低劑量放射性物質對新生兒健康及死胎率的影響

Abstract

健康議題自古便十分受到重視，隨著知識普及醫療支出日益增加，現代人也對此愈來愈加關注，而新生兒健康一直是在這領域受到相當著重的分野。胚胎起源假說便認為胚胎時期受到的外在環境不良會導致新生兒健康及其長期發展受到影響。 在過去的文獻中對於胚胎起源假說已多有著墨，但多著重於貧窮與疾病等外力，本文則是以車諾比核電廠事故為契機，藉由美國資料探究低劑量放射性物質對於新生兒的影響。 我們發現在新生兒健康方面，低劑量放射性物質雖然有影響，但影響效果十分低微，幾可忽略不計。這或許是因為胎兒在母體中受到放射線物質影響時，能夠存活下來的便已是較為健康的胎兒，對此我們發現，低劑量放射性物質會造成的影響似乎存在於懷孕週數較低的胎兒，對於已過了一定週數的胎兒影響是不具有影響力的。

Since ancient times, health issues has been an issue of importance, and with the popularization of health-related knowledge and the increase in medical expenditures, people in the modern world have paid even more attention to this issue, in particular the health of newborn babies. For instance, the Fetal Origin Hypothesis (FOH) posits that baleful influences from the environment during the fetal period will have effects on the newborn’s health and long term development. Previous literature has already covered a lot of research on FOH, but the research mostly focuses on external forces such as poverty and diseases. This paper uses instead the Chernobyl incident as a starting point and uses data from the U.S. databases to explore the influences low dosages of radiation have on newborn babies. We have that discovered that in terms of the newborn’s health, low dosages of radiation do hold some effects, although the influences of the radiation is minimal to the degree of being negligible. Perhaps this is because when the children are affected by the radiation, those that can survive are the healthier babies. The effects of radiation hold more sway upon children in the first few weeks of pregnancy and less on children that have been conceived for more than a few weeks.