A population-based cohort study of traffic congestion and infant growth using connected vehicle data

Abstract

More than 11 million Americans reside within 150 meters of a highway, an area of high air pollution exposure. Traffic congestion further contributes to environmental pollution (e.g., air and noise), but its unique importance for population health is unclear. We hypothesized that degraded environmental quality specifically from traffic congestion has harmful impacts on fetal growth. Using a population-based cohort of births in Texas (2015–2016), we leveraged connected vehicle data to calculate traffic congestion metrics around each maternal address at delivery. Among 579,122 births, we found consistent adverse associations between traffic congestion and reduced term birth weight (8.9 grams), even after accounting for sociodemographic characteristics, typical traffic volume, and diverse environmental coexposures. We estimated that up to 1.2 million pregnancies annually may be exposed to traffic congestion (27% of births in the United States), with ~256,000 in the highest congestion zones. Therefore, improvements to traffic congestion may yield positive cobenefits for infant health.

Back to the future: omnipresence of fetal influence on the human brain through the lifespan

“…The solidity, replicability, and universality of effects as shown here for a partly environmentally influenced metric [12][13][14] , appear exceptional in human brain imaging.…”

“…Such factors, which are then targeted for prevention and intervention at different stages of the life-course, often do not show consistent relationships to brain characteristics 42 , may not actually be causal 42 , and may themselves be related to prenatal growth 19 . Another phenotype which obviously, like BW, reflects both genetic and environmental influences [12][13][14] , is body mass index (BMI) 43 . Consistent BWAS patterns have been reported for BMI 37 .…”

“…While we cannot claim that BW itself causes the cortical characteristics observed in aging, the cortical variance explained by BW after one decade, and seven or eight decades of life alike, is unlikely to be explained by influences only present at some point in adulthood or aging. BW, as further discussed below, depends on genetic, as well as prenatal environmental influences [12][13][14] , which likely have causal effects on early brain morphological features. Here we find that these effects are substantial also in the aging brain.…”

“…In this regard, birth weight (BW) stands out as a solid available measure. BW reflects fetal and maternal genetic, but also other in utero environmental factors affecting fetal growth 12–14 , including brain growth 6, 15–17 . By now, a series of studies have established that BW relates positively to mental health, cognitive function and brain characteristics, including neuroanatomical volumes and cortical surface area as measured in different age groups 4–6, 15, 18, 19 .…”

“…In this regard, birth weight (BW) stands out as a solid available measure. BW reflects fetal and maternal genetic, but also other in utero environmental factors affecting fetal growth [12][13][14] , including brain growth 6,[15][16][17] .…”