Response to: Correspondence on: Household use of crop residues and fuelwood for cooking and newborn birth size in rural Bangladesh by Lee et al

We thank Das and Janardhanan for their interest in our study on household use of crop residues and fuelwood and birth size outcomes.1 As acknowledged in our article, we collected data on the type of biomass fuels using a questionnaire,2 as did many prior observational studies. In environmental epidemiological studies, questionnaires are often used in exposure assessment, allowing a large sample size and greater statistical power.3 Although the information on the type of cooking fuels using the questionnaire allowed us to assess the association between exposure and outcome, the quantification and the identification of specific exposure are not available. As we discussed, the potential for measurement error using the questionnaire could introduce non-differential (random) exposure misclassification, which might underestimate the true association. Das also mentioned maternal diet and pregnancy complications such as pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and other metabolic conditions and ambient air pollution...
Source: Occupational and Environmental Medicine - Category: Occupational Health Authors: Tags: PostScript Source Type: research