International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health

We examined associations between prenatal fine particulate matter (PM2.5 ), nitrogen dioxide (NO2 ), and ozone (O3 ) exposures and child respiratory outcomes through age 8-9 years in 1279 ECHO-PATHWAYS Consortium mother-child dyads. We averaged spatiotemporally modeled air pollutant exposures during four fetal lung development phases: pseudoglandular (5-16 weeks), canalicular (16-24 weeks), saccular (24-36 weeks), and alveolar (36+ weeks). We estimated adjusted relative risks (RR) for current asthma at age 8-9 and asthma with recent exacerbation or atopic disease, and odds ratios (OR) for wheezing trajectories using modified Poisson and multinomial logistic regression, respectively...

BACKGROUND: Studies on cognitive and neurodevelopmental outcomes have shown inconsistent results regarding the association with prenatal exposure to perfluoroalkyl substance (PFAS) and organochlorines. Assessment of mixture effects of correlated chemical exposures that persist in later life may contribute to the unbiased evaluation and understanding of dose-response associations in real-life exposures. METHODS: For a subset of the 4th Flemish Environment and Health Study (FLEHS), concentrations of four PFAS and six organochlorines were measured in respectively 99 and 153-160 cord plasma samples and 15 years later in adolescents' peripheral serum by Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS)...

Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WaSH) interventions are the most effective in reducing diarrheal disease severity and prevalence. However, very few studies have investigated the effectiveness of WaSH intervention in reducing pathogen presence and concentration. In this study, we employed a microfluidic PCR approach to quantify twenty bacterial pathogens in water (n = 360), hands (n = 180), and fomite (n = 540) samples collected in rural households of Nepal to assess the pathogen exposures and the effect of WaSH intervention on contamination and exposure rates...

Dietary patterns provide a comprehensive assessment of food consumption, including essential nutrients and potential exposure to environmental contaminants. While pro-vegetarian (PVG) dietary patterns have shown health benefits in adults, their effects on children are less well studied. This study aims to explore the association between children's adherence to the most common PVG dietary patterns and their exposure to metals, assessed through urine concentration. In our study, we included a population of 723 children aged 4-5-years from the INfancia y Medio Ambiente (INMA) cohort in Spain...

BACKGROUND: Electronic waste (e-waste) recycling activities release toxic metals, which pose substantial hazard to the environment and human health. We evaluated metal concentrations in biological and environmental samples, and examined the associations between biological lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), and mercury (Hg) with soil and dust metals, and other possible determinants, among populations exposed and non-exposed to e-waste in Bangladesh. METHODS: A total of 199 e-waste workers and 104 non-exposed individuals were recruited...

Several aromatic amines (AA) are classified as human carcinogens, and tobacco smoke is one of the main sources of exposure. Once in the human body, they undergo different metabolic pathways which lead to either their excretion or ultimately to the formation of DNA and protein adducts. The aim of this study was to investigate AA in 68 urine samples (aged 29-79, 47% female), including 10 smokers (S), 28 past-smokers (PS) and 30 never-smokers (NS), and to study if there was a relation between the smoking status and the amount of the AA present...

BACKGROUND: Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of synthetic organic chemicals with potential endocrine-disrupting effects, and have been found to impair the physical growth of offspring in both experimental and epidemiological studies. We aimed to investigate the effects of prenatal PFAS exposure on repeated measurements of multiple anthropometric indicators in infants. METHOD: PFAS were measured in serum samples collected from pregnant women at 12-16 gestational weeks...

Growing evidences supported that arsenic exposure contributes to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) risk, but findings were still inconsistent. Additionally, once absorbed, arsenic is methylated into monomethyl and dimethyl arsenicals. However, no studies investigated the association of arsenic metabolism with NAFLD. Our objectives were to evaluate the associations of arsenic exposure and arsenic metabolism with NAFLD prevalence. We conducted a case-control study with 1790 participants derived from Dongfeng-Tongji cohort and measured arsenic species (arsenite, arsenate, monomethylarsonate [MMA], dimethylarsinate [DMA], and arsenobetaine) in urine...

OBJECTIVES: To comprehensively assess the association of husband smoking with wives' thyrotropin abnormality. METHODS: This population-based retrospective cohort study included 2 406 090 Chinese reproductive-aged women who had participated twice in the National Free Pre-pregnancy Checkups Project between 2010 and 2020. Multivariate-adjusted odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for subnormal and supranormal thyrotropin were estimated according to the husband's smoking status...

BACKGROUND: Eating behaviors are controlled by the neuroendocrine system. Whether endocrine disrupting chemicals have the potential to affect eating behaviors has not been widely studied in humans. We investigated whether maternal and paternal preconception and maternal pregnancy urinary phthalate biomarker and bisphenol-A (BPA) concentrations were associated with children's eating behaviors. METHODS: We used data from mother-father-child triads in the Preconception Environmental exposure And Childhood health Effects (PEACE) Study, an ongoing prospective cohort study of children aged 6-13 years whose parent(s) previously enrolled in a fertility clinic-based prospective preconception study...

Post-COVID-19, schools urgently need to enhance infection control and prevention (IPC) measures, including water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), to prepare for future outbreaks and pandemics. Particularly in Brazil, that is of particular concern, as students are still recovering from the 20th longest school closure in the world. Hence, the current study had two goals: (i) to describe WASH solutions outlined in policies released at the federal, state, and capital city levels in Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic for the safe reopening of schools and (ii) to discuss their potential to enhance school's capacity to remain operational during a new pandemic or outbreak...

INTRODUCTION: Dental caries is the most common non-communicable human disease, yet little is known about the role of environmental metals, despite teeth consisting of a hard matrix of trace elements. We conducted a cross-sectional study of associations between environmental metals and objective assessment of dental caries and subjective assessments of oral health among a representative sample of U.S. children and adolescents. METHODS: Data were from the 2017-March 2020 pre-pandemic data file of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)...

BACKGROUND: behaviour change interventions were central in the COVID-19 response and are vital for strengthening pandemic preparedness and resilience. To be effective, interventions must target specific behavioural determinants, but determinants are complex and multifaceted and there is a gap in robust, theory driven evidence on which behavioural determinants are most effective at changing mask usage and hand hygiene behaviour. PURPOSE: to map available evidence on the types of hand hygiene and mask usage behaviour change interventions conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic and assess their effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability...

BACKGROUND: Nearly six million people residing in the United States do not have access to safely managed sanitation. Housed populations may lack access to centralized wastewater treatment systems or functioning onsite wastewater treatment systems, which subsequently places them at higher risk for adverse health outcomes associated with unsafe sanitation. OBJECTIVES: We sought to understand the various social barriers that impact access to safe sanitation in the United States...

BACKGROUND: In 2012, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that diesel engine emissions (DEE) emissions cause cancer in humans. However, there is still controversy surrounding this conclusion, due to several studies since the IARC decision citing a lack of evidence of a dose-response relationship. OBJECTIVES: Through a systematic review, we aimed to evaluate all evidence on the association between occupational DEE and lung cancer to investigate whether there is an increased risk of lung cancer for workers exposed to DEE and if so, to describe the dose-response relationship...

BACKGROUND: Women with multiple pregnancies are vulnerable to experience postpartum depression (PPD). Emerging evidence indicates an association between poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) exposure and PPD in women delivering singletons. The health risks of PFAS may also be present in women delivering twins. OBJECTIVE: To estimate the impacts of prenatal PFAS exposure on the risk of PPD in women with twin pregnancies. METHODS: Our study included 150 mothers who gave birth to twins and were enrolled in the Wuhan Twin Birth Cohort...

Childhood diseases correspond to major public health issues. A large number of studies using different approaches provide evidence regarding effects of environmental exposures, encompassed in the exposome, on children's health. We aimed to summarize the overall level of evidence (LoE) from all streams of evidence regarding exposome effects on child health. For 88 selected chemical and urban factors, we retrieved the conclusions of agency reports or literature reviews published between 2015 and 2021 regarding effects on child health, including cardiovascular, metabolic, neurodevelopmental, respiratory and other health outcomes...

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a wide-ranging group of chemicals that have been used in a variety of polymer and surfactant applications. While 3M Cordova, Illinois was not one of 3M's primary manufacturing facilities for the legacy long-chain PFAS (PFOS, PFOA, PFHxS), it has been a major manufacturing site for short-chain PFAS (compounds that are or may degrade to PFBS or PFBA). The purpose of this research focused on: 1) an analysis of biomonitoring data of employees and retirees, and 2) an analysis of the cohort mortality of workers from 1970 to 2018...

Whether adopting healthy lifestyles and maintaining moderate levels of essential metals could attenuate the reduction of heart rate variability (HRV) related to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) exposure are largely unknown. In this study, we measured urinary metals and PAHs as well as HRV, and constructed a healthy lifestyle score in 1267 coke oven workers. Linear regression models were used to explore the association of healthy lifestyle score and essential metals with HRV, and interaction analysis was performed to investigate the potential interaction between healthy lifestyle score, essential metals, and PAHs on HRV...

BACKGROUND AND AIM: To date, few studies have focused on the health effects of pesticide exposure among avocado farmworkers. We examined the association of exposure to insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides with cognitive and mental health outcomes among these avocado workers from Michoacan, Mexico. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study of 105 avocado farmworkers between May and August 2021. We collected data on self-reported pesticide use during the 12 months prior to the baseline survey and estimated annual exposure-intensity scores (EIS) using a semi-quantitative exposure algorithm...