It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Young women seem to be less drawn to degrees in science or technology. But what is putting them off? A sociological study at UZH has revealed that outdated gender stereotypes – such as supposed differences in analytical thinking – play a major role.
Why do so few female school leavers with good grades in mathematics choose to study a technical subject – despite the high salaries and good employment prospects in the STEM sector? This question has long preoccupied the social sciences, especially as studies show that girls and boys do equally well in mathematics at school.
It is possible that socially embedded gender stereotypes play a role, such as: men think logically and in abstract terms, women are more creative; men should be the breadwinners, women take care of the family; men are competitive, women are more risk-averse. A study by Benita Combet from the Department of Sociology at the University of Zurich has now shown that some of these ingrained beliefs do indeed influence people’s subject choices.
Considering factors in isolation
Until now, researchers have struggled to conclusively answer the question of motives. “The problem is that many of these field of study characteristics are simultaneously present,” says study author Combet. For example, most STEM subjects involve a lot of math, require an affinity for technology, and can lead to high salaries, with part-time work in these fields (still) being rather rare. But how do we know which of these considerations is the deciding factor for or against a subject for prospective students?
Combet chose a new approach for her study: instead of asking the participants about their interest in real subjects such as mathematics or psychology, she presented them with hypothetical fields of study that differed in specific ways – for example, in terms of the possibility of part-time work or the requirements for analytical thinking and emotional intelligence. This enabled her to separate out the various factors in her analysis. About 1,500 Swiss high school students took part in the survey.
Old habits die hard
“Surprisingly, the male students were influenced by two factors only: their preference for mathematics, and materialistic values such as salary and prestige,” says Combet. The other factors seemed to be irrelevant for the young men. For young women, the picture was completely different: they were averse to subjects that required analytical rather than creative thinking and that demanded little in the way of social and emotional skills in everyday work. They also showed a preference for less competitive fields with the possibility of part-time work. Contrary to expectations, however, they were attracted to occupations with high salaries and prestige, just like the men.
“Especially with regard to factors such as logical thinking style and technical skills, strong gender stereotypes still exist, which obviously significantly influence the decisions of female high school students,” says Combet. “We should therefore continue to work on challenging and questioning these fixed beliefs.” With regard to analytical thinking, for example, it has by no means been scientifically proven that there are differences between men and women. Moreover, the ability to think analytically is a basic requirement for almost every subject area.
Combet also believes schoolchildren should be given better and more detailed information about future subject choices: “Many of their current perceptions are not accurate.” For example, many believe that to be good at engineering, all you need is an affinity for technology. In fact, says Combet, “interpersonal and creative skills are also important in engineering, for example working in a team to develop new products.”
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Menopause-related symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats, mood changes, sleep disturbances, joint aches and cognitive difficulties damage the quality of life for millions of women. They also can adversely affect women in the workplace. A newly published Mayo Clinic study puts numbers on that cost: an estimated $1.8 billion in lost work time and $28 billion when medical expenses are added, in the U.S. alone.
Menopause occurs at a mean age of about 52 years, and given that midlife women make up a sizable proportion of the global workforce, the impact of menopause symptoms on worker absenteeism, productivity, increased direct and indirect medical costs, and lost opportunities for career advancement are significant.
To evaluate the impact of menopause symptoms on women in the workplace, Mayo Clinic researchers invited 32,469 women aged 45 to 60 who are receiving primary care at Mayo Clinic to participate in a survey study. Just over 5,200 women responded (16.1%) and of those, 4,440 women were currently employed and included in the study.
The findings, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, identified an association between menopause symptoms and adverse work outcomes, including lost work productivity, with the severity of menopause symptoms strongly predicting the odds of an adverse work outcome. According to the Proceedings article, the findings highlight a critical need to improve medical treatment provided to women and an opportunity to make the workplace environment more supportive for women experiencing menopause symptoms.
Journalists: Broadcast-quality sound bites with Dr. Faubion are available on the Mayo Clinic News Network.
"A full 13% of the women we surveyed experienced an adverse work outcome related to menopause symptoms, and about 11% were missing days of work because of these symptoms," Dr. Faubion says. "We also found some racial and ethnic differences on a sub-analysis of the results, though more research is needed in this area, in larger and more diverse groups of women."
The survey was conducted from March 1, 2021, through June 30, 2021, and symptoms were assessed by the Menopause Rating Scale (MRS). The mean total MRS score was 12.1, indicating moderate menopause symptom burden. The mean age of the 4,440 participants was 53.9 years, with the majority being white (93%), married (76.5%) and educated (59.3% with college degree or more).
A total of 597 women (13.4%) reported at least one adverse work outcome due to menopause symptoms, and 485 women reported missing one or more days of work in the preceding year due to symptoms.
"Adding to the complexity of women's experience of menopause is that the topic has been taboo, particularly in the workplace, which potentially adds to the psychological burden of symptoms," says senior author Ekta Kapoor, M.B.B.S., assistant director of Mayo Clinic Women's Health. "Women often fear bias, discrimination and stigmatization, and therefore may be reluctant to disclose their menopause symptoms to their workplace managers and others. Recognizing these concerns and creating a safe workplace environment for women to discuss their health care needs may help address this."
Dr. Faubion and Dr. Kapoor also are co-authors of an article to be published in the May edition of Mayo Clinic Proceedings on the association between migraine and vasomotor symptoms. Vasomotor symptoms, such as hot flashes and night sweats, are a hallmark symptom of menopause and are experienced by a majority of women during the menopause transition.
"Our research suggests a critical need to address this issue for women in the workplace," Dr. Faubion says. "Clinicians need to ask women about menopause symptoms and offer guidance and treatment, and employers need to create and implement workplace strategies and policies to help women navigate this universal life transition."
Video of Dr. Faubion discussing the research is available here.
###
About Mayo Clinic Proceedings Mayo Clinic Proceedings is a monthly peer-reviewed journal that publishes original articles and reviews on clinical and laboratory medicine, clinical research, basic science research, and clinical epidemiology. The journal, sponsored by the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research as part of its commitment to physician education, has been published for 97 years and has a circulation of 127,000.
About Mayo Clinic Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit organization committed to innovation in clinical practice, education and research, and providing compassion, expertise and answers to everyone who needs healing. Visit the Mayo Clinic News Network for additional Mayo Clinic news.
JOURNAL
Mayo Clinic Proceedings
ARTICLE TITLE
Impact of Menopause Symptoms on Women in the Workplace
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
26-Apr-2023
Abundance of urban honeybees adversely impacts wild bee populations, according to new Concordia research
The explosion of beekeeping in cities may be overwhelming other species competing for the same resources
IMAGE: GAIL MACINNIS: “SITES WITH THE LARGEST INCREASE IN HONEYBEE POPULATIONS ALSO HAD THE FEWEST WILD BEE SPECIES.”view more
CREDIT: CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
Who hasn’t received a pot of homegrown honey from a friend or relative who decided to take up urban beekeeping? The sentiment behind the gift is sweet, but their newfound interest in urban agriculture may be adversely affecting local biodiversity.
In a new paper in the journal PeerJ, a team led by Concordia researchers argue that the rapid growth in urban honeybee-keeping over the past decade may be negatively impacting nearby wild bee populations. Small bees with limited foraging ranges may be especially at risk, they write.
The researchers compared bee population data collected from sites around the island of Montreal in 2013 to data they collected at the same sites in the summer of 2020.
“We found that the sites with the largest increase in honeybee populations across sites and years also had the fewest wild bee species,” says Gail MacInnis, a former Concordia postdoctoral researcher and the study’s lead author. Etienne Normandin from the Université de Montréal and Carly Ziter, an assistant professor in the Department of Biology, are co-authors.
According to Quebec’s Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food), the number of honeybee colonies on the island of Montreal has increased over twelvefold. In 2013, there were under 250 colonies. That number has ballooned to almost 3,000 in 2020.
Honeybees are not native to the region, the researchers note. This type of bee is therefore in competition with almost 180 other species for resources like pollen and nectar, as identified in the 2013 study.
Invasive and hungry
The researchers visited 15 sites across the island of Montreal that were known to attract pollinators. Sites included community gardens, cemeteries and large urban parks. The researchers used a standardized system of pan trap triplets — multicoloured bowls designed to attract bees — and nets to collect their samples. Each site was sampled five times between late June and early September 2020, with a total sample size of 6,200 bees. The researchers also measured other important factors that influence wild bee populations, like habitat and floral resource availability.
Nearly 4,000 samples turned out to be wild bees belonging to 120 species. Roughly 2,200 were honeybees. By contrast, in 2013, approximately 5,200 bees were collected at similar locations. Nearly all of these samples were wild bees belonging to 163 species.
Statistical analyses were performed across sites in 2020 on wild bee diversity; bee traits and honeybee abundance; wild bee community composition; and pollen depletion. Similar analyses compared the bee communities of 2013 and 2020.
The study found that wild bee species richness declined significantly. Honeybee abundance increased but remained similar to 2013 levels in areas where the honeybee population was comparatively lower. Honeybee abundance was also associated with pollen depletion in white clover flowers.
Not a risk-free hobby
MacInnis points out that a lack of registry or regulations makes studying bee populations difficult. Understanding honeybee colony density is crucial, she says, as just one honeybee colony can support up to 50,000 individuals.
“We need to provide food if we want to support large bee populations. But we also need to be careful about population density, especially for commercially managed bees, because they are prone to many diseases,” she says. “This issue can become especially bad when there are many new beekeepers in the area. They may not be as knowledgeable about controlling for things like mites, viruses and other pathogens.”
“Beekeeping provides an agricultural product that is valuable to people in the form of honey. My concern is that urban beekeeping is often falsely marketed as a solution to biodiversity loss,” Ziter adds. “Just as we wouldn’t advocate keeping backyard chickens to save the birds, we shouldn’t look to beekeeping to save the bees. It’s important that our actions match our goals or motivations.”
“If our goal is to increase urban biodiversity, we’re much better off planting pollinator gardens than adding more urban hives.”
Grant funding was provided by MITACS, Bayer Crop Science and the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
Decline in wild bee species richness associated with honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) abundance in an urban ecosystem
Bee abundance and diversity is higher in actively managed green spaces (e.g.: those planted with native wildflowers), according to study in urban Appleton, Wisconsin
IMAGE: ONE OF THE “BEE HOTELS” THAT THE TEAM BUILT DURING THIS PROJECT, SITUATED IN FRONT OF BLOOMING FRUIT TREES NEAR AN URBAN SITE ON THE LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY CAMPUS.view more
B.Y.O. Bees: Managing wild bee biodiversity in urban greenspaces
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
26-Apr-2023
Do fish bay at the moon? Can their odd songs identify Hawaiian mystery fish? Eavesdropping scientists progress in recording, understanding ocean soundscapes
AUDIO: FROM A YOUTUBE CHANNEL (HTTPS://BIT.LY/3H5LY54) DEVOTED TO MARINE LIFE SOUNDS.view more
CREDIT: HAWAII INSTITUTE OF MARINE BIOLOGY; CONSERVATION METRICS INC.
Using hydrophones to eavesdrop on a reef off the coast of Goa, India, researchers have helped advance a new low-cost way to monitor changes in the world’s murky marine environments.
Reporting their results in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), the scientists recorded the duration and timing of mating and feeding sounds – songs, croaks, trumpets and drums – of 21 of the world’s noise-making ocean species.
With artificial intelligence and other pioneering techniques to discern the calls of marine life, they recorded and identified
snapping shrimp (audio: https://bit.ly/3mTQ0gd), including commercially-valuable tiger prawns.
Some species within the underwater community work the early shift and ruckus from 3 am to 1.45 pm, others work the late shift and ruckus from 2 pm to 2.45 am, while the plankton predators were “strongly influenced by the moon.”
Also registered: the degree of difference in the abundance of marine life before and after a monsoon.
The paper concludes that hydrophones are a powerful tool and “overall classification performance (89%) is helpful in the real-time monitoring of the fish stocks in the ecosystem.”
The team, including Bishwajit Chakraborty, a leader of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE), benefitted from archived recordings of marine species against which they could match what they heard, including:
Snapping shrimp (audio: https://bit.ly/41NZWH2), whose sounds baby oysters reportedly like to follow
Also captured was a “buzz” call of unknown origin (https://bit.ly/3GZdRSI), one of the oceans’ countless marine life mysteries.
With a contribution to the International Quiet Ocean Experiment, the research will be discussed at an IQOE meeting in Woods Hole, MA, USA, 26-27 April.
Global hydrophone deployment as of 13 March 2023.
“Hydrophones are now being deployed in more locations, more often, by more people, than ever before.” - Miles Parsons, AIMS, Australia. Map available at https://bit.ly/41Qp67H
CREDIT
Eduardo Klein
Advancing the Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds (GLUBS)
That event will be followed April 28-29 by a meeting of partners in the new Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds (GLUBS), a major legacy of the decade-long IQOE, ending in 2025.
GLUBS, conceived in late 2021 and currently under development, is designed as an open-access online platform to help collate global information and to broaden and standardize scientific and community knowledge of underwater soundscapes and their contributing sources.
It will help build short snippets and snapshots (minutes, hours, days long recordings) of biological, anthropogenic, and geophysical marine sounds into full-scale, tell-tale underwater baseline soundscapes.
Especially notable among many applications of insights from GLUBS information: the ability to detect in hard-to-see underwater environments and habitats how the distribution and behavior of marine life responds to increasing pressure from climate change, fishing, resource development, plastic, anthropogenic noise and other pollutants.
“Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an effective technique for sampling aquatic systems that is particularly useful in deep, dark, turbid, and rapidly changing or remote locations,” says Miles Parsons of the Australian Institute of Marine Science and a leader of GLUBS.
He and colleagues outline two primary targets:
Produce and maintain a list of all aquatic species confirmed or anticipated to produce sound underwater;
Promote the reporting of sounds from unknown sources
Odd songs of Hawaii’s mystery fish
In this latter pursuit, GLUBS will also help reveal species unknown to science as yet and contribute to their eventual identification.
For example, newly added to the growing global collection of marine sounds are recent recordings from Hawaii, featuring the baffling
now part of an entire YouTube channel (https://bit.ly/3H5Ly54) dedicated to marine life sounds in Hawaii and elsewhere (e.g. this “complete and total mystery from the Florida Keys”: https://bit.ly/41w1Xbc(Annie Innes-Gold, Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology; processed by Jill Munger, Conservation Metrics, Inc.)
Says Dr. Parsons: “Unidentified sounds can provide valuable information on the richness of the soundscape, the acoustic communities that contribute to it and behavioral interactions among acoustic groups. However, unknown, cryptic and rare sounds are rarely target signals for research and monitoring projects and are, therefore, largely unreported.”
The many uses of underwater sound
Of the roughly 250,000 known marine species, scientists think all fully-aquatic marine mammals (~146, including sub-species) emit sounds, along with at least 100 invertebrates, 1,000 of the world’s ~35,000 known fish species, and likely many thousands more.
GLUBS aims to help delineate essential fish habitat and estimate biomass of a spawning aggregation of a commercially or recreationally important soniferous species.
In one scenario of its many uses, a one-year, calibrated recording can provide a proxy for the timing, location and, under certain circumstances, numbers of ‘calling’ fishes, and how these change throughout a spawning season.
It will also help evaluate the degradation and recovery of a coral reef.
GLUBS researchers envision, for example, collecting recordings from a coral reef that experienced a cyclone or other extreme weather event, followed by widespread bleaching. Throughout its restoration, GLUBS audio data would be matched with and augment a visual census of the fish assemblage at multiple timepoints.
Oil and gas, wind power and other offshore industries will also benefit from GLUBS’ timely information on the possible harms or benefits of their activities.
* * * * *
Other IQOE legacies include:
Manta (bitbucket.org/CLO-BRP/manta-wiki/wiki/Home), a mechanism created by world experts from academia, industry, and government to help standardize ocean sound recording data, facilitating its comparability, pooling and visualization.
OPUS, an Open Portal to Underwater Sound being tested at Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven, Germany to promote the use of acoustic data collected worldwide, providing easy access to MANTA-processed data, and
The first comprehensive database and map of the world’s 200+ known hydrophones recording for ecological purposes
* * * * *
Marine sounds and COVID-19
The IQOE’s early ambition of humanity’s maritime noise being minimized for a day or week was unexpectedly met in spades when the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Virus control measures led to “sudden and sometimes dramatic reductions in human activity in sectors such as transport, industry, energy, tourism, and construction,” with some of the greatest reductions from March to June 2020 – a drop of up to 13% in container ship traffic and up to 42% in passenger ships.
Other IQOE accomplishments include achieving recognition of ocean sound as an Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) within the Global Ocean Observing System, underlining its helpfulness in monitoring
climate change (the extent and breakup of sea ice; the frequency and intensity of wind, waves and rain)
ocean health (biodiversity assessments: monitoring the distribution and abundance of sound-producing species)
impacts of human activities on wildlife, and
nuclear explosions, foreign/illegal/threatening vessels, human activities in protected areas, and underwater earthquakes that can generate tsunamis
The Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO) funded an IQOE Working Group in 2016, which quickly identified the lack of ocean sound as a variable measured by ocean observing systems. This group developed specifications for an Ocean Sound Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) by 2018, which was approved by the Global Ocean Observing System in 2021. IQOE has since developed the Ocean Sound EOV Implementation Plan, reviewed in 2022 and ready for public debut at IQOE’s meeting April 26.
* * * * *
One of IQOE’s originators, Jesse Ausubel of The Rockefeller University’s Programme for the Human Environment, says the programme has drawn attention to the absence of publicly available time series of sound on ecologically important frequencies throughout the global ocean.
“We need to listen more in the blue symphony halls. Animal sounds are behavior, and we need to record and understand the sounds, if we want to know the status of ocean life,” he says.
The program “has provided a platform for the international passive acoustics community to grow stronger and advocate for inclusion of acoustic measurements in national, regional, and global ocean observing systems,” says Prof. Peter Tyack of the University of St. Andrew’s, who, with Steven Simpson, guide the IQOE International Scientific Steering Committee.
“The ocean acoustics and bioacoustics communities had no experience in working together globally, and coverage is certainly not global; there are many gaps. IQOE has begun to help these communities work together globally, and there is still progress to be made in networking and in expanding the deployment of hydrophones, adds Prof. Ausubel.
A description of the project’s history and evaluation to date is available at https://bit.ly/3H7FCbN.
* * * * *
Encouraging greater worldwide use of hydrophones
According to Dr. Parsons, “hydrophones are now being deployed in more locations, more often, by more people, than ever before,”
To celebrate that, and to mark World Oceans Day, June 8, GLUBS recently put out a call to hydrophone operators to share marine life recordings made from 7 to 9 June, so far receiving interest from 124 hydrophone operators in 62 organizations from 29 countries and counting. The hydrophones will be retrieved over the following months with the full dataset expected sometime in 2024.
They also plan to make World Oceans Passive Acoustic Monitoring (WOPAM) Day an annual event – a global collaborative study of aquatic soundscapes, salt, brackish or freshwater – the marine world’s answer to the U.S. Audubon Society’s 123-year-old Christmas Bird Count.
Interested researchers with hydrophones already planned to be in the water on June 8 are invited to contact Miles Parsons (m.parsons@aims.gov.au) or Steve Simpson (s.simpson@bristol.ac.uk).
JOURNAL
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Study: Brain circuits for locomotion evolved long before appendages and skeletons
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN, NEWS BUREAU
IMAGE: THE SEA SLUG, PLEUROBRANCHEA CALIFORNICAview more
CREDIT: PHOTO BY FRED ZWICKY
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Hundreds of millions of years before the evolution of animals with segmented bodies, jointed skeletons or appendages, soft-bodied invertebrates like sea slugs ruled the seas. A new study finds parallels between the brain architecture that drives locomotion in sea slugs and that of more complex segmented creatures with jointed skeletons and appendages.
Reported in the Journal of Neuroscience, the study suggests that, rather than developing an entirely new set of neural circuits to govern the movement of segmented body parts, the insects, crustaceans and even vertebrates like mammals adapted a network of neurons, a module, that guided locomotion and posture in much simpler organisms.
“Sea slugs may still have that module, a smallish network of neurons called the ‘A-cluster,’ with 23 neurons identified so far,” said University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign molecular and integrative physiology professor Rhanor Gillette, who led the new research.
“The question that we addressed in this study is whether the similarities we see between sea slugs and more complex creatures evolved independently or whether those with segmented body parts and appendages may have inherited their underlying neural circuitry from a soft-bodied bilateral common ancestor,” he said.
To answer that question, Gillette and his colleagues, former graduate students Colin Lee and Jeffrey Brown, videotaped sea slug movements and combined that data with recorded responses to the stimulation of nerves and specific neurons in the sea slug brain.
“The predatory sea slug we studied, Pleurobranchea californica, uses cilia on its foot to crawl, paddling through secreted mucus,” Gillette said. “For a postural turn toward or away from a stimulus, it simply shortens one side of its body and escapes from other predators with a frantic, rocking swim – all driven by the A-cluster.”
Previous studies from Gillette’s laboratory showed that Pleurobranchaea engages in cost-benefit calculations every time it encounters another creature in the wild. If it is very hungry, the neurons that control its attack and feeding behavior are at a heightened state of arousal and it will go after nearly anything that smells like food. Under other circumstances, it will do nothing or even actively avoid the stimulus.
“This is a good idea if it doesn’t need the food and can avoid other cannibalistic Pleurobranchaea attracted by it,” Gillete said. “All these behaviors involve how the A-cluster coordinates with action choices.”
In mammals, a special hindbrain module called the reticular system translates specific instructions for action choices from higher brain regions for posture and locomotion, Gillette said. This region then sends the motor commands down to the spinal cord for final transmission to the muscles.
“In particular, the reticular system relies on critical serotonin-producing neurons to control body movements in posture and locomotion,” he said. “In the new study, we find that similar serotonin-producing neurons in the A-cluster of sea slugs are driving behaviors like pursuit, avoidance and escape.
“In their relative simplicity, the sea slugs resemble in many ways the expected simpler ancestor of today’s complex animals,” Gillette said. “All the major circuit modules of action choice, translating that choice into motor commands, and motor pattern-generation found in the nervous systems of complex animals are also identifiable in the simpler soft-bodied sea slugs.”
The study offers the first evidence that the circuits driving locomotion in animals with complex bodies and behaviors “have close functional analogies in the simpler gastropod mollusks and may share a common inheritance,” Gillette said.
The paper “Coordination of locomotion by serotonergic neurons in the predatory gastropod Pleurobranchaea california” is available online or from the U. of I. News Bureau.
Coordination of locomotion by serotonergic neurons in the predatory gastropod Pleurobranchaea california
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
24-Apr-2023
Hair relaxer use may affect ability to conceive
A new study showed that use of chemical hair straighteners was associated with a slight reduction in the likelihood of pregnancy, and that Black and Hispanic people were more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to use these products.
A first-of-its-kind study showed that use of chemical hair straighteners was associated with a slight reduction in the likelihood of pregnancy, and that Black and Hispanic individuals were more likely than other racial and ethnic groups to use these products early in life, more frequently, and for longer durations.
New research led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) suggests that chemical hair straighteners may affect a person’s ability to become pregnant.
Published online ahead of print in the American Journal of Epidemiology, a first-of-its-kind study found that use of these hair straighteners also called “relaxers,” is linked to a slight reduction in one’s ability to conceive. Black, Hispanic, and mixed-race individuals were more likely to use hair straighteners, and thus, more likely to be exposed to the toxic chemicals in these products. Current and former use of hair relaxers, greater frequency and duration of use, as well as sustained scalp burns from the products, were also associated with lower chances of becoming pregnant.
Funded by the National Institutes of Health, the study builds upon a growing body of research linking reproductive health issues with exposure to toxic, endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in beauty products. Phthalates, phenols, and parabens are a few of the chemicals in relaxers that may contribute to reduced fecundability.
The researchers caution that the full set of ingredients is rarely included on the product label and more data are needed to better understand the specific mechanisms by which relaxers may affect fertility. However, the study underscores the racial disparities in exposure to toxic chemicals in beauty care and the adverse health consequences that may occur as a result. Societal pressure to conform to Eurocentric beauty norms and racial discrimination, such as restrictions on or prohibitions of Afrocentric hairstyles in the workplace and schools, contribute to disproportionate use of these toxic beauty products by individuals of color.
“Our work underscores the importance of expanding research on the reproductive health effects of beauty product use to promote environmental justice and increase health equity,” says study lead author Dr. Lauren Wise, professor of epidemiology at BUSPH.
For the study, Dr. Wise and colleagues analyzed survey data on several aspects of hair relaxer use among pregnancy planners in the BUSPH-based Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO), an ongoing NIH-funded study since 2013 that enrolls U.S. and Canadian pregnancy planners, and follows them from preconception through six months after delivery. PRESTO participants provide baseline information on sociodemographics, lifestyle, and medical histories. For this study, more than 11,274 participants provided information on several aspects of hair relaxer use from 2014 to 2022.
Compared with those who had never used relaxers, participants who reported ever having used relaxers were more likely to be older, have less education and annual income, a higher BMI, smoke, be unmarried, be residents of the Southern U.S., and experience longer pregnancy attempt time at study enrollment.
Current and former hair relaxer use was highest among Black participants, followed by Hispanic participants. More than half of Black participants reported using their first relaxer before age 10 years, compared with 1-17 percent among other racial and ethnic groups.
Fertility rates were lowest among participants who used relaxers for at least 10 years or at least five times per year, but the study results did not show clear dose-response patterns for either association.
The senior author of the study is Dr. Tamarra James-Todd, Associate Professor in the Departments of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study was also co-authored by Tanran Wang, Dr. Collette Ncube, Sharonda Lovett, Martha Koenig, Ruth Geller, Dr. Amelia Wesselink, Chad Coleman, and Dr. Elizabeth Hatch in the Department of Epidemiology at BUSPH; Dr. Renée Boynton-Jarrett in the Department of Pediatrics at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, and Dr. Jasmine Abrams at Yale University School of Public Health.
**
About Boston University School of Public Health
Founded in 1976, Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top five ranked private schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations—especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable—locally and globally.
Use of chemical hair straighteners and fecundability in a North American preconception cohort
COI STATEMENT
LW serves as a fibroid consultant for AbbVie, Inc. She also receives in- kind donations for primary data collection in Pregnancy Study Online (PRESTO) from Swiss Precision Diagnostics (home pregnancy tests) and Kindara.com (fertility apps).
