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Prenatal metal exposures in urban and suburban New York, and a scoping review to compare metal concentrations in meconium across studies

Journal of Perinatology volume 46, pages 276–283 (2026)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Objective

This study aimed to compare the concentrations of ten metals in meconium samples from an urban and a suburban hospital in New York State.

Study design

A cross-sectional study was conducted on mother-child pairs. Meconium metal concentrations were quantified using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and samples were compared using Wilcoxon rank-sum tests. Additionally, a scoping review was conducted to compare literature concentrations.

Results

The findings of the cross-sectional study indicated significantly higher levels of toxic metals, lead, and cadmium (p < 0.05), in the urban samples, but higher copper, chromium, iron, and molybdenum (p < 0.001) were identified in suburban samples. The scoping review identified studies in low and high pollution areas. Our study findings were comparable with the results from low pollution locations.

Conclusion

Understanding metal concentrations in newborns, both toxic and nutritionally necessary, from different geographic areas is an important step in the assessment of prenatal exposure.

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Fig. 1: Scoping review protocol diagram.

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Data availability

A deidentified dataset can be requested from the corresponding author, with details about potential use.

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Funding

This project was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) with grant number R840454.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, New York, NY, USA

    Fiona Fogarty, Brian Pavilonis & Suzanne McDermott

  2. Medgar Evers College of The City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Jin Shin

  3. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA

    Jin Shin

  4. Brooklyn College of The City University of New York, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Zhongqi Cheng

  5. Department of Pediatrics, NYC Health & Hospitals at Kings County, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Nadine Lahage

  6. SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University, Brooklyn, NY, USA

    Nadine Lahage

  7. Montefiore St. Luke’s Hospital Cornwall, Newburgh, NY, USA

    Prabhakar Kocherlakota

  8. Department of Pediatrics, New York Medical College, Valhalla, NY, USA

    Prabhakar Kocherlakota

Authors
  1. Fiona Fogarty
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  2. Brian Pavilonis
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  3. Jin Shin
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  4. Zhongqi Cheng
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  5. Nadine Lahage
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  6. Prabhakar Kocherlakota
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  7. Suzanne McDermott
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Contributions

BP and SM conceived of the project, acquired funding, and contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript. FF consented participants, collected samples, analyzed the data, and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. NL and KP contributed to the concept of the project, collected samples, and facilitated collaboration at the hospitals. JS and ZC analyzed the samples and contributed to data analysis and interpretation. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Fiona Fogarty.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval

Informed consent was collected from all participants. All protocols relating to human subjects involved in the study were reviewed and approved by the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy Institutional Review Board (IRB) (Protocol # 2020-0882). All methods were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.

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Fogarty, F., Pavilonis, B., Shin, J. et al. Prenatal metal exposures in urban and suburban New York, and a scoping review to compare metal concentrations in meconium across studies. J Perinatol 46, 276–283 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41372-025-02504-w

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