Urinary polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) metabolite concentrations in three pregnancy cohorts from 7 U.S. study sites

• Published in: PloS one 2024-07, Vol.19 (7), p.e0305004
• Main Authors: Masterson, Erin E, Riederer, Anne M, Loftus, Christine T, Wallace, Erin R, Szpiro, Adam A, Simpson, Christopher D, Muralidharan, Revathi, Trasande, Leonardo, Barrett, Emily S, Nguyen, Ruby H N, Kannan, Kurunthachalam, Robinson, Morgan, Swan, Shanna, Mason, W Alex, Bush, Nicole R, Sathyanarayana, Sheela, LeWinn, Kaja Z, Karr, Catherine J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Adult; Analysis; Anthracene; Biology and Life Sciences; Biomarkers; Calibration; Candles; Children; Childrens health; Chrysene; Cohort Studies; Consortia; Correlation coefficient; Correlation coefficients; Density; Earth Sciences; Exposure; Female; Fluorene; Health aspects; Humans; Low molecular weights; Maternal Exposure - adverse effects; Medicine and Health Sciences; Metabolites; Molecular weight; Naphthalene; Nutrition; Organic contaminants; Pediatrics; People and Places; Phenanthrene; Physical Sciences; Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons - urine; Pregnancy; Pregnant women; Prenatal experience; Smoking; Social Sciences; Tides; United States; Urine; Young Adult
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0305004

Prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is associated with adverse birth and developmental outcomes in children. We aimed to describe prenatal PAH exposures in a large, multisite U.S. consortium. We measured 12 mono-hydroxylated metabolites (OH-PAHs) of 7 PAHs (naphthalene, fluorene, phenanthrene, pyrene, benzo(c)phenanthrene, chrysene, benz(a)anthracene) in mid-pregnancy urine of 1,892 pregnant individuals from the ECHO PATHWAYS consortium cohorts: CANDLE (n = 988; Memphis), TIDES (n = 664; Minneapolis, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle) and GAPPS (n = 240; Seattle and Yakima, WA). We described concentrations of 8 OH-PAHs of non-smoking participants (n = 1,695) by site, socioeconomic characteristics, and pregnancy stage (we report intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) for n = 677 TIDES participants). Exposure to the selected PAHs was ubiquitous at all sites. 2-hydroxynaphthalene had the highest average concentrations at all sites. CANDLE had the highest average concentrations of most metabolites. Among non-smoking participants, we observed some patterns by income, education, and race but these were not consistent and varied by site and metabolite. ICCs of repeated OH-PAH measures from TIDES participants were ≤ 0.51. In this geographically-diverse descriptive analysis of U.S. pregnancies, we observed ubiquitous exposure to low molecular weight PAHs, highlighting the importance of better understanding PAH sources and their pediatric health outcomes attributed to early life PAH exposure.