Impact of air pollution on stunting among children in Africa

Undernutrition is a global public health crisis, causing nearly half of deaths for children under age 5 years. Little is known regarding the impact of air pollution in-utero and early childhood on health outcomes related to undernutrition. The aim of our study is to evaluate the association of prenatal and early-life exposure to PM and child malnutrition as captured by the height-for-age z-score (HAZ), and stunting in 32 countries in Africa. We also evaluated critical windows of susceptibility during pregnancy to each environmental risk. We linked nationally representative anthropometric data from 58 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) (n = 264,207 children