| Urinary 1-Hydroxypyrene as a Biomarker of PAH Exposure in 3-Year-Old Ukrainian Children Amy Pelka Mucha,1,2 Daniel Hryhorczuk,1,2 Andrij Serdyuk,3 Joseph
Nakonechny,4 Alexander Zvinchuk,5 Serap Erdal,2 Motria
Caudill,2 Peter Scheff,1,2 Elena Lukyanova,4 Zoreslava
Shkiryak-Nyzhnyk,6 and
Natalia Chislovska6 1Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and
Health, and 2Division of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences,
University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, Chicago, Illinois,
USA; 3Institute of Hygiene and Medical Ecology, Kiev, Ukraine; 4Institute
of Medico-Ecological Problems, Chernivtsi, Ukraine; 5University
of Illinois at Chicago Louise Hamilton Data Management Center, Kiev, Ukraine; 6Institute
of Pediatrics, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Kiev, Ukraine Abstract
Urinary 1-hydroxypyrene (1-OHP) is a biomarker of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure. We measured urinary 1-OHP in 48 children 3 years of age in Mariupol, Ukraine, who lived near a steel mill and coking facility and compared these with 1-OHP concentrations measured in 42 children of the same age living in the capital city of Kiev, Ukraine. Children living in Mariupol had significantly higher urinary 1-OHP and creatinine-adjusted urinary 1-OHP than did children living in Kiev (adjusted: 0.69 vs. 0.34 µmol/mol creatinine, p < 0.001 ; unadjusted: 0.42 vs. 0.30 ng/mL, p = 0.002) . Combined, children in both cities exposed to environmental tobacco smoke in their homes had higher 1-OHP than did children not exposed (0.61 vs. 0.42 µmol/mol creatinine ; p = 0.04 ; p = 0.07 after adjusting for city) . In addition, no significant differences were seen with sex of the children. Our sample of children in Mariupol has the highest reported mean urinary 1-OHP concentrations in children studied to date, most likely due to their proximity to a large industrial point source of PAHs. Key words: air pollution, biomarker, children, environment, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Environ Health Perspect 114:603-609 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.7898 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 20 October 2005]
Address correspondence to A.P. Mucha, University of Illinois at Chicago, School of Public Health, Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health, 2121 W. Taylor (M/C 922) , Chicago, IL 60612 USA. Telephone: (312) 413-0378. Fax: (312) 413-7369. E-mail: apmucha@uic.edu We gratefully acknowledge all the children and their families for their participation. We thank E. Delisio for his able technical assistance with mapping Mariupol. This work was supported in part by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Cooperative Agreement CX826321-01-0 and the National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center Grant 5 D43 TW00653. Additional in-kind support was provided by participating research institutions. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 30 December 2004 ; accepted 19 October 2005. The full version of this article is available for free in HTML or PDF formats. |
