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Frédéric Dallaire,¹ Éric Dewailly,¹ Carole Vézina,¹ Gina Muckle,¹ Jean-Philippe Weber,² Suzanne Bruneau,¹ and Pierre Ayotte¹

¹Public Health Research Unit, Laval University Medical Center–Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec, Québec City, Québec, Canada; ²Centre de Toxicologie, Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec, Sainte-Foy, Québec, Canada

Abstract
Objective: We set out to assess whether environmental prenatal exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) is associated with incidence of acute respiratory infections in preschool Inuit children.

Study design: We reviewed the medical charts of 343 children from 0 to 5 years of age and evaluated the associations between PCB-153 concentration in umbilical cord plasma and the incidence rates of acute otitis media (AOM) and of upper and lower respiratory tract infections (URTIs and LRTIs, respectively) .

Results: The incidence rates of AOM and LRTIs were positively associated with prenatal exposure to PCBs. Compared with children in the first quartile of exposure (least exposed) , children in fourth quartile (most exposed) had rate ratios of 1.25 (p < 0.001) and 1.40 (p < 0.001) for AOM and LRTIs, respectively. There was no association between prenatal PCB exposure and incidence rate of URTIs or hospitalization.

Conclusion: Prenatal exposure to PCBs could be responsible for a significant portion of respiratory infections in children of this population.

Key words: cord blood, environmental health, human, infections, Inuit, organochlorines, pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, prenatal exposure, respiratory tract infections. Environ Health Perspect 114:1301–1305 (2006) . doi:10.1289/ehp.8683 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 13 March 2006]

Address correspondence to É. Dewailly, Unité de recherche en santé publique, 945 Ave. Wolfe, Québec, G1V 5B3 Canada. Telephone: (418) 650-5115. Fax: (418) 654-3132. E-mail: eric.dewailly@inspq.qc.ca

We are grateful to the Nunavik population for their participation in this research. We are indebted to G. Lebel for management of the initial database. We thank M.-L. Mercier, M. Gaudreault, C. Lalonde, É. Leblanc, and V. Marchand for medical charts review, and P. Tulugak and M. Nulukie for help with charts retrieval and copying.

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.

Received 25 September 2005 ; accepted 13 March 2006.