A Prospective Birth Cohort Study on the Effect of Personal, Indoor, and Outdoor VOCs of Pregnancy Outcomes

Abstract

P-371 Introduction: A growing body of evidence suggests that exposure to ambient air pollutants is associated with adverse pregnancy outcomes, however, there were limitation since they could not estimate valid personal exposure. This study aims to investigate the indoor and outdoor exposures to VOC and PM10 is related to reproductive outcomes in pregnant women who received prenatal care at hospitals in Seoul. Methods: Women who visited the hospital between 8th and 14th week of pregnancy were enrolled the Seoul birth and development cohort (SBC) and followed until delivery. For measuring indoor and personal VOCs, well-trained researcher visited the every pregnant women’s house. The high-risk group was defined as mothers who experienced preterm births, spontaneous abortion and preeclampsia. Personal, indoor, and outdoor concentrations for 72 hours of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were measured concurrently using passive samplers (N=20). To estimate exposure concentration, a time activity diary was used to weight measured concentrations by time spent in each microenvironment. The relationships between exposures were estimated by spearman correlation and, linear regression was used to estimate the effects of indoor and outdoor exposure on pregnancy outcome. Results: During the first trimester, personal exposure to VOCs was significantly higher than the home or outdoor concentrations. The indoor and outdoor exposure to VOCs during the first trimester decreased the gestational age by 2.96 week and 0.02 weeks, respectively. Personal and indoor exposure to VOCs decreased the birth weight by 324g and 606g, respectively. The concentrations between indoor and outdoor exposure during the first trimester was highly correlated in Toluene (r=0.71), Ethylbenzene (r=0.48), Xylenes (r=0.84), Trimethybenzene (r=0.83) and m-Xylenes (r=0.87). Conclusion: This study suggests that the indoor and outdoor exposure to VOCs during pregnancy may contribute the adverse pregnancy outcomes. Acknowledgement: This study was supported by the Ministry of Environment, Republic of Korea (Eco-technopia, 2005, 09001-0032-0).