Drinking mums putting unborn at risk Around 2600 babies a year are born with drain damage as a result of alcohol. MORE than one in three pregnant women is putting her baby's brain at risk by drinking alcohol and nearly one in 10 consumes five drinks in a sitting. A study of mums to be in Southern Queensland and Northern NSW has also found that one in four pregnant women is smoking. More alarmingly, 149 use recreational drugs. However, the study has found things are improving, with the proportion of women who reported drinking falling from 53 percent in 2007 to 35 percent in 2011. The National Health and Medical Research Council recommends that not drinking is the safest option during pregnancy. It is estimated that around 2600 babies a year are born with drain damage as a result of alcohol which can cause poor memory, language, communication and social skills. Over 2700 pregnant women in public maternity hospitals in Logan, Beaudesert, Gold Coast and Tweed health districts were studied as part of the Griffith Study of Population Health. The result of the study, published in the Medical Journal of Australia today, found older mums are more likely to consume alcohol at low levels during the first three months of pregnancy. This happened even when they are better educated and earning higher incomes. Single women who did not complete school were more likely to drink after the first trimester of pregnancy. Around 240 women in the study engaged in high-risk drinking, consuming five standard drinks or more on one occasion. These women tended to be younger, less educated and were more likely to be single parents. Women who smoked cigarettes and used recreational drugs during pregnancy were also more likely to consume alcohol, the study found. Australian Medical Association president Dr Steve Hambleton said the results were "surprising" and meant that "clearly the message is not getting through." We know there is no safe level of drinking while pregnant, not to mention tobacco and illicit drugs," he said. He said questions about alcohol consumption needed to become a standard part of antenatal examinations and more needed to be done on pregnancy warning labels on alcohol. There should also be debate about volumetric taxation of alcohol, he said. The good news is the study has found alcohol consumption is declining among pregnant women. "The proportion of women who consumed alcohol during every trimester of pregnancy almost halved from 2007 to 2011," the study says. However, high risk consumption levels did not change and the rate of alcohol consumption among pregnant women aged over 35 did not fall significantly. "It is possible that increased media emphasis on the negative effects of alcohol during pregnancy may have increased under reporting of alcohol consumption during the study," the report says.