Giving Compass' Take:

• Global Citizen raises concerns over a new CNN report that shows how airborne polluted particles can travel into pregnant women's placenta, jeopardizing fetal health.

• What are we doing to make a bigger impact on air pollution? How can we raise more awareness about the public health risks involved with carbon emissions?

• Here's how air pollution can begin at home.

Scientist have reason to believe pollution particles can travel through the lungs and into pregnant women's placentas, potentially reaching their fetuses, CNN reports.

The placenta is an organ that attaches itself to the womb during pregnancy and attaches the mother to the fetus. The organ is crucial to the fetus’ health. It lets oxygen and nutrients pass through a mother’s bloodstream to the fetus through the umbilical cord, and filters out any waste.

How exactly air pollution enters a pregnant woman’s womb wasn't very well understood, until now.

The European Respiratory Society International Congress in Pariscame across sooty particles in the placentas of five non-smoking pregnant women living in London who planned to deliver healthy babies and volunteered to have researchers look at their placentas after their planned cesarean sections.

They believe the sooty particles found in the placental macrophages, which are part of the body’s immune system and fight off harmful particles from bacteria and pollution, were carbon particles.

Read the full article about air pollution particles discovered in mothers' placenta by Erica Sanchez and Leah Rodriguez at Global Citizen.