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Dec 02, 2021 1 min, 6 secs

Lead, mercury and other pollutants could be affecting the ratio of boys to girls born each year, according to a study published Thursday in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Pollutants could be preventing some pregnancies from coming to term, with imbalances in how they affect each sex, said Andrey Rzhetsky, a professor of medicine and genetics at the University of Chicago and a lead author on the study. .

Rzhetsky and his colleagues suspect chemical compounds could play a role in terminating pregnancies and that the effects are more pronounced for either girls or boys for reasons not yet known.  .

The ratio of boys to girls is typically close to even

“The impacts of environmental chemicals on the developing fetus and child are pretty profound and cross different body systems,” Emily Barrett, an associate professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at Rutgers University, said

The strength of this new research is in its size, Barrett, who was not involved in the study, said

It’s possible other pollutants or factors not included in the study could confound the results, too, Barrett said

Still, the study adds to a growing body of evidence that pollution has negative effects on pregnancy and that these effects are important enough to skew nationwide data on something so core to the human experience as the proportion of boys and girls

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