Prenatal Harmattan Exposure and Birth Size in Ghana, 2013-2015

1,261 mother-infant pairs from the GRAPHS study in Kintampo, Ghana, were analyzed to assess the impact of the Harmattan season on newborn size. Distributed lag models identified sensitive gestational windows, particularly weeks 1-11 and 15-34, where exposure was associated with reduced head circumference in male infants. The dataset was authored by Gabriella Y. Meltzer and last updated in May 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling time-varying associations between seasonal exposure and birth outcomes based on weekly gestational data.
• Investigating sex-specific effects of environmental stressors on fetal development.
• Identifying critical windows of prenatal vulnerability to air pollution.
• Supporting climate change impact assessments on maternal health in West Africa.

Strengths

• Includes 1,261 mother-infant pairs from a defined cohort study (GRAPHS).
• Analysis covers specific gestational weeks from 2013 to 2015 in Kintampo, Ghana.
• Uses distributed lag models to identify sensitive exposure windows.
• Released under a permissive CC-BY-4.0 license.

Limitations

• The dataset is very small at 75.6 KB, indicating limited raw data or a summary document.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count for the underlying analytical dataset is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

Ghana Randomized Air Pollution and Health Study (GRAPHS).

Collection Method

Cohort study enrolling pregnant women from 2013 to 2015.

Time Range

2013 to 2015.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-18 05:39:25; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Kintampo, Ghana.