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The effect and its critical window for ambient temperature and humidity in pregnancy on term low birth weight

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Abstract

As common meteorological factors in daily life, there is limited evidence for the effect of ambient temperature and humidity during pregnancy on the risk of term low birth weight. Furthermore, little is known about the interaction of ambient temperature and humidity on TLBW. The objective of the study was to explore the effect of ambient temperature, humidity during pregnancy, and their interaction on the risk of TLBW and, moreover, to identify exposure critical window. We recruited 6640 infants and their mothers to build a birth cohort study in Jinan City, China, from January 2018 to December 2019. The associations between temperature and humidity during pregnancy and TLBW were estimated by generalized additive model, logistic regression model, and interaction analysis, and the critical window was identified by the distributed lag non-linear model. The incidence of TLBW was 1.36% for the infants in the birth cohort. TLBW was related to the low level of temperature and humidity in the whole pregnancy, compared with the moderate level and the adjusted ORs were 4.44 (1.65–11.42) and 6.23 (1.92–21.39), respectively. The indicators of the interaction analysis of temperature and humidity were not statistically significant. For the low level of humidity, the association with TLBW was statistically significant at first to sixth gestational weeks, and the maximum OR in male infants (3.95, 1.70–9.16) was higher than that in females (1.96, 1.06–3.63). For the low level of temperature, we failed to find significant association with TLBW at each gestational week. The low level of temperature and humidity during pregnancy could increase the risk of TLBW. There was no statistical interaction between temperature and humidity on TLBW. Moreover, the early stage of pregnancy was the critical window for humidity exposure, in which the boys had a greater effect.

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available due to the cohort in the follow-up stage and the subject’s privacy but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Firstly, we would like to thank all children and parents for their cooperation and thank all clinics for their support and participation in our study. Secondly, we would like to thank Jinan Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention for its coordination and help in the research work and thank Shandong Jinan Ecological Environment Monitoring Center for providing the air pollution monitoring data. Additionally, we would like to thank Han Wu for their methodological guidance.

Funding

This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81773386).

Author information

Author notes

  1. Shuang Du, Shuoxin Bai and Xiaodong Zhao contributed equally.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Occupational and Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China

    Shuang Du & Yifan Zhai

  2. Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, 44 Wenhuaxi Road, Jinan, Shandong, 250012, People’s Republic of China

    Shuoxin Bai & Zhiping Wang

  3. Jinan Municipal Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaodong Zhao & Shaoqian Lin

  4. Shandong Jinan Ecological Environment Monitoring Center, Jinan, Shandong, People’s Republic of China

    Zhaojun Wang

Authors
  1. Shuang Du
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  2. Shuoxin Bai
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Contributions

Shuang Du: investigation, software, writing—original draft preparation. Shuoxin Bai: investigation, visualization, writing—original draft preparation. Xiaodong Zhao: investigation, resources, writing—original draft preparation. Shaoqian Lin: supervision, investigation. Yifan Zhai: visualization, validation. Zhaojun Wang: resources, investigation. Zhiping Wang: project administration, methodology, conceptualization.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhiping Wang.

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Ethics approval and consent to participate

The study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Preventive Medicine of Shandong University (approved number: 20170315). Informed consent was obtained from mothers of subjects.

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The author confirms that neither the entire manuscript nor any part of its content has been submitted for publication elsewhere. The author consents to publish.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

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Du, S., Bai, S., Zhao, X. et al. The effect and its critical window for ambient temperature and humidity in pregnancy on term low birth weight. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 54531–54542 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19512-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19512-4

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