Abstract
The exposure of adults of reproductive age as well as pregnant women and children to environmental contaminants is of particular concern, as it can impact fertility, in utero development, pregnancy outcomes and child health. Consequently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and international societies advocate including Environmental Health (EH) in perinatal care, yet perinatal health professionals (HPs) hardly put these recommendations into practice. In 2017, a cross-sectional study was performed in a large panel of perinatal HPs in south-eastern France with the aim of painting a picture of their current attitudes, representation, knowledge, and training expectations. Quantitative and qualitative information was collected via auto-questionnaire. Questionnaires were completed by 962 participants, mainly midwives (41.1%), physicians (25.6%) and nursery nurses (11%). Indoor/outdoor air quality and endocrine disruptors were the best-mastered topics, whereas electromagnetic fields and diet gave rise to unsure responses. Overall, perinatal HPs were ill-trained and -informed about the reproductive risks linked to daily environmental exposure. HPs reported scarce knowledge, fear of patient reaction and lack of solutions as the main barriers to providing information regarding EH to the public. Our findings highlight the need to set up EH training programmes focused on scientific knowledge and to provide simple messages and tips to help perinatal HPs deliver advice to populations to mitigate exposure to environmental toxicants.
Highlights
The general population is widely exposed to hundreds of different environmental contaminants: e.g., solvents, pesticides, phthalates, and atmospheric pollutants, some of which areInt
Our results indicated that perinatal health professionals (HPs) were concerned about Environmental Health (EH) (4.21 ± 0.81, Figure 3A), being
Since 2015, several international scientific societies have urged reproductive health professionals, including obstetricians, gynaecologists, midwives, nurses, women’s health nurse practitioners, nursery nurses and all other professionals working in the field of neonatology and early infancy, to include in the clinical setting some actions to prevent exposure to harmful environmental agents
Summary
The general population is widely exposed to hundreds of different environmental contaminants: e.g., solvents, pesticides, phthalates, and atmospheric pollutants, some of which areInt. Res. Public Health 2018, 15, 2259 endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The environment, before conception and during pregnancy and infancy, is linked with adverse reproductive outcomes and pregnancy complications: miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, preterm birth, low birth weight, congenital defects, infertility, risk of later non-communicable diseases in adulthood (NCDs), and possibly transgenerational threats [3,4,5]. These notions are encapsulated in the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) hypothesis [6,7]
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