title: Blood and urine levels of long half-life toxicants by nativity among immigrants to the United States.
abstract: One's place of birth is a major determinant of his or her exposure to environmental toxicants. By understanding biological burdens of long half-life toxicants by race and nativity we can better understand geographic variation in toxicant distribution. We used the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (1999-2006) biomonitoring data to examine differences in blood and urine levels of long half-life environmental toxicants of foreign-born relative to US-born people by race/ethnicity. We log transformed blood and urine measures of 51 environmental toxicants. We then used "seemingly unrelated regression," a robust technique for making multiple comparisons across a group of variables with correlated error terms, to examine differences in blood and urine toxicants by nativity and race. We found that, compared to native-born Americans, the foreign-born are generally more likely to be exposed to metals (p<0.001) and organochlorine pesticides (p<0.001), but less likely to be exposed to dioxin-like compounds (p<0.001) or polyflourinated compounds (p<0.001). While levels of toxicants varied greatly by region of birth, US-born participants had consistently higher levels of dioxin-like compounds and polyflourinated compounds.
authors.affiliation: Columbia University, Mailman School of Public Health, 600 West 168th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY, 10032, USA. pm124@columbia.edu
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Muennig
authors.forename: Xiaoyu
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Song
authors.forename: Devon C
authors.initials: DC
authors.lastname: Payne-Sturges
authors.forename: Gilbert C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Gee
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D054242:Emigrants and Immigrants / Q000145:classification; D004785:Environmental Pollutants / Q000097:blood* / Q000145:classification / Q000652:urine*; D005260:Female; D006207:Half-Life; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009749:Nutrition Surveys; D044382:Population Groups; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014116:Toxicology / Q000379:methods*; D014481:United States / Q000453:epidemiology; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D004785:Environmental Pollutants