Prenatal Exposure for Perfluorinated Compounds Related to Lower Birth Weight in Swedish Children

Abstract

Perfluorinated compounds (PFCs) which are man-made persistent organic pollutants with suspected endocrine disrupting properties, have been widely spread throughout the environment and detected in both humans and animals. Nonstick pans, carpets, furniture, household cleaners, shampoos, shoes, clothing, and convenience food packaging are some of the products that can contain PFCs. Such compounds have been found to be associated with fetal growth in animal models. For humans most of the focus has been on PFOA and PFOS where associations with a lower birth weight have been reported, however, there is limited data on other PFCs than PFOA and PFOS. The aim of the study is to identify the impact of 1st trimester exposure to 8 PFCs compounds on birth weight of children in the Swedish SELMA study. Serum was taken from the women at week 10 and analyzed for 8 PFCs (Table 1). We used log-transformed serum levels for PFCs from ~1,350 women and analyzed the association to birth weight for the child with adjustments in the regression model for potential confounders. All eight PFCs were identified above detection limit in all serum samples. Multivariate analyses showed that all eight examined PFCs were negatively correlated with the birth weight of the child (Table 1), with strongest associations for PFOA, PFOS, and PFNA and non-significant results for PFUnDA, PFDoDA and PFHpA. For example, one log unit increase in prenatal PFOA levels decreased the birth weight of the child with around 350 g.