Puerto Rico Testsite for Exploring Contamination Threats (PROTECT)

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PFAS and the impact on human health: From the laboratory to the community Since 2010, PROTECT (Puerto Rico Testsite for Exploring Contamination Threats) investigators have studied the effects of hazardous chemicals, commonly found at Superfund sites, on adverse pregnancy outcomes in women living in the Northern Karst region of Puerto Rico. The primary chemicals found to be present in the PROTECT cohort of pregnant women are pesticides, phthalates, bisphenols, triclosan, and triclocarban (Lewis et al, 2014; Ferguson et al., 2019; Aker et al., 2019). PFAS (per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances) are a class of over 12,000 chemicals that have been manufactured and used in a variety of industries worldwide since the 1940s. There is evidence that exposure to PFAS is linked with detrimental effects on human health. In pregnant women, PFAS exposure has been associated with low birth weight (Ashley et al., 2017) and increased incidence of gestational diabetes, childhood obesity, preeclampsia, and fetal growth restriction (Szilagyi et al., 2020). Despite the increased number of contaminants studied in PROTECT, the presence of PFAS in pregnant women, their families, and the general population in Puerto Rico is unknown. This request for KC Donnelly funding starts to address this need for more exploratory research. I am a doctoral student in Social Determinants of Health at the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus. As a member of the PROTECT team since 2019, I am particularly interested in the effects of hazardous chemicals on pregnancy outcomes. I am also very active in the Community and Engagement Core and the initiative to provide results of harmful exposures and follow-up education for risk avoidance to our study participants through the Report Back program. My project has two Specific Aims, one that will broaden my environmental health science skills under the guidance of Dr. Jamie DeWitt, a professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University. The second aim is to work with my mentors in PROTECT (Drs. Velez-Vega and Brown) to apply my newly acquired skills toward the development of an educational program that will enhance our Report Back initiative to the benefit our study population as well as all communities in Puerto Rico that need to be informed about the risks of PFAS exposure.