Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou

• ScD
• Professor (Associate) at Columbia University

Older adults may experience worse wildfire fine particulate matter (PM2.5) smoke-related health effects due to conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRDs). We evaluated whether wildfire PM2.5 was associated with acute hospitalizations among older adults with ADRD, linking modeled daily wildfire PM2.5 concentrations and circ...

Quantifying how hurricanes disrupt educational attainment is essential to evaluating the burden of climate-related disasters. Here, we examine the association between hurricane-force tropical cyclones and educational attainment among elementary and middle school students in all affected areas in the United States during the 2008/2009–2017/2018 scho...

Flooding greatly endangers public health and is an urgent concern as rapid population growth in flood-prone regions and more extreme weather events will increase the number of people at risk. However, an exhaustive analysis of mortality following floods has not been conducted. Here we used 35.6 million complete death records over 18 years (2001–201...

Identifying the determinants of pregnancy loss is a critical public health concern. However, pregnancy loss is often not noticed, and even when it is, it is inconsistently recorded. Thus, past studies have been limited to medically-identified losses or small, highly selected cohorts, which can lead to biased or non-generalizable results. We show ma...

Human exposure to complex, changing, and variably correlated mixtures of environmental chemicals has presented analytical challenges to epidemiologists and human health researchers. There have been a wide variety of recent advances in statistical methods for analyzing mixtures data, with most of these methods having open-source software for impleme...

During the 2019 coronavirus pandemic, stay‐at‐home policies such as New York's (NY) NY on Pause dramatically reduced traffic congestion. Despite high traffic burden in NY's environmental justice communities, this reduction has not been evaluated through an environmental justice lens—our objective in this analysis. We obtained census tract‐level tra...

The exposome concept aims to account for the comprehensive and cumulative effects of physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial influences on biological systems. To date, limited exposome research has explicitly included climate change-related exposures. We define these exposures as those that will intensify with climate change, including dir...

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in the United States. Accurate time-to-event CHD prediction models with high-dimensional DNA methylation and clinical features may assist with early prediction and intervention strategies. We developed a state-of-the-art deep learning autoencoder survival analysis...

Indicators of male fertility are in decline globally, but the underlying causes, including the role of environmental exposures, are unclear. This study aimed to examine organic chemical pollutants in seminal plasma, including both known priority environmental chemicals and less studied chemicals, to identify uncharacterized male reproductive enviro...

Wildfires have become more frequent and intense due to climate change and outdoor wildfire fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) concentrations differ from relatively smoothly varying total PM 2.5 . Thus, we introduced a conceptual model for computing long-term wildfire PM 2.5 and assessed disproportionate exposures among marginalized communities. We u...

Maternal exposure to air pollution during pregnancy has a substantial public health impact. Epidemiological evidence supports an association between maternal exposure to air pollution and low birth weight. A popular method to estimate this association while identifying windows of susceptibility is a distributed lag model (DLM), which regresses an o...

Evidence showed that air pollution was associated with an increased risk of tuberculosis (TB). This study aimed to study the impact of long-term exposure to ambient particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) on the acquisition of LTBI and on the risk of subsequent active disease development among rural older adults fro...

Over the last decades, air pollution emissions have decreased substantially; however, inequities in air pollution persist. We evaluate county-level racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in emissions changes from six air pollution source sectors (industry [SO2], energy [SO2, NOx], agriculture [NH3], commercial [NOx], residential [particulate o...

Background Long-term exposure to air pollution has been associated with changes in levels of metabolites measured in the peripheral blood. However, most research has been conducted in ethnically homogenous, young or middle-aged populations. Objective To study the relationship between the plasma metabolome and long-term exposure to three air pollut...

Despite plausible behavioral and physiological pathways, limited evidence exists on how temperature variability is associated with acute mental health-related episodes. This analysis explored associations between daily temperature range (DTR) and mental health-related hospitalizations in New York State during 1995-2014. A case-crossover design with...

Background Limited evidence exists on how temperature increases are associated with hospital visits from alcohol- and substance-related disorders, despite plausible behavioral and physiological pathways. Methods In the present study, we implemented a case-crossover design, which controls for seasonal patterns, long-term trends, and non- or slowly-...

Background: Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure is a known risk factor for numerous adverse health outcomes, with varying estimates of component-specific effects. Populations with compromised health conditions such as diabetes can be more sensitive to the health impacts of air pollution exposure. Recent trends in PM2.5 in primarily American I...

Knowledge of excess deaths after tropical cyclones is critical to understanding their impacts, directly relevant to policies on preparedness and mitigation. We applied an ensemble of 16 Bayesian models to 40.7 million U.S. deaths and a comprehensive record of 179 tropical cyclones over 32 years (1988-2019) to estimate short-term all-cause excess de...

Introduction Myocardial infarction (MI) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and its risk increases with extreme temperatures. Climate change causes variability in weather patterns, including extreme temperature events that disproportionately affect socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. Many studies on the healt...

Introduction: Traffic-related air pollution can trigger myocardial infarction (MI). However, the hourly hazard period of exposure to nitrogen dioxide (NO2), a common traffic tracer, for incident MI has not been fully evaluated. Thus, the current hourly US national air quality standard (100 ppb) is based on limited hourly-level effect estimates, wh...

There is evidence that indicators of male fertility are in decline globally, but the underlying causes to this pressing global concern have yet to be elucidated. While environmental chemicals are likely major contributors, current knowledge of environmental determinants of male fertility is limited and does not adequately explain this phenomenon. P...

Contemporary environmental health sciences draw on large-scale longitudinal studies to understand the impact of environmental exposures and behavior factors on the risk of disease and identify potential underlying mechanisms. In such studies, cohorts of individuals are assembled and followed up over time. Each cohort generates hundreds of publicati...

Introduction: While considered extreme events, wildfires will lengthen and strengthen in a changing climate, becoming an omnipresent climate-sensitive exposure. However, few studies consider long-term exposure to wildfire fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Here, we present a conceptual model to assess long-term wildfire PM2.5 exposure and evaluate di...

Studies suggest a link between PM2.5 and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but critical exposure windows have not been examined. We performed a case-control study on the Danish population spanning 1989 to 2013. Cases selected from the Danish National Patient Registry based on ICD codes. Five controls were randomly selected from the Danish Civil...

Background: Nationwide household transitions to the use of clean-burning cooking fuels are a promising pathway to reducing under-5 lower respiratory infection (LRI) mortality, the leading cause of child mortality globally, but such transitions are rare and evidence supporting an association between increased clean fuel use and improved health is l...

Background: Osteoporosis heavily affects postmenopausal women and is influenced by environmental exposures. Determining the impact of criteria air pollutants and their mixtures on bone mineral density (BMD) in postmenopausal women is an urgent priority. Methods: We conducted a prospective observational study using data from the ethnically divers...

Chronic exposure to arsenic (As) remains a global public health concern and our understanding of the biological mechanisms underlying the adverse effects of As exposure remains incomplete. Here, we used a high-resolution metabolomics approach to examine how As affects metabolic pathways in humans. We selected 60 non-smoking adults from the Folic Ac...

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, several cities allocated more public spaces for physical activity and recreation instead of road transport through Open Streets. This policy locally reduces traffic and provides experimental testbeds for healthier cities. However, it may also generate unintended impacts. For instance, Open Streets may impa...

Unlabelled: The association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and cardiovascular outcomes is well established. To evaluate whether source-specific PM2.5 is differentially associated with cardiovascular disease in New York City (NYC), we identified PM2.5 sources and examined the association between source-specific PM2.5 exposure and risk of h...

Long-term exposure to air pollution has been associated with changes in levels of several metabolites measured in the peripheral blood. However, most work has been conducted in ethnically homogenous populations. We studied the relationship between the plasma metabolome and long-term exposure to three air pollutants: particulate matter (PM) less tha...

Distributed lag models (DLMs) are often used to estimate lagged associations and identify critical exposure windows. In a simulation study of prenatal nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and birth weight, we demonstrate that bias amplification and variance inflation can manifest under certain combinations of DLM estimation approaches and time trend adjustment m...

This study characterized associations between annually scaled thermal indices and annual heat stress illness (HSI) morbidity outcomes, including heat stroke and heat exhaustion, among active-duty soldiers at ten Continental U.S. (CONUS) Army installations from 1991 to 2018. We fit negative binomial models for 3 types of HSI morbidity outcomes and a...

In the context of a binary treatment, matching is a well-established approach in causal inference. However, in the context of a continuous treatment or exposure, matching is still underdeveloped. We propose an innovative matching approach to estimate an average causal exposure-response function under the setting of continuous exposures that relies...

Background: Environmental health researchers often aim to identify sources or behaviors that give rise to potentially harmful environmental exposures. Objective: We adapted principal component pursuit (PCP)-a robust and well-established technique for dimensionality reduction in computer vision and signal processing-to identify patterns in enviro...

Introduction Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the NY on Pause stay-at-home order (March 22 – June 8, 2020), substantially reduced traffic and traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) in New York City (NYC). We evaluated the magnitude of TRAP decreases and examined the role of modifying factors such as weekend/weekday, road proximity,...

We aimed to determine if long-term fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations are associated with increased risk of testing positive for COVID-19 among pregnant individuals who were universally screened at delivery and if socioeconomic status (SES) modifies this relationship. We used obstetric data from Columbia University Irving Medical Center...

Background: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a fatal neurodegenerative disease. Limited evidence suggests ALS diagnosis may be associated with air pollution exposure and specifically traffic-related pollutants. Methods: In this population-based case-control study, we used 3,937 ALS cases from the Danish National Patient Register diagnosed...

Background Motor vehicles, including public transit buses, are a major source of air pollution in New York City (NYC) and worldwide. To address this problem, governments and transit agencies have implemented policies to introduce cleaner vehicles into transit fleets. Beginning in 2000, the Metropolitan Transit Agency began deploying compressed natu...

Background The waterfront in the South Bronx in New York City is used industrially and harbors the Harlem River Yards (HRY). The HRY borders an environmental justice area, which includes a mixed-use area that is separated from a densely populated residential area by interstates. Recently, development of the HRY has expanded including the 2018 openi...

Purpose of Review Evaluating the environmental health impacts of urban policies is critical for developing and implementing policies that lead to more healthy and equitable cities. This article aims to (1) identify research questions commonly used when evaluating the health impacts of urban policies at different stages of the policy process, (2) de...

Objectives. To compare fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) concentrations in American Indian (AI)-populated with those in non–AI-populated counties over time (2000–2018) in the contiguous United States. Methods. We used a multicriteria approach to classify counties as AI- or non--AI-populated. We ran linear mixed effects models to estimate the differ...

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: Exposure to arsenic, cadmium, manganese, and lead have been linked to adverse neurocognitive outcomes in adults/children, but effects in adolescents are not fully characterized. This study aims to examine the association between exposure to a mixture of metals (As, Cd, Mn, Pb, Se) and cognitive function in adolescents. METHODS/STU...

Long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has been associated with disease aggravation in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In this study, we characterized long-term exposure to six major PM2.5 components and their individual association with disease aggravation in ALS. Methods: We leveraged 15 years of data from the New York Depar...

Purpose of Review Menstrual bleeding is a regular, common occurrence in a substantial portion of the population. Menstruators may use more than 10,000 menstrual products over the lifetime. Given the potential for environmental chemicals in menstrual products to be absorbed by the vulvar and vaginal epithelium into systemic circulation, we reviewed...

Purpose of Review Menstrual blood loss, a common physiologic occurrence, provides an excretion route for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) since these chemicals are bound to proteins in blood. To increase awareness of this relationship in environmental epidemiology, we reviewed the available epidemiologic data on menstrual bleeding and PFA...

Importance: Tropical cyclones have a devastating effect on society, but a comprehensive assessment of their association with cause-specific mortality over multiple years of study is lacking. Objective: To comprehensively evaluate the association of county-level tropical cyclone exposure and death rates from various causes in the US. Design, set...

Background: Short-term fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure is positively associated with acute cardiovascular and respiratory events. Understanding whether this association varies across specific cardiovascular and respiratory conditions has important biologic, clinical, and public health implications. Methods: We conducted a time-stratifie...

Background: Over 57 million people in Bangladesh have been chronically exposed to arsenic-contaminated drinking water. They also face environmental exposure to elevated levels of cadmium (Cd), manganese (Mn), and lead (Pb), all of which have been previously observed in environmental and biological samples for this population. These metals have bee...