Honorine Gauthier-Manuel

Background and Aims: One of today's challenges in terms of understanding the real impact of the environment on pregnancy and its complications is the ability to work with real‐life data that are correctly and extensively connected to data on the contamination of living environments and individualized exposures. We present a solution based on a data infrastructure that is directly usable for research. We describe (i) the methodological characteristics of the infrastructure, (ii) the geographical territory and environmental exposures covered by the infrastructure, and (iii) the initial description of the real‐life health data of the included population. Methods: The infrastructure is a relational database that integrates routine obstetric care data from CHUB with individual environmental exposure data linked via home addresses. The infrastructure includes all deliveries at Besançon University Hospital (CHUB) from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2021. Results: Our infrastructure included information on 20,376 women, 28,344 pregnancies, and 29,190 births. The infrastructure described includes 20% of deliveries in an administrative region of more than 1.5 million inhabitants. The quality of the data is linked to highly contrasted exposure of living areas within this region and temporal coverage of more than 10 years of obstetrical events. This infrastructure is a research tool with the capacity to incorporate data in the future. Conclusion: This infrastructure can be used to address a wide range of questions aimed at describing the phenomena of environmental exposure during pregnancy, multiple exposures and their cumulative effects, particularly the phenomena of mediation, interaction, or confusion.

Over the course of history, the development of human societies implied the exploitation of mineral resources which generated huge amounts of mining wastes leading to substantial environmental contamination by various metal(loid)s. This is especially the case of coal mine tailings which, subjected to weathering reactions, produce acid mine drainage (AMD), a recurring ecological issue related to current and past mining activities. In this study, we aimed to determine the origin, the fate and the ecotoxicity of metal(loid)s leached from a historical coal tailing heap to the Beuveroux river (Franche-Comté, France) using a combination of mineralogical, chemical and biological approaches. In the constitutive materials of the tailings, we identified galena, tetrahedrite and bournonite as metal-rich minerals and their weathering has led to massive contamination of the water and suspended particles of the river bordering the heap. The ecotoxicity of the AMD has been assessed using Chironomus riparius larvae encaged in the field during a one-month biomonitoring campaign. The larvae showed lethal and sub-lethal (growth and emergence inhibition and delay) impairments at the AMD tributary and near downstream stations. Metal bioaccumulation and subcellular fractionation in the larvae tissues revealed a strong bioavailability of, notably, As, Pb and Tl explaining the observed biological responses. Thus, more than 70 years after the end of mining operations, the coal tailings remain a chronic source of contamination and environmental risks in AMD effluent receiving waters.