Eye-Stinging Beijing Air Risks Lifelong Harm to Babies

As doctors tended the patients snaking through the ground floor of Beijing Children’s Hospital last week, it wasn’t the raspy throats and watery eyes caused by the city’s acrid air that concerned Li Pu most. It was the potential for lifelong lung damage and behavioral changes.

Li, a pediatrician focusing on early childhood development, is finding evidence of the cumulative toxic effect that pollution is having on children. It suggests that the acute sickness triggered this year by some of Beijing’s worst smog-cloaked days may be a prelude of chronic illnesses, such as heart disease, decades later.