Short abstract: We will review the early studies that reveal the adverse influence of air pollution on bone in US aging populations, its confirmation from epidemiological and in vivo studies from other groups, and recent findings about potential mechanisms of damage and the influence of social determinants of health in this environmentally induced damage.
Bio: Dr. Diddier Prada is an environmental and molecular epidemiologist focusing on environmental toxicants’ role in age-related conditions. Dr. Prada attended his Medical School in Colombia, was trained in Internal Medicine, did his PhD in Biomedical Sciences at the National University of Mexico (UNAM), and then did his postdoctorate at the Harvard School of Public Health. Dr. Prada was a Researcher in Biomedical Science at the National Cancer Institute in Mexico City and an Associate Research Scientist at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Dr. Prada is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Health Equity Research, with affiliations to the Department of Population Health Science and Policy and the Department of Environmental Medicine and Climate Science at the Icahn School of Public Health. Dr. Prada’s reported the first strong evidence for the association between air pollution and bone loss during aging, which was published in Lancet Planetary Health and selected as NIEHS/NIH’s Paper of the Month in 2017. He also confirmed the primary role of nitrogen oxides in bone damage in postmenopausal women, which was also selected as NIEHS/NIH’s Paper of the Month in 2023 and recently as the 2023 NIEHS Paper of the Year. This work has been widely disseminated in the media, with recent interviews for Science and the Washington Post.