Twelve-plus years of research have added significantly to the scientists\u2019 understanding of how chemical exposures \u2014 in the womb and after \u2014 may influence a child\u2019s brain development and behavior, said U. of I. comparative biosciences<\/a> professor emerita Susan Schantz<\/a>, the original IKIDS director who continues as a co-principal investigator with her colleagues, comparative biosciences professor Andr\u00e9a Aguiar<\/a> and Michigan State University food science and human nutrition professor Rita Strakovsky<\/a>. Aguiar is the IKIDS director.<\/p>\n IKIDS began recruiting pregnant parents in 2012 and joined the ECHO program in 2016. In the first wave of its work, it enrolled 565 mother-child pairs residing in the Urbana-Champaign region, Aguiar said. A new round of ECHO funding started in 2023 and will continue until 2030. The IKIDS\u2019 goal is to enroll another 600 local mother-child participants.<\/p>\n The IKIDS studies have focused on chemical exposures that are widespread in the U.S. population, Schantz said. These include over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen; chemicals in plastics and food packaging like bisphenols and phthalates; antimicrobials like triclosan in soaps, toothpaste and other consumer products; agricultural chemicals like glyphosate; and chemicals that are added to or leach into the water supply, like fluoride and per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.<\/p>\n The studies also look at cognitive developmental outcomes.<\/p>\n It\u2019s challenging to know what\u2019s going on in the infant brain, but eye-tracking studies are a useful metric, Aguiar said. Even in infancy, children begin to recognize familiar and unfamiliar objects, scenes or behavioral patterns in the people around them. If something violates the pattern \u2014 \u201cfor example, if a ball rolls behind a chair but doesn\u2019t appear between the legs of the chair as expected,\u201d Aguiar said \u2014 an infant of eight weeks who is developing at a normal pace will spend more time staring at it. If a child of this age does not stare longer at a similar unusual event or an unfamiliar face appearing next to a familiar face, it can signal a developmental delay.<\/p>\n Other tests in older children \u2014 of their language development or ability to regulate their behaviors or emotions \u2014 can also signal neurodevelopmental problems or delays.<\/p>\n So far, IKIDS has found evidence linking phthalates, phenols like bisphenols, triclosan, acetaminophen and even maternal stress to disruptions or delays in cognitive and language development, the researchers said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re finding different patterns with different chemicals and different exposures,\u201d Schantz said.<\/p>\n For example, the team reported that higher acetaminophen exposure in the second trimester of pregnancy was associated with increased attention and behavior problems in 3- and 4-year-olds. Another analysis linked increasing acetaminophen exposure during pregnancy with language delays.<\/p>\n An earlier study linked prenatal phthalate exposure to altered information-processing in infants. Even exposure to maternal stress correlated with cognitive delays in some infants.<\/p>\n \u201cMaternal stress had more of an impact on female infants, and phthalates tended to have more of an impact on male infants,\u201d Schantz said.<\/p>\n Other hormone-mimicking chemicals that are often found in food packaging, like bisphenols, are associated with neurodevelopmental delays. Even the bisphenols that were introduced after bisphenol A was phased out because of health concerns have some negative impacts, Aguiar said.<\/p>\n \u201cOur results suggest that chemicals like bisphenol S and bisphenol F, which some are calling the \u2018regrettable replacements,\u2019 appear to be problematic for emotional control in 2-year-old girls and neurodevelopment in 1-year-old babies, respectively,\u201d she said. \u201cThese are subtle effects, but we know from other studies that very subtle disruptions early in development can lead to bigger problems later on.\u201d<\/p>\n The research into \u201cforever chemicals\u201d such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, yielded \u201cno significant effects\u201d on children\u2019s neurodevelopment, the team found. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that PFAS are benign,\u201d Schantz said. \u201cThere\u2019s much clearer negative effects on the immune system and the thyroid hormones.\u201d<\/p>\n Their studies of triclosan, an antibacterial agent found in soaps and other consumer products, and benzophenone, a sunscreen, found \u201csome associations of exposure to poorer attention and slower information processing,\u201d Aguiar said.<\/p>\n This work will continue at least until the current ECHO grant ends in 2030. The IKIDS program is working to recruit a more diverse pool of pregnant participants than in the original cohort, Aguiar said. Outreach is being conducted on several fronts, including in Spanish and through the local public health department, Promise Healthcare in Champaign and CarleHealth\u2019s obstetrics and gynecology clinic in Urbana.<\/p>\n Current and future studies are investigating associations between child neurodevelopment and prenatal exposures to fluoride, the herbicide glyphosate \u201cor other prenatal exposures that are widespread in the U.S. population,\u201d Aguiar said.<\/p>\n The IKIDS cohort was initiated with a grant jointly funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences at the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has been expanding since 2016 with support from the National Institutes of Health, ECHO program.<\/p>\n Editor\u2019s notes:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n To reach Andr\u00e9a Aguiar, email aaguiar@illinois.edu<\/a>. Schantz presented this data at the 50th annual meeting of the Developmental Neurotoxicology Society in Washington, D.C., on June 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHAMPAIGN, Ill. \u2014 For more than a decade, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have tracked the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[64,63,137],"class_list":["post-902779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/cr-Andrea-Aguiar-vert-506x760.jpg\")
<\/a>Comparative biosciences professor Andr\u00e9a Aguiar leads the IKIDS program in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the U. of I. Photo courtesy Beckman Institute<\/p>\n
To reach Susan Schantz, email schantz@illinois.edu<\/a>. <\/p>\n