Pollution of the environment is increasing and threatens the health and wellbeing of adults and children around the globe. The impact of air pollution on pulmonary and cardiovascular disease has been well documented, but it also has a deleterious effect on reproductive health. Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia, has one of the highest levels of air pollution in the world. During the extreme winters when temperatures routinely fall below −20 °C the level of air pollution can reach 80 times the WHO recommended safe levels. Heating mainly comes from coal, which is burned both in power stations, and in stoves in the traditional Ger housing. We studied the impact of air pollution on conception rates and birth outcomes in Ulaanbaatar using a retrospective analysis of health data collected from the Urguu Maternity hospital in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Daily levels of SO₂, NO₂, PM₁₀, and PM_2.5 were collected from the government Air Quality Monitoring Stations in Ulaanbaatar for the same period as the study. In January, the month of highest pollution, there is a 3.2-fold decrease in conceptions that lead to the successfully delivered infants compared to October. The seasonal variations in conceptions resulting in live births in this study in Ulaanbaatar are shown to be 2.03 ± 0.20 (10-sigma) times greater than those in the Denmark/North America study of Wesselink et al., 2020. The two obvious differences between Ulaanbaatar and Europe/North America are pollution and temperature both of which are extreme in Ulaanbaatar. The extreme low temperature is mitigated by burning coal, which is the main source of domestic heat especially in the ger districts. This drives the level of pollution so the two are inextricably linked. Infants conceived in the months of June-October had the greatest cumulative PM_2.5 pollution exposure over total gestation, yet these were also the pregnancies with the lowest PM_2.5 exposure for the month of conception and three months prior to conception. The delivered-infant conception rate shows a markedly negative association with exposure to PM_2.5 prior to and during the first month of pregnancy. This overall reduction in fecundity of the population of Ulaanbaatar is therefore a preventable health risk. It is of great consequence that the air pollution in Ulaanbaatar affects health over an entire lifespan including reproductive health. This could be remedied with a clean source of heating.

Using our recently developed laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) to visualize blood vessels and monitor blood flow, here we test the utility of the chick embryo for drug screening. To this end, we examined the effects of antihypertensive agents Nifedipine and Amlodipine, belonging to the L-type calcium channel antagonist family, on blood flow visualized noninvasively through the intact shell. Guided by the live view mode, the drugs were injected through the shell and ventral to HH16-19 chick embryos. Our results show a significant reduction in the chick heart rate, blood flow, and vascular size within 5-20 minutes after Nifedipine or Amlodipine injection. For moderate Nifedipine concentrations, these parameters returned to initial values within 2-3 hours. In contrast, Amlodipine showed a rapid reduction in heart rate and blood flow dynamics at a more than ten times higher concentration than Nifedipine. These findings show that our LSCI system can monitor and distinguish the chick heart’s response to injected drugs from the same family. This serves as proof-of-concept, paving the way for a rapid, cost effective, and quantitative test system for screening drugs that affect the cardiovascular system of live chick embryos. Live noninvasive imaging may also provide insights into the development and functioning of the vertebrate heart. Highlights Non-invasive Laser Speckle Contrast Imaging (LSCI) of the chick chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) in whole incubated eggs Simultaneous recording images of the CAM, dynamics of blood flow, and heart rate Live view mode to identify size, heart position, and location of the embryo in the egg Automated system for data acquisition and analysis Longitudinal quantification of the impact of a calcium channel antagonists, nifedipidine and amlodipine on the embryonic heart rate, CAM’s blood flow, size and number of vessels