Cognitive, Immunological, and Neurophysiological Consequences of Home Radon Exposure in Children and Adolescents

项目摘要/摘要：研究项目(1) 认知、免疫学和神经生理学后果 儿童和青少年的家庭氡暴露情况 市民大众已深切认识到环境污染物和毒素对环境造成的影响。 发展中的身体。从铅和杀虫剂到香烟烟雾和工业空气污染，研究一致 表明环境毒素对青年的发展有重大和持久的影响，包括慢性 认知和大脑发育缺陷。这些后果可能会对学术产生反响影响 成就和心理健康。也就是说，一种令人惊讶的常见但很少被研究的环境毒素是 氡气。氡是一种自然产生的放射性气体，积聚在家庭中，对健康构成重大威胁。 风险，包括患某些癌症的风险增加，以及对发育敏感组织的损害 和器官(如大脑)通过加重的炎症过程。美国(美国)环境 环保局(EPA)设定的家庭氡浓度的行动限值为4pci/L，这是致癌物质 相当于每天抽10支烟。令人惊讶的是，全美每15个家庭中就有一个预计将拥有 氡浓度达到或高于美国环保局的行动极限，在全国各地留下了大量的青年 长期暴露在高浓度的氡中。然而，将氡毒性与神经和神经功能改变联系起来的研究 认知发展极其稀少。目前的提议旨在解决这一严重的知识差距。 通过研究有毒水平的氡暴露对典型发育中的大脑和认知功能的影响 青春年华。我们开创性的初步工作首次表明，注意力(即引导和维持 对特定刺激和任务的关注)受到氡暴露的独特影响。具体地说，我们发现 长期暴露在较高家庭氡水平下的年轻人在行为方面的表现明显较差 注意力的测量，并显示为注意力服务的关键大脑网络内的神经动力学发生了变化 和更高层次的认知。在目前的多模式神经成像研究中，我们将量化家庭的影响 儿童和青少年发育过程中多个不同注意系统的氡暴露。为此， 我们将招募一大批典型发育的年轻人进行脑磁图(MEG)检查。 在一系列旨在评估多个为注意力处理服务的独特神经系统的任务中。 青少年还将完成结构磁共振成像(MRI)，完成一组神经心理学 以注意力为目标的评估，并提供唾液样本以捕捉炎症的测量 已知在氡暴露的情况下会升高。我们的具体目标是：1)识别特定的注意力 受氡暴露影响的区域和神经底物，以及2)量化 氡通过炎症过程改变年轻人的注意力发育。这项研究的结果 有可能塑造围绕氡意识和缓解努力的公共卫生政策的未来， 在周围地区尤其如此，那里的家庭氡水平是全国最高的之一。

Project Summary/Abstract: Research Project (1) Cognitive, Immunological, and Neurophysiological Consequences of Home Radon Exposure in Children and Adolescents The public at large has grown keenly aware of the effects of environmental pollutants and toxins on the developing body. From lead and pesticides to cigarette smoke and industrial air pollution, studies consistently show that environmental toxins have substantial, lasting impacts on the development of youth, including chronic deficits in cognitive and brain development. These consequences can have reverberating impacts on academic achievement and mental health. That said, one surprisingly common, but rarely studied environmental toxin is radon. Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that accumulates in homes and poses significant health risks, including increased risk of developing certain cancers, and damage to developmentally sensitive tissues and organs (e.g., the brain) through accentuated inflammatory processes. The United States (US) Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) set the action limit for home radon concentrations at 4 pCi/L, which is the carcinogenic equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes per day. An astonishing 1 in 15 homes across the US is expected to have radon concentrations at or above the EPA action limit, leaving a large number of youth across the country chronically exposed to high concentrations of radon. However, studies linking radon toxicity to altered neural and cognitive development are extremely sparse. The current proposal aims to address this critical gap in knowledge by examining the impact of toxic levels of radon exposure on brain and cognitive function in typically-developing youth. Our groundbreaking preliminary work is the first to show that attention (i.e., the ability to direct and maintain focus on specific stimuli and tasks) is uniquely impacted by radon exposure. Specifically, we have found that youth who are chronically-exposed to higher home radon levels had markedly worse performance on behavioral measures of attention, and exhibited altered neural dynamics within the critical brain networks serving attention and higher-order cognition. In the current multimodal neuroimaging study, we will quantify the impact of home radon exposure on multiple distinct attentional systems during child and adolescent development. To this end, we will enroll a large sample of typically-developing youth who will undergo magnetoencephalography (MEG) during a battery of tasks designed to assess multiple unique neural systems serving attentional processing. Youth will also complete structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), complete a battery of neuropsychological assessments targeting attentional abilities, and provide saliva samples to capture measures of inflammation that are known to be elevated in the context of radon exposure. Our specific aims are to 1) identify specific attentional domains and neural substrates that are affected by radon exposure, and 2) quantify the mechanistic role of inflammatory processes through which radon alters attentional development in youth. The outcomes of this study have the potential to shape the future of public health policy surrounding radon awareness and mitigation efforts, and this is especially true in the surrounding region where home radon levels are some of the highest in the nation.