Relationship of serum polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAHs) and lung function in adults: Evidence from a large...

Studies have shown polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) exposure was related to reduced lung function. Existing studies mainly focused on the metabolites of several specific components with high detection rates in urine while internal exposure levels of other PAHs priority pollutant were rarely reported. Studies conducted in general population from China were limited and their findings were not completely consistent. Although the half-lives of PAHs are only approximately 6-35h, parent PAHs can still be detected in blood samples. Therefore, we recruited 1232 community residents from Guangzhou, China. We measured the concentration of 18 parent PAHs in their serum samples and performed pulmonary function tests on our participants. We included 15 components with a detection rate higher than 70 % in subsequent analysis and selected forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1s (FEV₁) and the ratio of FEV₁ to FVC (FEV₁/FVC) as outcomes. We observed significant associations between serum PAHs and lower lung function parameters in generalized linear models (GLMs) and weighted quantile sum regression (WQS) models. Compared with the lowest quartile (Q1) of serum fluorene concentration, higher quartiles of concentrations were associated with a decrease of FEV₁/FVC of -1.35 [95 % CI, (-2.55, -0.14)] in Q2, -2.21 [95 % CI, (-3.42, -0.99)] in Q3 and -1.57 [95 % CI, (-2.78, -0.36)] in Q4. Similarly, higher quartiles of PAHs mixture were associated with a decrease in FEV₁ of -56.00 [95 % CI, (-108.92, -3.08)] and in FEV₁/FVC of -1.60 [95 % CI, (-2.56, -0.64)]. Sensitivity analysis indicated that our results were robust.