On June 12, 2019 we attended lecture series from Duke University Professor Subhrendu K. Pattanayak that was hosted by ICIMOD. The research work that he was talking about was really interesting. The topic revolved around three main aspects : Climate change, air pollution and Human health. Being a social scientist he was trying to address these issues from economical perspective. Case study of 1997 from Indonesia was much interesting among all for me. That was a El-Nino year, with much more heating going around in south-east Asia. That year there was huge forest fire around some of the states of Indonesia, resulting tremendous air pollution. What Pattanayak and team did was something peculiar. It was previously known to science that air pollution specially under foetal condition can have impacts upon height. So the team estimated the number of pregnant women in that year in pollution prone specific months and tracked the child born that were under the influence of air pollution from foetus. Comparing and tracking the height of children born in pollution prone area to that of normal area, it was found that children's height was found to be significantly affected by pollution around those state caused by forest fire. Its fascinating to know how the physical trait like height can be affected by chemicals and polluted environment under foetal condition.
The findings seems very interesting and it was nice time listening to his research in those fields. Thank you ICIMOD for inviting and Pattanayak sir for excellent lecture series.
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