Wildfires Now Top Source of Unhealthy Air for Pregnant Women in U.S.

FRIDAY, Aug. 7, 2026 (HealthDay News) -- Prenatal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) decreased between 2003 and 2019 in the United States, but the contribution of wildfire smoke to prenatal PM2.5 exposure has more than doubled, according to a study published online Aug. 7 in Frontiers in Environmental Health.Menglu Liang, Ph.D., from the University of Maryland School of Public Health in College Park, and colleagues linked daily county-level PM2.5 data from 2,842 counties (2003 to 2019) to national birth certificate records covering 64.5 million live births to estimate population-based prenatal exposure at the national scale. Wildfire-related PM2.5 was separated from nonfire PM2.5. Trends were assessed across nine National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration climate regions, demographic subgroups, and counties.The researchers observed a decline in prenatal PM2.5 from 12.82 to 8.45 µg/m³ (−34.1 percent), with a steeper decline in nonfire PM2.5 (−37.2 percent). The share of wildfire more than doubled (3.71 to 8.19 percent), with improvement of 0.22 µg/m³ foregone nationally. There was essentially no change in fire-attributable exceedance days (about 14 to 15 percent of infants), while nonfire exceedance decreased 85 percent; wildfire accounted for 65 percent of remaining events. Disproportionate burdens were borne by wildland-urban interface, low-income, and American Indian/Alaska Native infants. By 2017 to 2019, wildfire contributions were nearly double in maternity hospital shortage counties than adequate-access counties."Those gains have genuinely protected pregnant people and unborn babies, and without them exposures today would be considerably worse," Liang said in a statement. "What our findings show is that wildfire smoke is offsetting a growing share of these hard-won improvements."Abstract/Full Text (subscription or payment may be required).Sign up for our weekly HealthDay newsletter

Wildfires Now Top Source of Unhealthy Air for Pregnant Women in U.S.

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