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Indoor air pollution is a recognized risk factor for a range of negative health outcomes. This study aimed to investigate the association between maternal prenatal exposure to indoor air pollution and the presence of autistic-like behaviors among preschool children. Data were obtained from the Longhua Child Cohort Study in 2017, in which we enrolled a total of 65 317 preschool children. Associations between maternal exposure to four sources of indoor air pollution (e.g., cooking, environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), mosquito coils, and home decoration) during pregnancy and preschool children's autistic traits were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression. Our results showed that maternal exposure to indoor air pollution from four different sources during pregnancy was associated with the presence of children's autistic-like behaviors. There was dose-response relationship between the accumulative exposure to the four different indoor air pollution sources and the risk of autistic-like behaviors. Furthermore, we found a significant additive interaction between prenatal exposure to both cooking and mosquito coil incense on the risk of autistic-like behaviors. Maternal prenatal exposure to the indoor air pollution from four sources might increase with the risk of autistic-like behaviors being present among preschool children, with an additive interaction effect between some pollution sources., (© 2021 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Cooking is one of the main sources of indoor air pollution in China. Given emerging evidence of a link between air pollutants and neurodevelopmental delays, we examined whether maternal experiences with cooking during gestation might increase their child's hyperactivity at 3 years of age. The participants involved 45 518 mothers of children who were newly enrolled at kindergarten in the Longhua District of Shenzhen from 2015 to 2017. The results show that maternal exposure to cooking fumes during pregnancy was related to an increased risk of their offspring having hyperactivity behaviors at the age of 3 years. Compared with pregnant mothers who never cooked, pregnant mothers who cooked sometimes, often, or always had children who showed a significantly higher hyperactivity risk. Households using cooking fuels such as coal, gas during the mothers' pregnancy, exhibited more hyperactivity behaviors in the young child when compared to those using electricity for cooking. In addition, poor ventilation during cooking, while mothers were pregnant, was found to be a significant risk factor for clinical levels of the offspring's hyperactive behaviors. Furthermore, the positive association with maternal cooking during pregnancy and their offsprings' hyperactivity was relatively consistent across strata defined by social class, education, and other covariates., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)