Environmental Exposures: A Bio-ethnography of Urban Families

这个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都是一样的吗？”还是受到生活环境的影响？”越来越多的证据表明，早期接触化学物质与当代美国糖尿病和肥胖症的流行有关。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会加剧接触这些化学物质的影响。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，因为健康状况不佳影响教育程度和工作生产率。因此，了解生活环境与化学品暴露之间的关系是至关重要的，以便为有关环境清洁和化学品监管的稀缺资源分配的公共政策提供信息。这项研究将在墨西哥的墨西哥城进行，在过去的几十年里，那里的肥胖和糖尿病发病率急剧上升。1995年，一组来自美国的环境健康科学家开始了一项化学物质暴露研究，研究对象是墨西哥城一大批贫穷和工人阶级的孕妇。该研究已成为北美同类研究中规模最大、持续时间最长的研究，并在生命早期接触化学物质与肥胖和糖尿病之间的联系方面做出了几项重要发现。然而，尽管项目科学家从参与研究的7000多名妇女和儿童身上收集了大量的生物样本和调查数据，但他们对可能影响化学物质暴露如何影响这些研究参与者健康的日常生活环境知之甚少。这个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调查化学暴露和家庭和社区环境如何影响健康。这项研究的研究者是密歇根大学的医学人类学家伊丽莎白·罗伯茨博士，她将在一年的时间里对六个研究参与者家庭的日常生活和社区环境进行深入的人种学观察。当研究者完成这些观察后，她的数据将与过去19年收集的这些家庭的生物暴露数据相关联。这项合作研究的结果将深入了解长期生活环境如何与化学品暴露相互交织，从而影响城市贫困人口和工人阶级家庭的健康和经济状况。了解这种相互交织的关系，有助于在美国为今天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.