Prenatal exposure to organophosphate pesticides and brain morphology and white matter microstructure in preadolescents

Background: Prenatal exposure to organophosphate (OP) pesticides associate with impaired neurodevelopment in humans and animal models. However, much uncertainty exists about the brain structural alterations underlying these associations. The objective of this study was to determine whether maternal OP pesticide metabolite concentrations in urine...

Marine mammals and sonar: Dose-response studies, the risk-disturbance hypothesis and the role of exposure context

Marine mammals may be negatively affected by anthropogenic noise. Behavioural response studies (BRS) aim to establish a relationship between noise exposure conditions (dose) from a potential stressor and associated behavioural responses of animals. A recent series of BRS have focused on the effects of naval sonar sounds on cetaceans. Here, we...

Biomarkers of exposure in environment-wide association studies – Opportunities to decode the exposome using human biomonitoring data

Background: The European Union's 7th Framework Programme (EU's FP7) project HEALS – Health and Environment-wide Associations based on Large Population Surveys – aims a refinement of the methodology to elucidate the human exposome. Human biomonitoring (HBM) provides a valuable tool for understanding the magnitude of human exposure from all...

Comparison of industrial emissions and carpet dust concentrations of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans in a multi-center U.S. study

Proximity to facilities emitting polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDD/F) has been associated with increased risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL). There is limited information about whether proximity to industrial sources leads to indoor PCDD/F contamination of homes. We measured carpet dust concentrations (pg/g...

Spatial variability of trace elements and sources for improved exposure assessment in Barcelona

Trace and major elements concentrations in PM10 and PM2.5 were measured at 20 sites spread in the Barcelona metropolitan area (1 rural background, 6 urban background, 13 road traffic sites) and at 1 reference site. Three 2-week samples per site and size fraction were collected during 2009 using low volume samplers, adding a total of 120 samples....

Neurobehavioral effects of transportation noise in primary schoolchildren A cross-sectional study

Background. Due to shortcomings in the design, no source-specific exposure-effect relations are as yet available describing the effects of noise on children's cognitive performance. This paper reports on a study investigating the effects of aircraft and road traffic noise exposure on the cognitive performance of primary schoolchildren in both...

Relating biomarkers to whole-organism effects using species sensitivity distributions: A pilot study for marine species exposed to oil

Biomarkers are widely used to measure environmental impacts on marine species. For many biomarkers, it is not clear how the signal levels relate to effects on the whole organism. This paper shows how species sensitivity distributions (SSDs) can be applied to evaluate multiple biomarker responses in species assemblages. To our knowledge, the...

Optimization of airborne endotoxin exposure assessment: Effects of filter type, transport conditions, extraction solutions, and storage of samples and extracts

Endotoxin exposure occurs in homes and occupational environments and is known to cause adverse health effects. In order to compare results from different studies and establish standards, airborne endotoxin exposures should be assessed using standardized methods. Although the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) developed guidelines for...

In vitro intestinal lead uptake and transport in relation to speciation

Children might be exposed substantially to contaminants such as lead via soil ingestion. In risk assessment of soil contaminants there is a need for information on oral bioavailability of soilborne lead. Oral bioavailability can be seen as the result of four steps: (1) soil ingestion; (2) mobilization from soil during digestion, i.e.,...

Exposure-annoyance relationships for odour from industrial sources

Existing data from field surveys have been reanalysed in order to establish relationships between odour annoyance and odour exposure concentrations caused by (bio) industrial odours in a community. The percentage of highly annoyed persons (%HA) was found to have a simple relationship with the logarithm of the 98 percentile of the odour exposure...