Air Pollution In South Korea Linked to Birth Defects

Here is something to think about for anyone thinking of living long term and raising a family in South Korea:

The number of South Korean babies with birth defects has increased significantly since the early 1990s, likely due to traffic-related air pollutants and endocrine disruptors, a study showed Monday.  The report, by Inha University’s Social and Preventive Medicine department, researched the national health insurance data of 403,250 infants aged 0-1 living in Korea’s seven metropolitan areas between 2009 and 2010. It found that 5.5 percent of all infants researched during the period had birth defects, an increase from the 3.3 percent of those born between 1993 and 1994.

Among all birth defects reported in the period of 2009-2010, hypospadias — a birth defect of the urethra where the urinary opening is not on the head of the male genital — had the highest increase rate of all birth defects from 1993-2010. The prevalence rate of the abnormality increased from 0.7 per 10,000 in 1993-1994 to 9.9 per 10,000 in 2009-2010. Meanwhile, the number of cases of cryptorchidism, the absence of one or both testes from the scrotum, also increased significantly from 2.6 per 10,000 to 29.1 per 10,000.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but I always wondered what long term exposure to the yellow dust polluted with heavy metals from China would do to people over the long term.