nitrogen-dioxide and phthalic-acid

Chemical and nonchemical environmental exposures are increasingly suspected to influence the development of obesity, especially during early life, but studies mostly consider single exposure groups.. Our study aimed to systematically assess the association between a wide array of early-life environmental exposures and childhood obesity, using an exposome-wide approach.. The HELIX (Human Early Life Exposome) study measured child body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, skinfold thickness, and body fat mass in 1,301 children from six European birth cohorts age 6-11 y. We estimated 77 prenatal exposures and 96 childhood exposures (cross-sectionally), including indoor and outdoor air pollutants, built environment, green spaces, tobacco smoking, and biomarkers of chemical pollutants (persistent organic pollutants, metals, phthalates, phenols, and pesticides). We used an exposure-wide association study (ExWAS) to screen all exposure-outcome associations independently and used the deletion-substitution-addition (DSA) variable selection algorithm to build a final multiexposure model.. The prevalence of overweight and obesity combined was 28.8%. Maternal smoking was the only prenatal exposure variable associated with higher child BMI (. This first comprehensive and systematic analysis of many suspected environmental obesogens strengthens evidence for an association of smoking, air pollution exposure, and characteristics of the built environment with childhood obesity risk. Cross-sectional biomarker results may suffer from reverse causality bias, whereby obesity status influenced the biomarker concentration. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP5975.

Topics: Air Pollutants; Air Pollution; Body Mass Index; Child; Environmental Exposure; Environmental Pollutants; Exposome; Female; Humans; Male; Nitrogen Dioxide; Obesity; Phthalic Acids; Pregnancy; Skinfold Thickness; Smoking; Waist Circumference