Project 2: Exposure to Air Pollutants and Risk of Birth Defects

“暴露于空气污染物和出生缺陷的风险”-出生缺陷是美国婴儿死亡的主要原因。我们提出的形成中心的研究工作，将提高对出生缺陷的潜在环境病因学的科学认识，这无疑将对风险评估和预防这些常见的，昂贵的，往往是致命的妊娠结局产生重要影响。 在这个项目（项目2）中，我们建议进行一项严格的以人群为基础的流行病学研究，针对30种不同的出生缺陷。我们的研究目的特别提出，以确定是否暴露于特定的空气污染物和空气污染物的混合物，在胎儿器官形成的关键时期，与妇女提供婴儿/胎儿结构性出生缺陷。 在这个项目中，我们将使用美国迄今为止最大的出生缺陷病例对照研究的数据-国家出生缺陷预防研究。我们将把我们的调查限制在加州的研究地点，该研究地点正在圣华金河谷进行，该地区的空气质量很差。对于这些数据，我们将提供一个更详细和具体的测试我们的假设与精炼的暴露数据有关的高环境空气污染。 大多数结构性出生缺陷的病因是未知的。有一些观察结果指出，环境空气污染物是人类出生缺陷的危险因素。然而，由于缺乏良好的接触和结果数据，这一重要的公共卫生假设一直没有得到充分研究。因此，项目2独特地填补了我们对环境暴露对人类出生缺陷风险的作用的理解的重要空白。

"Exposures to Air Pollutants and Risk Of Birth Defects" - Birth defects are the leading cause of infant mortality in the US. Our proposed Formative Center's research efforts, will enhance scientific understanding of the potential environmental etiologies of birth defects, which will undoubtedly have important implications for risk assessment and prevention of these common, costly, and often deadly outcomes of pregnancy. In this project (Project 2) we propose to conduct a rigorous population-based epidemiologic study that targets 30 different birth defects. Our research aim specifically proposes to determine whether exposures to specific air pollutants and mixtures of air pollutants, during critical periods of fetal organogenesis, are associated with women delivering infants/fetuses with structural birth defects. In this project we will use data from the largest case-control study conducted to date in the US on birth defects - the National Birth Defects Prevention Study. We will limit our inquiries to the California study site which is being conducted in the San Joaquin Valley - an area with demonstrated poor air quality. To these data, we will provide a much more detailed and specific test of our hypothesis with refined exposure data pertaining to high ambient air pollution. The etiologies of most structural birth defects are unknown. There have been a few observations that point toward ambient air pollutants as risk factors for human birth defects. However, this important public health hypothesis has been under studied owing to the lack of good exposure and outcome data. Thus, Project 2 uniquely fills an important gap in our understanding of the role of environmental exposure on the risk of human birth defects.