High-Throughput Suspect Screening Reveals Widespread Pesticide Exposure in Early Childhood

Area of Science:

• Environmental Health Sciences
• Toxicology
• Analytical Chemistry

Background:

• The human exposome, encompassing all environmental exposures, is crucial for understanding disease etiology.
• Early life environmental exposures significantly impact long-term health, but comprehensive characterization is lacking.
• Pesticide exposure is a major public health concern, especially in vulnerable populations like children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and apply a high-throughput suspect screening workflow for comprehensive pesticide exposure assessment in children.
• To characterize the pesticide exposure landscape in a cohort of children.
• To identify potential coexposure risks and factors influencing pesticide detection.

Main Methods:

• Established a nontarget data acquisition for target analysis-based suspect screening workflow.
• Screened over 1000 pesticides within a 14-minute run time.
• Analyzed 438 urine samples from 187 children using the developed workflow.

Main Results:

• Identified 215 pesticide residues, with 51 detected in over 20% of samples.
• Detected an average of 31 pesticides per child, ranging from 21 to 50 compounds.
• Observed significant associations between pesticide detection frequencies and child age, sex, and gestational age, alongside co-occurrence patterns.

Conclusions:

• Developed a rapid, high-throughput method for human exposome characterization.
• Demonstrated widespread pesticide exposure in a vulnerable child population.
• Highlighted potential coexposure risks and the need for further exposome research in early life stages.