High traffic roads and adverse birth outcomes: comparing births upwind and downwind of the same road

Abstract

Traffic-related air pollution is a major concern for perinatal health. Determining causal associations, however, is difficult because high-traffic areas tend to correspond with lower socioeconomic neighborhoods and other environmental exposures. To overcome confounding, we compared pregnant individuals living downwind and upwind of the same high-traffic road. We leveraged vital statistics data for Texas from 2007 to 2016 (n = 3 570 272 births) and computed hourly wind estimates for residential addresses within 500 m of high-traffic roads (ie, annual average daily traffic >25 000 vehicles) (10.9% of births). We matched pregnant individuals predominantly upwind with pregnant neighbors downwind of the same road segment (n = 37 631 pairs). Living downwind was associated with a decrease of 11.6 g (95% CI, -18.01 to -5.21) in term birth weight. No associations were observed with low term birth weight, preterm birth, or very preterm birth. In distance-stratified models, living downwind within 50 m was associated with a decrease of 36.3 g (95% CI, -67.74 to -4.93) in term birth weight and living 51-100 m downwind was associated with an odds ratio of 3.68 (95% CI, 1.71-7.90) for very preterm birth. These results suggest traffic air pollution is associated with adverse birth outcomes, with steep distance decay gradients around major roads. This article is part of a Special Collection on Environmental Epidemiology.

Keywords: air pollution; birth outcomes; instrumental variable; traffic; wind.