“We Didn’t Know”: How Climate Change and Air Pollution Are Silently Endangering Maternal Health

If we don’t fight for our kids, who will? - Dr. Jalonne White-Newsome

By Almeta E. Cooper, National Manager for Health Justice, and Liz Hurtado, National Field Manager at Moms Clean Air Force

Luz Drada speaks at Moms Clean Air Force’s Maternal and Child Health in a Dangerous Climate Forum, Washington, DC, May 2025

“I was so scared. I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the next day,” recalled Luz Drada, an advocate and program coordinator with Moms Clean Air Force, recounting the harrowing experience of her high-risk pregnancy at Maternal and Child Health in a Dangerous Climate, a forum held in Washington, DC, exploring the intersections of global warming, air pollution, and maternal health disparities.  

Diagnosed with preeclampsia, a life-threatening condition that disproportionately affects women of color, Luz later discovered what her doctors never told her: exposure to air pollution and extreme heat may have contributed to her condition. “No one warned me about air quality. No one said not to go outside on hot days,” Luz said. “Now I know those things could have made a difference.” 

Her testimony at the forum underscored a growing crisis: the environmental burdens that unequally harm women of color, especially during pregnancy. “Most women of color don’t know there’s a connection between environmental factors and pregnancy,” she added. “I want to be that point of reference for women who need this information and aren’t getting it from their doctors.” 

The data backs her up. Black women in the U.S. are three times more likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications. And increasingly, environmental stressors such as air pollution, extreme heat, and exposure to toxic chemicals are being recognized as contributing factors. 

Health professionals and environmental advocates at the forum stressed that these risks aren’t abstract. They’re lived realities for communities historically excluded from environmental protections and quality health care. One speaker traced these injustices back more than a century. 

“Since the earliest recorded health outcomes, disparities have existed, and in the 1890s, figures like Frederick Hoffman used these disparities among Black people in the rural South to argue for racial inferiority, blaming individuals rather than the environments that shaped their health,” said Dr. Sharon Malone, OB-GYN, New York Times best-selling author of Grown Woman Talk, and women’s health advocate. “When you begin from a place of blame rather than context, you perpetuate injustice from the very start.” 

That historical context was echoed in the personal reflections of Dr. Julie A. González, who grew up in a family of migrant farmworkers. She offered a stark example from her own childhood. “I remember a pregnant woman working in the fields who lost her baby after being exposed to pesticides every day,” González said. “She didn’t speak English, wasn’t documented, and had nowhere to turn. Her pain wasn’t just physical, it was emotional and psychological. We can’t separate mental health from environmental justice.” Her story speaks to a broader truth: environmental hazards are not only worsening due to climate change but are also hitting the most vulnerable the hardest.  

That reality was laid bare by Nsedu Obot Witherspoon, MPH, Executive Director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network, who emphasized how early these burdens begin: “This is where we're at. Every child is born pre-polluted in this world. If you are any child, this is challenging. If you're a Black or Brown child in this world, and especially America, that is an additional challenge to overcome.” 

Speakers at the event called for urgent, systemic reforms, stronger air quality regulations, climate adaptation strategies, and investments in communities living near industrial pollution sources, like manufacturing facilities. But they also emphasized the power of local, community-led solutions and the importance of listening to those most affected. 

“This is about justice,” said Luz. “It’s about ensuring every mother can have a healthy pregnancy and a safe environment.” 

Dr. Jalonne White-Newsome, former Chief Environmental Justice Officer at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), offered attendees a powerful call to action: 

“Let’s continue to be a force and center people and health in all our policy solutions and activate the work at the local and state level like never before. And remember, if we don’t fight for our kids, who will?”