Pollution and children’s development.  It’s a topic bubbling up in the media in light of studies linking polluted air to decreased mental capacity and premature birth in two U.S. cities: New York and Los Angeles.

The New York study will be published in August in the journal Pediatrics.

CNN’s Sanjay Gupta spoke to the authors of the study and asked how people can protect themselves from pollution.

“How do we know how to protect ourselves without overdoing it, be sensible about this?
I think that’s the key, being sensible, not doing panicked, but doing things that are reasonable.
She went on to say, closing windows, planning your walking routes when you go outside.”

The Huffington Post turned to neuroscientist Dan Agin for this policy level perspective.

“Too many people avoid any reality that makes them uncomfortable until it's too late to fix a problem. If environmental toxins are harming children before they are even born, we need to know about it, and do something about it, and stop pretending that all environmental effects occur after birth and none before birth.”

In Los Angeles, Environmental Health Perspectives found that the risk for delivery when the fetus is less than 30 weeks old increased by as much as 128% for women exposed to the highest levels of traffic generated smog.

The LA Times reported on that study and environmentalist Paul Taylor of Examiner.com commented that the study was unnecessarily alarmist.

“Please stop the fear mongering. Air quality in Los Angeles is much improved since its regulation in the 1970s...21st century environmentalism has abandoned scientific rigor because the packaging of partisan political narratives is a more powerful propaganda tool in an age of superficial pop-cultural politics and gullible media complicity.”

So, what do you think?  Does evidence of air pollution harming children’s development change  the your view on the subject of urban air pollution or is this fear mongering?