Association between prenatal air pollutant exposure and child development in a follow-up birth cohort study

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Air pollutant exposure adversely associates with infant development. This study aimed to investigate the effect of prenatal air pollutant exposure on children development. METHODS: Mother–infant pairs in two birth-cohort studies were recruited from five hospitals from 2001 to 2005. Children’s mental and psychomotor development was measured by the Bayley Scales of Infant Development in children aged 2 years. Hourly concentrations of five air pollutants (i.e. NO2, CO, O3, SO2, and PM10) within 1 year before childbirth were obtained from 76 air quality monitoring stations cross Taiwan. We used weighted K-nearest neighbor method (k=3) to estimate the personalized air pollution exposure and transformed the concentration of the five air pollutants into Individual Air Quality Index (IAQI) values. Multiple variable regression was used to assess the association between prenatal air pollutant exposure and Bayley score in 2-year-old children. RESULTS:Overall, 286 mother-infant pairs completed all measurements. The geometrical mean of mental development index (MDI) score and psychomotor development index (PDI) score were 95.2 and 99.3, respectively. After adjusted for recruited cohort, parental education, gestational week, and child's sex, monthly average of prenatal air pollutants' IAQI different of CO, NO2, and PM10 were negatively associated with PDI score. Per unit increasing of the monthly average different of CO, NO2, and PM10 IAQI were associated with 10.30 (95% confidence interval, CI = 4.40-16.56), 2.58 (95% CI = 0.96-4.21), and 0.63 (95% CI = 0.06-1.19) decrease of PDI score in children, respectively. CONCLUSIONS:Prenatal exposure to CO, NO2, and PM10 and their concatenation changes with time may affect children’s development at age 2 years. KEYWORDS: air pollution, neurodevelopmental outcomes, children's environmental health, birth cohort