Publication: Influence of Home Indoor Dampness Exposure on Volatile Organic Compounds in Exhaled Breath of Mothers and Their Infants: The NELA Birth Cohort
Authors
Lozano Terol, Gema ; Behalf of the NELA Study Group ; Cánovas Díaz, Manuel ; Diego Puente, Teresa de ; Gallego Jara, Julia ; Noguera Velasco, José Antonio ; Sola Martínez, Rosa Alba ; Morales Bartolomé, Eva ; García-Marcos Álvarez, Luis Vicente
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DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/app12146864
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info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Description
©2022. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This document is the Published, version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Applied Sciences. To access the final edited and published work see https://doi.org/10.3390/app12146864
Abstract
Currently, the effect of exposure to indoor air contaminants and the presence of dampness at
home on respiratory/atopic health is of particular concern to physicians. The measurement of volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath is a useful approach for monitoring environmental
exposures. A great advantage of this strategy is that it allows the study of the impact of pollutants
on the metabolism through a non-invasive method. In this paper, the levels of nine VOCs (acetone,
isoprene, toluene, p/m-xylene, o-xylene, styrene, benzaldehyde, naphthalene, and 2-ethyl-1-hexanol)
in the exhaled breath of subjects exposed and not exposed to home dampness were assessed. Exhaled
breath samples were collected from 337 mother–child pairs of a birth cohort and analysed by gaschromatography–mass-spectrometry. It was observed that the levels of 2-ethyl-1-hexanol in the
exhaled breath of the mothers were significantly influenced by exposure to household humidity. In
the case of the infants, differences in some of the VOC levels related to home dampness exposure;
however, they did not reach statistical significance. In addition, it was also found that the eosinophil
counts of the mothers exposed to home dampness were significantly elevated compared to those of
the non-exposed mothers. To our knowledge, these findings show, for the first time, that exposure to
home dampness may influence VOC patterns in exhaled breath.
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Applied Sciences
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