Racial disparity in maternal phthalates exposure; Association with racial disparity in fetal growth and birth outcomes

Abstract Experimental and observational data implicate phthalates as developmental toxicants. However, few data are available to assess the maternal risks of gestational exposure by race and infant sex. To begin to address this data gap, we characterized associations between maternal urinary phthalate metabolites and birth outcomes among African American and white mothers from a southeastern U.S. population. We enrolled pregnant African American ( n  = 152) and white ( n  = 158) women with singleton live births between 18 and 22 weeks gestation. We measured phthalate metabolites (mono-n-butyl phthalate (MBP), monoisobutyl phthalate (MiBP), monobenzyl phthalate (MBzP), mono(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP), mono(2-ethyl-5-oxohexyl) phthalate (MEOHP), mono-2-ethyl-5-hydroxyhexyl phthalate (MEHHP), monoethyl phthalate (MEP), monomethyl phthalate (MMP), and the sums of DEHP (ΣDEHP) and DBP (ΣDBP) metabolites) in up to two gestational urine specimens from mothers, and evaluated confounder-adjusted associations per natural log unit greater concentration with birth weight for gestational age z-score, small for gestational age (SGA; p  = 0.04), indicating an association among whites (β = −0.14; 95% CI: −0.28, 0.001) but not among African Americans (β = 0.05; 95% CI = −0.09, 0.19). Greater MiBP (OR = 2.82; 95% CI: 1.21, 6.56) and MEOHP (OR = 2.80; 95% CI: 1.05, 7.42) were associated with an overall higher SGA risk, greater MEHP was associated with higher SGA risk ( p  = 0.10) in whites (OR = 3.26 95% CI: 0.64, 16.56) but not in African Americans (OR = 0.71 95% CI: 0.07, 7.17), and the associations for MiBP ( p  = 0.02) and ΣDBP ( p  = 0.02) varied by infant sex. We detected interactions for PTB in which African Americans were at higher risk than whites for greater MiBP ( p  = 0.08) and MEP ( p  = 0.02) although lower risk for greater MEHP ( p  = 0.09). Greater MEP was associated with an overall higher LBW risk (OR = 1.33; 95% CI: 0.95, 1.86), and males were at higher risk than females with greater MBP ( p  = 0.002), MiBP ( p  = 0.02), MBzP ( p  = 0.01), MEP ( p  = 0.002), MMP ( p  = 0.09), and ΣDBP ( p  = 0.01) concentrations. Overall, our results suggest that gestational phthalate exposure is associated with adverse maternal birth outcomes, and that the effects vary by maternal race and infant sex.