Educational attainment and self-reported environmental exposures of pregnant women living in Nairobi, Kenya

Christopher Zuidema, Priscillah Wanini Edemba, Anne M Riederer, Vincent K Kipter, Allison R Sherris, Lewis Olweywe, Judith Adhiambo, Brendah Isavwa, Erica A Wetzler, Barbra A Richardson, John Kinuthia, Michael J Gatari, Elizabeth Maleche-Obimbo, Edmund Seto, Catherine J Karr, Sarah Benki-Nugent and Faridah H Were

PLOS Global Public Health, 2025, vol. 5, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Environmental exposures experienced by pregnant women living in cities of low- and middle-income countries are poorly described. We collected information on housing characteristics, household and ambient air pollution, and work-related exposures through questionnaires in a cohort of 400 pregnant women in Nairobi, Kenya and examined exposures in relation to educational attainment, a proxy for socioeconomic status. Participants were median 26 years of age, mostly married (85%) and self-described homemakers (54%), with at least some secondary school education (74%). Housing generally consisted of one room (58%) with one window (57%), access to electricity (94%), and no piped water (88%). Participants commonly reported living near sewers (55%) and the Dandora dumpsite (34%). Liquified petroleum gas (LPG) was the primary domestic cooking fuel, followed by kerosene, with 65% and 32%, respectively, reporting use most days to daily. Most participants reported exposure to outdoor cooking smoke (73%) and vehicle exhaust (66%) most days to daily. Employed participants (N = 151) reported work-related exposure to vehicle exhaust (68%), cigarettes (37%), marijuana (33%), dusty/unpaved roads (32%), welding (30%), and the dumpsite (30%) most days to daily. Exposure to rubbish burning was reported by 4.5% of participants at home, by 24% outdoors, and by 25% related to work most days to daily. Relative to women with primary school education or lower, women with at least secondary school education were more likely to use LPG (p

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/artic ... journal.pgph.0005453 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/globalpublichealth/artic ... 05453&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pgph00:0005453

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0005453

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Global Public Health from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by globalpubhealth ().