Health outcome · disease
Stillbirth
Part of: Birth outcomes
Also: fetal death, intrauterine fetal death, late fetal death
The death of a baby before birth, after a threshold of gestational age that differs between countries — commonly 22 or 28 weeks. It is the gravest birth outcome and the one whose definition most needs recording alongside any figure.
Not reviewed by a clinician. This entry describes a disease or a symptom. We are introducing clinical review for pages of this kind; until that reviewer is in place, this page has been written and checked by the Coridum team but not reviewed by a clinician. It is general information and not medical advice. How this library is built is described in How we build this library.
Why it matters indoors
The mechanisms proposed are the ones that act on the placenta. Carbon monoxide binds haemoglobin and reduces the oxygen that reaches the fetus; fine particles provoke inflammation and impair placental vessel function. Both would act most strongly where household combustion exposure is highest and sustained through the pregnancy, which is where the household studies have been done.
Three limits apply to every figure. The gestational threshold differs between countries and even between registries, so rates are not comparable unless the definition is stated. Ascertainment is incomplete wherever births happen outside health facilities — which is disproportionately the same population that cooks with solid fuel. And the exposure is almost always a questionnaire answer about fuel rather than a measurement.
Coridum records the threshold used and the exposure definition with the estimate, and treats a crude comparison by fuel type as weak evidence.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Solid fuel | other 2.40 (2.21–2.62) | — · home | cross-sectional analysis of a national survey: households using unclean cooking fuel compared with households using clean fuel, with prevalence ratios for smoking, stillbirth and low birth weight | F-1713 Roberman et al. Adverse Birth Outcomes Due to Exposure to Household Air Poll… (2021) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Stillbirth. Coridum Knowledge G-0209, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0209/