International Journal of Hygiene and Environmental Health · Oct 27, 2026

Mid-pregnancy plasma environmental chemical exposures and maternal blood pressure in a pilot study of Black women

By Joseph G, DeBolt CA, Maroli AS et al.

Epidemiological evidence suggests Black women experience disproportionate exposure to environmental chemicals and diagnoses of hypertension during pregnancy. We characterized environmental chemicals and determined their associations with blood pressure in a cross-sectional analysis of Black women in Philadelphia. We measured 32 plasma chemicals using non-targeted analysis in samples collected between the 16th and 24th weeks of gestation in the MOMENTUM cohort (n = 68). We assessed the association between log₂-transformed chemical abundance and blood pressure, as well as preterm hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP), using regression analysis. We categorized chemical abundances into tertiles and modelled them as ordinal variables; blood pressure as a continuous variable; and preterm HDP as a binary variable. We assessed the mixture effect with a Weight Quantile Sum regression constraint in the positive direction. Each increase in one tertile of 4-methylbenzophenone (β = 4.48 mmHg; 95% CI: 1.84, 7.12), 4-tert-Butylcatechol (β = 3.83 mmHg; 95% CI: 1.53, 6.14), benzophenone (β = 4.05 mmHg; 95% CI: 1.49, 6.61), carvone (β = 3.50 mmHg; 95% CI: 1.19, 5.81), and tris(2-ethylhexyl) phosphate (β = 3.98 mmHg; 95% CI: 1.23, 6.74) was cross-sectionally associated with a statistically significant increase in diastolic blood pressure. A mixture of flavoring and fragrance agents also showed a positive association with diastolic blood pressure (β = 3.05 mmHg; 95%CI: 0.60, 4.67). Exposures were not significantly associated with systolic blood pressure and preterm HDP. These findings are hypothesis-generating and require replication in large-scale cohort studies.

doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheh.2026.114935Open access, accepted manuscriptPubMed 42945788Populations