Whitney Cowell
New York University, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Everyday pollutants reach the developing baby during pregnancy, and these exposures may shape health for decades. Three projects ask how plastics, plastic-related chemicals and air pollution affect pregnancy and the newborn.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
microplastics
phthalates
bisphenols
- Grants
- 3 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Adapt microplastic measurement methods from environmental and marine samples to human placentas from NYU CHES pregnancies. Identify exposure sources, including changeable lifestyle factors and contamination in the delivery room and lab.
- Examine joint exposure to plastic particles and plastic additives by comparing placental microplastics with bisphenol and phthalate levels in mothers' urine during pregnancy.
- Test whether prenatal phthalate exposure shortens telomeres, the protective chromosome caps, in placenta and cord blood. Use Southern blotting and TeSLA in 500 mother-child pairs and follow up at about age 8.
- Determine whether phthalates act through hTERT, the gene for telomerase's main subunit. Measure hTERT expression, telomerase activity, telomere DNA damage foci and senescence markers in placental tissue.
- Identify pregnancy windows when daily PM2.5 air pollution most affects fetal growth, birthweight and gestational age. Use distributed lag models, including tests for sex differences, in 800 PRISM mother-newborn pairs.
- Test whether placental microRNAs, measured by RNA sequencing in tissue and extracellular vesicles, link PM2.5 exposure to pregnancy outcomes. Apply mediation analysis and map miRNA-mRNA regulatory networks.
More about the research
Each uses the placenta, the organ that links mother and fetus, as a window into exposure and biology. The work relies on large pregnancy cohorts, groups of mothers and children followed over time. One is the NYU Children's Health and Environment Study (NYU CHES).
Why it matters
Preterm birth and low birthweight raise the risk of illness in infancy and of chronic disease later in life. This work could support public health strategies that reduce air pollution exposure during the most sensitive weeks of pregnancy. It could also yield early placental biomarkers of pregnancy risk. Measuring microplastics in human tissue may change how their health risks are judged. Newborn telomere length could become a marker of future risk for telomere-linked diseases in adulthood.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Cande Ananth
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Public Health & Epidemiology
Build a linked birth database of about 16 million births in five U.S. states from 2000–2016, assigning each residence daily PM2.5 and its components, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and weather measures.
Zhongzheng Niu
University at Buffalo, NY·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether higher birth weight, faster BMI growth across childhood and early obesity shorten telomere length and speed its loss from birth to age 24, using birth records, yearly growth data and stored samples from the Southern California Children's Health Study.
Zorimar Rivera-Nunez
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Public Health & Epidemiology
Measure prenatal exposure to zearalenone (ZEN), a fungal estrogen-like contaminant, and its metabolites in TIDES pregnant women, and relate it to estrogen production and metabolomic profiles during pregnancy.
The school
New York University: 72 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 540 research doctorates a year.
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