Non-nutritive suck and airborne metal exposures among Puerto Rican infants

Air pollution has been shown to impact multiple measures of neurodevelopment in young children. Its effects on particularly vulnerable populations, such as ethnic minorities, however, is less studied. To address this gap in the literature, we assess the associations between infant non-nutritive suck (NNS), an early indicator of central nervous system integrity, and air pollution exposures in Puerto Rico. Among infants aged 0–3 months enrolled in the Center for Research on Early Childhood Exposure and Development (CRECE) cohort from 2017 to 2019, we examined associations between exposure to fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) and its components on infant NNS in Puerto Rico. NNS was assessed using a pacifier attached to a pressure transducer, allowing for real-time visualization of NNS amplitude, frequency, duration, cycles/burst, cycles/min and bursts/min. These data were linked to 9-month average prenatal concentrations of PM(2.5) and components, measured at three community monitoring sites. We used linear regression to examine the PM(2.5)-NNS association in single pollutant models, controlling for infant sex, maternal age, gestational age, and season of birth in base and additionally for household smoke exposure, age at testing, and NNS duration in full models. Among 198 infants, the average NNS amplitude and burst duration was 17.1 cmH(2)O and 6.1 s, respectively. Decreased NNS amplitude was consistently and significantly associated with 9-month average exposure to sulfur (−1.026 ± 0.507), zinc (−1.091 ± 0.503), copper (−1.096 ± 0.535) vanadium (−1.157 ± 0.537), and nickel (−1.530 ± 0.501). Decrements in NNS frequency were associated with sulfur exposure (0.036 ± 0.018), but not other examined PM components. Our findings provide new evidence that prenatal maternal exposure to specific PM components are associated with impaired neurodevelopment in Puerto Rican infants soon after birth.