Air Pollution and Gynecologic Disease Outcomes: Infertility, Menstrual Irregularity, Uterine Fibroids, and Endometriosis

While issues of environmental justice have highlighted populations at high risk of adverse health outcomes due to air pollution, chemical exposures, and land use, how these disparate exposures might uniquely impact women’s health is an area of emerging research interests. Women may be particularly vulnerable in different ways than men; in that, socially- and culturally-patterned exposures may lead to different exposure patterns in women. Sex differences in biological processes can also play a role in how chemical exposures could differentially impact the health of women compared to men. Further exacerbating these differences are how sex intersects with race, class, or gender to impact both environmental exposures and downstream biological effects on disease outcomes in women. This interaction between social, environmental, and biological factors may place vulnerable subpopulations of women, such as Hispanic or African-American women, at a disadvantage with respect to disease risk. We will highlight the growing body of research of the effects of air pollution on female reproductive outcomes and infertility, and the implications of these findings among vulnerable populations.