Background: Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a major public health problem. Identifying novel risk factors for CVD, including widely prevalent environmental exposures, is therefore important. Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a manmade chemical used in the manufacture of common household consumer products. Biomonitoring surveys have shown that PFOA is detectable in the blood of more than 98% of t...

The National Children's Study (NCS), launched in September of 2005, will investigate the effects of environmental exposures and children's health and development. Waukesha County, Wis was selected as 1 of 7 sites to spearhead this ambitious undertaking. Residents of Waukesha County may experience different kinds of environmental exposures from water, land, and air based on where they live, work...

OBJECTIVE To investigate effects of cold weather spells on incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD), and potential effect modification of socio-demographic, clinical, behavioural and environmental exposures. METHODS Data from two prospective studies were analysed: the British Regional Heart Study (BRHS), a population-based study of British men aged 60-79years, followed for CVD incidence from...

Several studies have proven the important influence that environmental exposures have in the individual's susceptibility to suffer allergy and other related diseases, mostly during embryonic or early life. Although the relationship between the environment and allergic diseases had been previously reported, one interesting attempt to describe this relationship was Strachan's hygiene hypothesis, ...

BACKGROUND To examine transient environmental exposures and their relationship with human fecundity, exposure assessment should occur optimally at the time of conception in both members of the couple. We performed an observational, prospective cohort study with biomonitoring in both members of a heterosexual couple trying to conceive. Couples collected urine, saliva, and semen specimens for up ...

Levels of exposure biomarkers vary among individuals because of differences in both environmental exposure and metabolism. However, the ultimate interest is in providing information about the impact of modifying environmental exposures through regulation or behavior change. Using these levels in studies of pregnancy outcomes, as nicely illustrated by the study of Kadhel et al. in this issue of ...

Recently, there has been an increased interest in modeling the association between aggregate disease counts and environmental exposures measured, for example via air pollution monitors, at point locations. This paper has two aims: first, we develop a model for such data in order to avoid ecological bias; second, we illustrate that modeling the exposure surface and estimating exposures may lead ...

Children have unusual patterns of exposure to environmental chemicals, and they have vulnerabilities that are quite distinct from those of adults. Increasingly, children's exposures to chemicals in the environment are understood to contribute to the causation and exacerbation of certain chronic, disabling diseases in children including asthma, cancer, birth defects, and neurobehavioral dysfunct...

As their most critical limitation, neighborhood and health studies published to date have not taken into account nonresidential activity places where individuals travel in their daily lives. However, identifying low-mobility populations residing in low-resource environments, assessing cumulative environmental exposures over multiple activity places, and identifying specific activity locations f...