Early-life household smoke and metal exposure and children's heart health
Official title: Early life household air pollution, metal composition and cardiovascular health: Evidence from GRAPHS
Funded at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai · NIH-11392928 · Data updated 2026-11-12
This project looks at whether breathing cooking smoke and metals before and during infancy changes heart health up through age 12 for children born in Ghana.
Quick facts
| Grant type | R01 grant |
|---|---|
| Study type | NIH-funded research |
| Funding institution | Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai NIH-funded |
| Lab location | 1 site (New York, United States) |
| Project start | September 7, 2022 |
| Project end | June 30, 2027 |
| Funding year | 2025 |
| Award (this year) | $43,810 |
| NIH project number | 3R01ES034433-04S1 |
| Project ID | NIH-11392928 on NIH RePORTER |
Who could benefit from this research
✓Could help
Ideal candidates are children from the GRAPHS cohort in Ghana who had documented prenatal and infancy exposure data to household air pollution and who can attend follow-up visits through age 12.
✕Less likely to help
People without early-life exposure records, adults, or those living outside the GRAPHS catchment area are unlikely to benefit directly from participating in this project.
What this research studies
If your child was born in a home that uses wood, charcoal, or other solid fuels for cooking, this work follows children from birth through age 12 to learn how that early exposure affects heart health. Researchers are building on the Ghana Randomized Air Pollution and Health Study (GRAPHS) and will use existing exposure measurements from pregnancy and infancy plus lab tests of metal content in the air. They will perform standard heart and growth checks over time using accepted clinical and laboratory methods. The goal is to connect early-life smoke and metal exposure with measurable heart and cardiovascular differences during childhood.
Why it matters
Potential benefit: If successful, this work could point to specific household exposures to reduce and help guide low-cost interventions to protect children's long-term heart health.
How similar studies have gone: Previous cohort studies have linked air pollution to heart risk in adults and older children, but using detailed metal composition from early-life household air pollution in a long-term child cohort is relatively new.
Where this research is happening
-
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, United States Active
Researchers
- Principal investigator: Lee, Alison G — Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
- Study coordinator: Lee, Alison G
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About this research
- This is an active NIH-funded research project — typically early-stage science, not a clinical trial accepting patient enrollment.
- Some NIH-funded labs run parallel clinical studies or seek volunteers for related work. To check, contact the principal investigator or institution listed above.
- For full project details, budget, and progress reports, visit the official NIH RePORTER page.