Abstract

Within the framework of the Health Impact Assessment for Schiphol Airport , a study was carried out on variations in birth weight and prenatal growth in the vicinity of Schiphol Airport. The purpose of this study was: 1) to evaluate the feasibility of using the Dutch Obstetrics Registration (LVR) for environmental health monitoring around Schiphol Airport and 2) to investigate whether birth weight and prenatal growth were associated with aircraft noise exposure around the same airport. The LVR, a national registration system recording data on the care given by midwives and gynaecologists, showed the LVR at the moment to be unsuitable for monitoring birth weight and prenatal growth in relation to aircraft noise exposure around Schiphol Airport. This is because the present data have important limitations: the lack of data on a number of important determinants of birth weight and prenatal growth (e.g. smoking of the mother) and the lack of individual exposure data. Another limitation is the fact that deliveries by general practitioners are not registered by the LVR; this causes overrepresentation of high-risk deliveries. To make the LVR suitable for monitoring purposes, information on determinants of birth weight and prenatal growth must be made available or collected (e.g. by questionnaire). Linking data at the individual level is preferred, although this is not possible at the moment.