Application of Principal Components Analysis to Urine Metal and Metalloid Exposures in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) Data

• Activity Number: 474 - SPEED: Infectious Disease, Environmental Epidemiology, and Diet
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 1, 2018 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Po-Yung Cheng* and Robert L Jones and Kathleen L Caldwell
• Companies: CDC and CDC and CDC
• Keywords: principal components analysis; metal and metalloid exposure; NHANES

Abstract

High levels of metal exposures is a public health issue due to their potential health effects. Recent exposure patterns to multiple metals in the U.S. population have not been examined. We applied principal components analysis to 15 urine metals and metalloids in the NHANES 2013-14 national survey data. The first eigenvalue (6.77) obtained from this analysis explained 45% of variation; the second (1.34) explained 9%; the third (1.14) explained 8%. The first principal component (PC1) was strongly correlated with all elements (correlation efficient (r) range: 0.56 - 0.84) except manganese. In contrast, PC2 was correlated with barium (0.47), manganese (0.52), arsenic (-0.52) and inorganic-related arsenic species (-0.47). PC3 was correlated with barium (-0.48), strontium (-0.41), and tin (0.44). Lower income level, Asian ethnicity, female and elderly had greater risk to be in the highest scores (90th percentile and above) for PC1. In contrast, the participants with greater risk to be in the highest scores for PC2 were non-Hispanic White. The participants with greater risk to be in the highest scores for PC3 were smokers.