Translocation of black carbon from the mother to the fetus. Development of a new internal label-free biomarker of black carbon exposures and its link with the early life origin of health and disease concept.

Current ambient outdoor air pollution concentrations are responsible for 3.7 million premature deaths worldwide. The combustion-related particulate matter (PM) air pollution, indicated as black carbon (BC), increases cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, but also chronic respiratory diseases and lung cancer. Two hypotheses are used to explain these findings both from experimental as well as epidemiological studies. First, particles produce pulmonary inflammation with a systemic release of cytokines. Second, the smallest particles translocate from the lungs in to the circulation with effects in different organ systems. Although, the air pollution associations are established as causal, risks might be considerably underestimated due to exposure misclassification. Indeed, until now in most epidemiological studies the exposure to PM air pollution is not measured at the individual level. We recently developed two new optical techniques to detect BC in a label-free way, what was not possible before. In this project we aim to further develop these techniques so that they can be applied to blood and the placenta. This allows to determine personal exposure over the entire pregnancy period and will provide insight in the translocation of particles from mother lungs to fetus. The BC determinations will be correlated with the early microcirculatory function of newborns and key biological networks at the level of the transcriptome and epigenetics relevant to vascular functioning.