September 17, 2024
Janice is a post-doctoral fellow/epidemiologist at Health Canada. Her current research investigates the impacts of exposures to chemical mixtures on pregnancy and child health outcomes. Pregnant individuals are exposed to a vast number of environmental chemicals. However, examining the impacts of chemical mixtures is an understudied research area and much of our understanding of chemical effects came from studies of the relationship between one chemical stressor and pregnancy outcomes. Therefore, a knowledge gap exists surrounding the combined effects of multiple chemical stressors in perinatal health. The good news is that recent advances in statistical methods have allowed environmental health researchers to assess the impacts of environmental mixtures.
Janice, who recently graduated from Simon Fraser University’s Health Sciences doctoral program, made use of these advanced statistical methods in her thesis work where she examined the effects of prenatal exposure to endocrine disrupting chemical mixtures and maternal hardships on adverse pregnancy outcomes. She found that phthalate exposure during early pregnancy is not associated with preterm birth but both metal and organochlorine exposures during early pregnancy were associated with poor fetal growth. Specifically, lead, a heavy metal, and trans-nonachlor, a banned insecticide, contributed most to the negative effects on infant birth weight. Furthermore, Janice also found that maternal hardships that co-occur with prenatal exposure to some organochlorines and metals may interact and produce greater detrimental effects on fetal growth than either exposure alone. For instance, trans-nonachlor exposure was more strongly associated with lower infant birth weight among poorer females compared to those who are more affluent. We, therefore, could mitigate poor fetal growth by identifying and managing both the social hardships pregnant individuals experience and their exposures to toxic environmental chemicals.