Environment/Climate Change
Air Pollution Exposure and Blood Pressure in Children of the NIH ECHO Consortium Yu Ni* Yu Ni Catherine Karr Miranda Jones Andrew Law Xingyu Gao Arpita K. Vyas Ruby Nguyan Mingyu Zhang Hooman Mirzakhani Assiamira Ferrara Alicia K. Peterson Judy Aschner Scott Collingwood Margaret R. Karagas Tom O’Connor Michelle Katzow Annemarie Stroustrup Mehtap Haktnair Tina V. Hartert Brittney M. Snyder Sophia Jan Anne Marie Singh Anne Marie Singh Dana Dabelea Angela M. Malek Jennifer K. Straughen Carlos. A. Camargo, Jr. Miatta A. Buxton Rosalind Wright Kecia Carroll Keia Sanderson Daphne Koinis Mitchell Viren D’Sa Christine Hockett Anne L. Dunlop Shohreh Farzen Alison Hipwell Sunni L. Mumford Akram N. Alshawabkeh Hudson P. Santos Jr Christine T Loftus Adam Szpiro Sindana Ilango Logan C Dearborn Allison Sherris Kaja LeWinn Nicole Bush Qi Zhao Marnie Hazlehurst Akhgar Ghassabian Anne Starling
Background: There is growing interest in linking early life exposures to ambient air pollution to child blood pressure; however, existing findings, largely from single site or cohort studies, are inconclusive.
Methods: We examined the association between exposures to two ambient air pollutants – fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – and blood pressure in 4,863 U.S. children from 20 study sites of the NIH ECHO Cohort. Point-based residential exposures were derived from spatiotemporal models with a biweekly resolution and averaged over each trimester, the whole pregnancy, and in offspring at aged 0-2 years. We converted systolic (SBP) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) to age-, sex-, and height-specific percentiles and classified children with SBP and/or DBP 90th percentile as high blood pressure (HBP). Linear and Poisson regressions were fitted to estimate the associations of PM2.5 (per 5-g/m3) or NO2 (per 10-ppb) exposures in each window with BP percentiles and HBP, adjusting for sociodemographics, lifestyle factors, and temporal and spatial confounders.
Results: Mean PM2.5 ranged from 7.6 to 7.9 g/m3 across windows, while mean NO2 ranged from 8.1 to 8.8 ppb. We found positive associations of PM2.5 in the first trimester with SBP percentile (: 1.92, 95%CI: 0.02, 3.83) and risk of HBP (RR: 1.16, 95%CI: 1.02, 1.33). Results also indicated that higher PM2.5 exposures averaged over pregnancy and age 0-2 years were related to elevated SBP percentiles and a higher risk of HBP, but with lower precision. Contrary to our hypotheses, inverse associations of pregnancy average NO2 averaged with both SBP (: -2.42, 95%CI: -4.70, -0.14) and DBP (: -1.94, 95%CI: -3.81, -0.08) percentiles were suggested.
Conclusion: The study provides evidence reinforcing the detrimental effects of PM2.5 on childhood cardiometabolic health. There remains a need in future research to understand the counterintuitive inverse association between NO2 and blood pressure.