Background:

Racial/ethnic disparities in hypertension are a pressing public health problem. The contribution of environmental pollutants including PFAS have not been explored, even though certain PFAS are higher in Black population and have been associated with hypertension.

Objectives:

We examined the extent to which racial/ethnic disparities in incident hypertension are explained by racial/ethnic differences in serum PFAS concentrations.

Methods:

We included 1,058 hypertension-free midlife women with serum PFAS concentrations in 1999–2000 from the multi-racial/ethnic Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation with approximately annual follow-up visits through 2017. Causal mediation analysis was conducted using accelerated failure time models. Quantile-based g-computation was used to evaluate the joint effects of PFAS mixtures.

Results:

During 11,722 person-years of follow-up, 470 participants developed incident hypertension (40.1 cases per 1000 person-years). Black participants had higher risks of developing hypertension (relative survival: 0.58, 95% CI: 0.45–0.76) compared with White participants, which suggests racial/ethnic disparities in the timing of hypertension onset. The percent of this difference in timing that was mediated by PFAS was 8.2% (95% CI: 0.7–15.3) for PFOS, 6.9% (95% CI: 0.2–13.8) for EtFOSAA, 12.7% (95% CI: 1.4–22.6) for MeFOSAA, and 19.1% (95% CI: 4.2, 29.0) for PFAS mixtures. The percentage of the disparities in hypertension between Black versus White women that could have been eliminated if everyone’s PFAS concentrations were dropped to the 10th percentiles observed in this population was 10.2% (95% CI: 0.9–18.6) for PFOS, 7.5% (95% CI: 0.2–14.9) for EtFOSAA, and 17.5% (95% CI: 2.1–29.8) for MeFOSAA.

Conclusions:

These findings suggest differences in PFAS exposure may be an unrecognized modifiable risk factor that partially accounts for racial/ethnic disparities in timing of hypertension onset among midlife women. The study calls for public policies aimed at reducing PFAS exposures that could contribute to reductions in racial/ethnic disparities in hypertension.