On February 03, 2019, Dr. Scott Sicherer spoke to CBS news about gene-environment interactions and their role in allergy development. Dr. Scott Sicherer, who directs the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, says there are a lot of theories as to why there’s been an increase in food allergies: “It goes from everywhere from what we call the hygiene or cleanliness hypothesis to vitamin D, to the way that the biology of our body may have changed, or even the food supply.” To read the full article click here.

Dr. Shanna Swan

On January 30, 2019, Dr. Shann Swan’s spoke to Cape Gazette on her recently published research that found language delays in children could be linked to phthalates in the environment. The study included 963 children and mothers from Sweden who participated in the Swedish Environmental Longitudinal Mother and Child, Asthma and Allergy Study, and 370 mothers and children from the United States who participated in the Infant Development and the Environment Study. Study author Shanna Swan said, “When you compare the risk of language delay in mothers with high exposure versus low exposure, it was double the risk. They were twice as likely to have language delay.” Swan is a professor in the department of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai Icahn School of Medicine. To read the full article click here.

On January 22, 2019, Dr. Supinda Bunyavanich spoke to Chemical & Engineering News about gut microbiota and it’s linkage to the presence of food allergy. “I think it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not going to be a single bullet you can use to treat food allergy,” says Supinda Bunyavanich, an allergy expert at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Gut bacteria act in communities, she says, and that the different species may influence how the immune system acts. To read the full article click here.

Dr. Manish Arora was featured in Spectrum Article, “How Pregnancy may shape a child’s autism”, to discuss how chemical exposures may affect a child’s odds of autism. Dr. Arora’s work is part of a growing field that is attempting to decipher what kinds of environmental exposures increase the odds of autism and how they interact with human biology and genetics.  Researchers cannot easily collect blood or saliva samples from fetuses to see what’s circulating through them. Instead, they try to discern fetal exposures by using the mother’s environment as a proxy. If a pregnant woman takes a particular medication, for instance, researchers can extrapolate that the fetus, too, was exposed. To read full article click here.

P30 Center Director, Dr. Robert Wright, featured in the news article “The Brain before Birth: Using fMRI to Explore the Secrets of Fetal Neurodevelopment” for Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The article appears in the November 2018 issue of EHP. To access the article click here.

P30 Center Director, Dr. Robert Wright, contributes to a new report from NASEM that recommends the creation of a health monitoring and research program (HMRP) on Gulf War and post 9/11 veterans. The committee that carried out the study and wrote the report assessed the available evidence on the reproductive, developmental, and generational health effects related to exposures that may have occurred during the Gulf War and post-9/11 conflicts. While there is a growing base of human and animal evidence on the reproductive and developmental effects of many toxicants of concern, there is a dearth of information on the specific effects of veterans’ exposures on their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. To read the full report click here.

Congratulations to our center researchers for being one of the three papers selected as an NIEHS Extramural Paper of the Month. The Extramural Papers of the Month are selected based on their important findings and potential for public health impact. The new study, “Sources of clinically significant neonatal intensive care unit phthalate exposure,” funded by NIEHS identified noninvasive respiratory support equipment — specifically, nasal prongs that deliver oxygen and air pressure — as a source of phthalate exposure in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Although multiple studies have demonstrated elevated phthalate markers in NICU patients, specific sources of phthalate exposure were not previously identified. According to the authors, their discovery of the source of potentially neuroactive phthalate exposure provides an avenue to reduce phthalate exposure among NICU patients. To see the papers for November, visit the NIEHS Environmental Factor website. 

Using evidence found in teeth from two Neanderthals from southeastern France, researchers from the Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai report the earliest evidence of lead exposure in an extinct human-like species from 250,000 years ago. This study is the first to report lead exposure in Neanderthal and is the first to use teeth to reconstruct climate during and timing of key developmental events including weaning and nursing duration— key determinants of population growth. Results of the study were published in Science Advances, a journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. To read more click here.

Dr. Robert Wright provided commentary for the American Academy of Pediatrics October 2018, VOLUME 142/Issue 4–“Motherless Children Have the Hardest Time”: Epigenetic Programming and Early Life Environment. Dr. Robert Wright discussed how the environment early in life can program health effects that manifest years or even decades later. His new commentary explains the importance of identifying risk factors for stress from infanthood. To read the AAP commentary click here.