Abstract
With the growing climate crisis, particulate matter (PM) air pollution increasingly impacts human health, especially children. Early-life PM2.5 (< 2.5 µm) exposure is linked to adverse neurodevelopment, yet prenatal critical windows and underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. This study examines prenatal critical windows of PM2.5 exposure and structural brain changes during early adolescence. We analyzed structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 238 children (ages 5–15; 90 females). Using Freesurfer, we quantified 14 subcortical volumes from T1-weighted MRI scans. Weekly prenatal PM2.5 levels were estimated using a satellite-based gradient-boosting hybrid model at a 1 × 1 km spatial resolution. Treating the 14 brain regions as an aggregate, we used lagged weighted quantile sum (L-WQS) regression to assess time-varying associations between weekly prenatal PM2.5 exposure and brain structure. Results. We identified two prenatal critical windows in which PM2.5 exposure was negatively associated with subcortical brain volume, with the strongest associations observed at 20 weeks before birth (β = -0.11 [95% CI: -0.08, -0.14]) and 4 weeks before birth (β = -0.12 [95% CI: -0.09, -0.15]), primarily driven by reductions in the nucleus accumbens volume. Our findings highlight two prenatal critical windows in which PM2.5 exposure is associated with reduced subcortical brain volume, particularly in the nucleus accumbens, a key region involved in motivation, reward processing, impulsivity, and risk-taking behaviors. These results provide new insight into the neurodevelopmental vulnerability to air pollution and emphasize the importance of targeted interventions during pregnancy to mitigate long-term outcomes.
Presenters
Elza RechtmanInstructor, Environmental Medicine, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2026 Special Focus—Unseen Unsustainability: Addressing Hidden Risks to Long-Term Wellbeing for All
KEYWORDS
Air Pollution, Neurodevelopment, PM2.5, Prenatal Exposure, Brain Imaging, Critical Windows
