) as having very high pollution levels and has also been linked with high infant mortality rates.
When Dr William Brend analysed the 1914 infant mortality rates for all parts of the British Isles, he saw that poverty couldn't be a causal factor but that air pollution must be.
County Roscommon had the lowest rate at 38 per 1,000 live births and Ashton-under-Lyne the highest rate in the British Isles at 184 per 1,000.
Birmingham's rate was 122 per 1,000 live births.
After the UK switched from toxic "town gas" to clean North Sea Gas, there was a rapid fall in infant death rates, which was noticed by ONS and others without any thought about what might have triggered such an event: "A " t national level in England and Wales, infant mortality rates fell rapidly from the early 1970s and into the 1980s."
Turkey switched to natural gas after the UK and the following was noted in a study published in January 2013: "Our results indicate that the rate of increase in the use of natural gas has resulted in a significant reduction in the rate of infant mortality in Turkey."
Michael Ryan Shrewsbury
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| Title Annotation: | Letters |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Birmingham Post (England) |
| Geographic Code: | 4EUUK |
| Date: | May 22, 2014 |
| Words: | 239 |
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