# Exploring Effects of Household Air Pollution on Pregnant Mothers and Their Offspring in Africa: A Scoping Review

## TL;DR

This review explores how household air pollution affects pregnant women and their children in Africa, highlighting the need for clean energy and policies to protect vulnerable populations.

## Contribution

The study provides a scoping review of household air pollution's effects on pregnant women in Africa, emphasizing socioeconomic and gender factors.

## Key findings

- Socioeconomic status and gender roles significantly influence pregnant women's exposure to household air pollution.
- Household air pollution leads to adverse pregnancy outcomes and long-term health risks for mothers and children.
- There is a need for targeted interventions and future research on mitigating air pollution in African contexts.

## Abstract

Public health relevance: How does this work relate to a public health issue?
This scoping review addresses household air pollution as a critical public health concern that leads to preventable mortality and morbidity in pregnant women, resulting in negative pregnancy outcomes and long-term health implications for both mothers and their children.

This scoping review addresses household air pollution as a critical public health concern that leads to preventable mortality and morbidity in pregnant women, resulting in negative pregnancy outcomes and long-term health implications for both mothers and their children.

Public health significance: Why is this work of significance to public health?
Household air pollution is a potentially modifiable environmental risk factor that leads to adverse health outcomes for mothers and their children. The findings from this review are important for guiding public health efforts to protect pregnant women and lower unnecessary illness and death rate.

Household air pollution is a potentially modifiable environmental risk factor that leads to adverse health outcomes for mothers and their children. The findings from this review are important for guiding public health efforts to protect pregnant women and lower unnecessary illness and death rate.

Public health implications: What are the key implications or messages for practitioners, policymakers, and/or researchers in public health?
The findings highlight the need to integrate household air pollution screening, risk awareness, and clean household energy interventions into maternal and prenatal health programmes, with policies that prioritize low-income households and gender-sensitive approaches.

The findings highlight the need to integrate household air pollution screening, risk awareness, and clean household energy interventions into maternal and prenatal health programmes, with policies that prioritize low-income households and gender-sensitive approaches.

In recent decades, air pollution has been the cause of major mortality and morbidity worldwide. WHO attributes about 4.2 million of these to ambient pollution and 3.2 million to household sources. Pregnant women are no exception to those mortalities. Therefore, this review aims to explore and critique existing evidence on the implications of household air pollution in homes among pregnant women. In this review, we adhered to the 2018 PRISMA Scoping Review guidelines. We followed the iterative steps. The time horizon of the literature was 2014–2024. The literature search was conducted on databases such as ProQuest, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, and PubMed. Only 19 publications met the inclusion criteria and were critically analyzed using thematic analysis technique. The review yielded two themes: (1) practices that predispose pregnant women to household air pollution and (2) impacts of household air pollution on the health of pregnant women. The study highlighted that socioeconomic status and gender roles play a vital role in exposure to air pollution among pregnant women. Therefore, this review finds it vital for future research to directly examine the impact of socioeconomic factors on air pollution. There is a particular need to develop strategies to mitigate air pollution in the African context. Furthermore, this review recommends that future research also focuses on the long-term biological effects of air pollution among pregnant women.