UNC CLEAN

#1 Contribute new knowledge on the impacts of early life toxicant exposures on neurodevelopment.

#2 Determine the underlying neural substrates that link exposure to neurobehavioral development using non-invasive imaging biomarkers.

#3 Disseminate knowledge across interdisciplinary groups of researchers.

#4 Translate interdisciplinary research on the impact of early life exposures to public health professionals and early childcare providers.

Project 1: Early Life Toxicant Exposures and Neurobehavioral Development (MPI Engel and Lu). Using the UNC BCP, Project 1 will examine early life phthalates and untargeted exposomic features in relation to early childhood behavior, executive function, language and motor development, and social cognition. Our study will: (1) Characterize the early life phthalate and exposome landscape: and. (2) Evaluate the longitudinal associations of early life toxicant exposures and neurobehavioral development. We will employ Bayesian semi-parametric modeling and -computation to examine joint associations between multiple phthalate exposures and multiple childhood inventories with attention to the potential for sex-specific effects; and, conduct a benchmark dose-response analysis to facilitate regulatory translation, including single chemicals and mixture-wide benchmark dose estimates.

Project 2: Neural Substrates of Prenatal and Early Life Neurotoxicity using Non-Invasive Imaging Methods (PI Lin). Using the UNC BCP, Project 2 will investigate the relationship between early life phthalate exposure and trajectories of structural and functional brain development. leveraging serial structural (sMRI) and resting-state functional (rsfMRI) imaging between birth and age 5 years. They will additionally develop novel biomarkers of prenatal neurotoxic effects using third trimester fetal brain imaging, a non-invasive approach to establishing the extent to which prenatal exvosures influence brain develooment in the earliest windows.

Through professional development focused on identifying and reducing exposure to environmental hazards in home and community settings, we propose to enhance the capacity of childcare and public health professionals to recognize hazards and recommend risk reduction strategies. As a result, these professionals will become community resources on children's environmental health and can inform development of policies that are protective of children's health. Additionally, by involving undergraduate students majoring in public health education at a local historically black college and university, we will contribute to a more diverse environmental health sciences workforce in the future.

Hu, W., Liu, C.-W., Jiménez, J. A., McCoy, E. S., Hsiao, Y.-C., Lin, W., Engel, S. M., Lu, K., & Zylka, M. J. (2022). Detection of azoxystrobin fungicide and metabolite azoxystrobin-acid in pregnant women and children, estimation of Daily Intake, and evaluation of placental and lactational transfer in mice. Environmental Health Perspectives, 130(2). https://doi.org/10.1289/ehp9808