Environmental Exposures: A Bio-ethnography of Urban Families

这项研究项目解决了这样一个问题：“接触铅、汞和双酚A等化学物质的有害影响对每个人来说都是一样的吗？还是它们受到生活环境的影响？”越来越多的证据表明，早年接触化学物质与当代美国流行的糖尿病和肥胖症有关。越来越多的证据表明，贫困、压力和营养不良等不利的生活环境加剧了这些化学物质暴露的影响。因此，接触化学品对穷人的长期生活影响可能比其他群体更大，因为健康状况不佳会影响教育程度和工作生产率。因此，关键是要了解生活环境和化学物质暴露之间的关系，以便为公共政策提供信息，以便为环境清理和化学法规分配稀缺资源。这项研究将在墨西哥墨西哥城进行，那里的肥胖率和糖尿病发病率在过去几十年里急剧上升。1995年，一组来自美国的环境健康科学家开始在墨西哥城对一大群贫穷和工薪阶层的孕妇进行化学暴露研究。这项研究已经成为北美同类研究中规模最大、持续时间最长的一项，并就早年接触肥胖和糖尿病之间的联系提出了几项关键发现。然而，尽管项目科学家从7000多名参与研究的妇女和儿童中收集了一系列无与伦比的生物样本和调查数据，但他们对可能影响这些研究参与者健康的日常生活环境知之甚少。这些生物数据集的深度和广度为社会科学家提供了一个独特的机会，来研究化学物质暴露以及家庭和邻里环境是如何塑造健康的。这项研究的调查者是密歇根大学的医学人类学家伊丽莎白·罗伯茨博士，他将对六个参与研究的家庭在一年的时间里在他们的家庭和邻里环境中的日常生活进行密集的人种学观察。当研究人员完成这些观察后，她的数据将与过去19年收集的关于这些相同家庭的生物暴露数据相关联。这项合作研究的结果将提供洞察，从长远来看，生活环境如何与化学品暴露交织在一起，从而塑造城市贫困家庭和工薪阶层家庭的健康和经济状况。了解这种相互交织的关系，有助于在美国为现在和未来制定有效的环境和卫生保健政策。

This research project addresses the question, "Are the deleterious effects of exposure to chemicals such as lead, mercury, and bisphenol A, the same for everyone? Or are they affected by life circumstances?" There is increasing evidence linking early life exposure to chemicals to the contemporary epidemic of diabetes and obesity in the United States. There is also increasing evidence that the effects of these chemical exposures are intensified by adverse life circumstance like poverty, stress and poor nutrition. Thus the long-term life impact of chemical exposures on the poor might be greater than for other groups, given that ill-health affects educational attainment and work productivity. It is critical then to understand the relationship between life circumstances and chemical exposures in order to inform public policy concerning the allocation of scare resources towards environmental clean up and chemical regulation.The research will be conducted in Mexico City, Mexico, where obesity and diabetes rates have risen dramatically in the last decades. In 1995, a group of environmental health scientists from the United States began a chemical exposure study with a large group of poor and working class pregnant women in Mexico City. The study has become the largest and longest running of its kind in all of North America, and has contributed several key findings about the links between early life chemical exposure to obesity and diabetes. However, while the project scientists have collected an unparalleled array of biological samples and survey data from the over 7000 women and children enrolled in the study, they know very little about the daily life circumstance that may affect how chemical exposures impact the health of these study participants. The depth and breadth of this biological data set offers a unique opportunity for a social scientist to investigate how chemical exposure and home and neighborhood environment shape health. The investigator for this study, medical anthropologist Dr. Elizabeth Roberts of the University of Michigan, will undertake intensive ethnographic observations of the daily life of six study participant families in their home and neighborhood environments over the course of a year. When the investigator completes these observations her data will be correlated with the biological exposure data collected about these same families for the last nineteen years. Findings from this collaborative research will provide insight into how life circumstances, over the long term, may intertwine with chemical exposures to shape the health and economic status of urban poor and working class families. Understanding this intertwined relationship can then contribute to developing effective environmental and health care policy in the United States for today and for the future.