Most birth defects happen during the first three months of pregnancy, when a baby's organs are developing. During this important time, environmental exposures could affect how a baby’s system or organ grows and works. The Missouri Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) Program shares data on birth defects that could be related to the environment.
What Causes Birth Defects?
Most birth defects are probably caused by a mix of genes and other risk factors.
Research studies suggest possible connections between chemicals in the environment and some birth defects. However, more research and ongoing monitoring are needed to better understand the relationship between birth defects and the environment. Often, we don't know why they happen.
Risk factors for birth defects include:
- Genes
- Smoking, drinking alcohol, or taking certain “street” drugs during pregnancy
- Having certain medical conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes before or during pregnancy
- Taking certain medicines
- Being deficient in folic acid
- Having another family member with a birth defect
- Being an older mother, typically over the age of 34 years
- Exposure to chemicals at work or in the environment
For more information on birth defects, visit Birth Defects.
Birth Defects Data
The Missouri EPHT Program collects data from the Missouri Birth Defects Registry on serious birth defects that studies suggest could be related to the environment. The data can be searched by the mother’s age and the infant’s sex, race, and ethnicity.
Missouri EPHT - Birth Defects Data Query
Search this query to find:
Number of infants with birth defects
Number of infants with birth defects per 10,000 live births
Other Data Sources
Other birth defects data are available at:
The data can help you:
- See which birth defects are happening
- See if some communities or populations are at higher risk
- See if birth defects are going up or down over time
The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program
Missouri Environmental Public Health Tracking (EPHT) is a program within the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. EPHT is part of a network of people and information systems which delivers a core set of health, exposure, and hazards data, information summaries and tools to enable analysis, visualization and reporting of insights drawn from data. Those insights are intended to help data drive actions and improve community health.