ORCID

Yining Yang: 0009-0005-3014-6988

Date of Award

Fall 2024

Language

English

Embargo Period

11-21-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School/Department

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Program

Epidemiology

First Advisor

Meredith M. Howley

Second Advisor

Akiko S. Hosler

Committee Members

Meredith M. Howley, Akiko S. Hosler

Keywords

maternal occupation, cleaner, maid, janitor, birth defects, neural tube defects

Subject Categories

Environmental Public Health | Epidemiology | Maternal and Child Health | Occupational Health and Industrial Hygiene | Women's Health

Abstract

Background: Cleaning work involves potential exposures to physical, chemical, biological, and psychosocial hazards, which may increase the risk of birth defects. Yet, there is limited research focused on maternal occupation cleaning-related jobs and the risk of birth defects. We sought to investigate the association between selected birth defects and maternal occupation as a cleaner during early pregnancy in the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (NBDPS), a case-control study from 1997-2011.

Methods: Participants self-reported job details, which was classified by experts into cleaners or non-cleaner occupations. Cases were live births or stillbirths ascertained with birth defects from state surveillance systems, while controls were randomly selected live births without structural defects. We obtained adjusted ORs with 95% confidence intervals (CI) from multivariable logistic regression for associations between maternal cleaning occupations and birth defects, controlling for eight confounders identified a priori. We conducted two sensitivity analyses focusing on isolated birth defects and those who worked more than 40 hours.

Results: There were 1109 participants (868 cases/241 controls) with a primary occupational code as a cleaner during early pregnancy. In total, nine of the 19 included birth defects had elevated odds ratios (>1.5), ranging from 1.58 for anophthalmia/microphthalmia to 2.65 for esophageal atresia/stenosis; six had CIs that excluded the null.

Conclusions: Our study found that maternal occupation in cleaning-related jobs was associated with specific birth defects. Further studies are necessary to provide a clearer understanding of how these occupations during early pregnancy might affect infant development.

License

This work is licensed under the University at Albany Standard Author Agreement.

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Available for download on Saturday, November 21, 2026

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