Uc Science Today

Pregnant women exposed to social stress and environmental chemicals, have a higher risk of prenatal developmental problems and low-birth-weight babies. Study leader Tracey Woodruff, an environmental health scientist at the University of California, San Francisco, says the key here is the combined effect of the risk factors. “Our study was evaluating the literature to understand what the combined effects were of being exposed to environmental chemicals and stresses that people may experience during life. Stresses that are due to things like living in poor living circumstances, issue that might be due to discrimination like racism, etc. or poverty." Babies born to mothers exposed to these hardships are at higher risk of developing multiple diseases in childhood and having cardiovascular problems and diabetes in adulthood. “We have to do a better job of figuring out how do these varies factors that influence somebody’s health work together rather than just studying them separately, because they might be in