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Noriaki Washino,¹ Yasuaki Saijo,² Seiko Sasaki,¹ Shizue Kato,¹ Susumu Ban,¹ Kanae Konishi,¹ Rie Ito,³ Ayako Nakata,³ Yusuke Iwasaki,³ Koichi Saito,³ Hiroyuki Nakazawa,³ and Reiko Kishi¹

¹Department of Public Health, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan; ²Department of Health Science, Asahikawa Medical College, Asahikawa, Japan; ³Department of Analytical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hoshi University, Tokyo, Japan

Abstract
Background: Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoate (PFOA) are man-made, ubiquitous, and persistent contaminants in the environment, wildlife, and humans. Although recent studies have shown that these chemicals interfere with fetal growth in humans, the results are inconsistent.

Objectives: Our goal was to investigate the correlation between relatively low levels of PFOS and PFOA in maternal serum and birth weight and birth size.

Methods: We conducted a hospital-based prospective cohort study between July 2002 and October 2005 in Sapporo, Japan. A total of 428 women and their infants were involved in the study. We obtained characteristics of the mothers and infants from self-administered questionnaire surveys and from medical records. We analyzed maternal serum samples for PFOS and PFOA by liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry (LC/MS/MS) .

Results: After adjusting for confounding factors, PFOS levels negatively correlated with birth weight [per log₁₀ unit: β = –148.8 g ; 95% confidence interval (CI) , –297.0 to –0.5 g]. In addition, analyses stratified by sex revealed that PFOS levels negatively correlated with birth weight only in female infants (per log₁₀ unit: β = –269.4 g ; 95% CI, –465.7 to –73.0 g) . However, we observed no correlation between PFOA levels and birth weight.

Conclusion: Our results indicate that in utero exposure to relatively low levels of PFOS was negatively correlated with birth weight.

Key words: birth weight, chest circumference, fetal growth, head circumference, length, perfluorinated chemicals, perfluorooctane sulfonate, perfluorooctanoate, prenatal exposure. Environ Health Perspect 117:660–667 (2009) . doi:10.1289/ehp.11681 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 4 November 2008]

Address correspondence to R. Kishi, Department of Public Health, Hokkaido University, Graduate School of Medicine, North 15, West 5, Kita-ku, Sapporo 060-8638 Japan. Telephone: 81-11-706-5068. Fax: 81-11-706-7805. E-mail address: rkishi@med.hokudai.ac.jp

We thank the medical staff at Sapporo Toho Hospital and the participants, and the staff at Fukuoka Institute of Health and Environmental Sciences.

This study was supported in part by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Japan Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare.

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.

Received 9 May 2008 ; accepted 4 November 2008.

Correction

In the third-to-last paragraph, the Spearman rank correlation coefficients and p-values were incorrect in the manuscript originally published online ; they have been corrected here.