Winter Air Pollution from Domestic Coal Fired Heating in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, Is Strongly Associated with a Major Seasonal Cyclic Decrease in Successful Fecundity

Abstract

Pollution of the environment is increasing and threatens the health and wellbeing of adults and children around the globe. The impact of air pollution on pulmonary and cardiovascular disease has been well documented, but it also has a deleterious effect on reproductive health. Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, has one of the highest levels of air pollution in the world. During the extreme winters when temperatures routinely fall below −20 °C the level of air pollution can reach 80 times the WHO recommended safe levels. Heating mainly comes from coal, which is burned both in power stations, and in stoves in the traditional Ger housing. We studied the impact of air pollution on conception rates and birth outcomes in Ulaanbaatar using a retrospective analysis of health data collected from the Urguu Maternity hospital in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Daily levels of SO2, NO2, PM10, and PM2.5 were collected from the government Air Quality Monitoring Stations in Ulaanbaatar for the same period as the study. In January, the month of highest pollution, there is a 3.2-fold decrease in conceptions that lead to the successfully delivered infants compared to October. The seasonal variations in conceptions resulting in live births in this study in Ulaanbaatar are shown to be 2.03 ± 0.20 (10-sigma) times greater than those in the Denmark/North America study of Wesselink et al., 2020. The two obvious differences between Ulaanbaatar and Europe/North America are pollution and temperature both of which are extreme in Ulaanbaatar. The extreme low temperature is mitigated by burning coal, which is the main source of domestic heat especially in the ger districts. This drives the level of pollution so the two are inextricably linked. Infants conceived in the months of June-October had the greatest cumulative PM2.5 pollution exposure over total gestation, yet these were also the pregnancies with the lowest PM2.5 exposure for the month of conception and three months prior to conception. The delivered-infant conception rate shows a markedly negative association with exposure to PM2.5 prior to and during the first month of pregnancy. This overall reduction in fecundity of the population of Ulaanbaatar is therefore a preventable health risk. It is of great consequence that the air pollution in Ulaanbaatar affects health over an entire lifespan including reproductive health. This could be remedied with a clean source of heating.