Organophosphate Urinary Metabolite Levels during Pregnancy and after Delivery in Women Living in an Agricultural Community Asa Bradman,1 Brenda Eskenazi,1 Dana B. Barr,2 Roberto
Bravo,2 Rosemary Castorina,1 Jonathan Chevrier,1 Katherine
Kogut,1 Martha E. Harnly,3 and Thomas E. McKone1,4 1Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research, School
of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA; 2National
Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 3Environmental Health Investigations Branch,
California Department of Health Services, Oakland, California, USA; 4Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, California,
USA Abstract Little information has been published about pesticide exposures experienced by pregnant women. We measured six dialkyl phosphate (DAP) urinary metabolites of organophosphate (OP) pesticides in 600 pregnant, low-income women living in the Salinas Valley, California, an agricultural area. A total of 28% were employed as farm fieldworkers during pregnancy, and 81% had at least one household member who worked in agriculture. Samples were collected twice during pregnancy (mean = 13 and 26 weeks’ gestation, respectively) and just after delivery (mean = 9 days) . As in other studies, dimethyldithiophosphate levels were higher than those of other urinary OP metabolites. Total DAP metabolite levels in samples collected after delivery were higher than in samples collected during pregnancy. Median metabolite levels at the first and second prenatal sampling points and at the postpartum collection were 102.8, 106.8, and 227.2 nmol/L, respectively. Both prenatal and postpartum metabolite levels were higher in these Salinas Valley women than in a sample of women of childbearing age in the general U.S. population (National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey) , although the deviation from U.S. reference levels was most pronounced after delivery. Higher DAP metabolite levels in the immediate postpartum period may have implications for estimating dose during pregnancy and for exposure during lactation. Key words: exposure, organophosphate, pesticides, pregnancy, prenatal, urinary metabolites, women. Environ Health Perspect 113:1802-1807 (2005) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7894 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 18 July 2005]
Address correspondence to A. Bradman, Center for Children’s Environmental Health Research/CHAMACOS, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, 2150 Shattuck Ave., Suite 600, Berkeley, CA 94720-7380 USA. Telephone: (510) 643-3023. Fax: (510) 642-9083. E-mail: abradman@socrates.berkeley.edu We thank the CHAMACOS field and laboratory staff and the women that participated in this study. In addition, we thank L. Caltabiano, A. Bishop, P. Restrepo, G. Weerasekera, P. Morales, M. Odetokuns, D. Walden, and J. Perez for their analytical support. This research was jointly funded by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant RD 83171001 and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant PO1 ES009605. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies. T.E.M. was supported in part by the U.S. EPA National Exposure Research Laboratory through Interagency Agreement DW-988-38190-01-0 with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory through the U.S. Department of Energy under contract grant DE-AC03-76SF00098. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 23 December 2004 ; accepted 18 July 20005. The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |