Pre-Natal Exposure to Pollution Linked to Cancer

From Bloomberg (by Nicole Ostrow):

Children whose mothers have an increased exposure to air pollution from motor vehicles while pregnant may have a higher chance of developing certain cancers, a study found.

Each increase in exposure to pollution from gasoline vehicles and diesel trucks was associated with a 4 percent higher risk of developing acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common childhood cancer, as well as increased chances of developing rarer cancers of the eye and of cells that form the reproductive system, according to data presented . . . at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Washington.

Research in adults has shown that carbon monoxide can damage the retina and have an effect on germ cells of the reproductive system, said Julia Heck, the lead study author. Today’s findings are the first to link air pollution with rarer pediatric cancers, she said.

“With childhood cancers, there’s a lot less known about the causes,” Heck, an assistant researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Public Health, said in an April 5 telephone interview. “My results have to be confirmed in other studies. This is the first real study to report on these rare tumors.”

She said it is unknown why exposure to pollution in utero can raise childhood cancer risks.

Read entire article here.

BPA in Cans Linked to Asthma

From UPI:

U.S. researchers report a link between early childhood exposure to bisphenol A — a chemical used in can liners and store receipts — and higher asthma risk.

Lead author Dr. Kathleen Donohue, an assistant professor of Medicine at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Center for Children’s Environmental Health, and colleagues tracked 568 women enrolled in the Mothers & Newborns study of environmental exposures.

BPA exposure was determined by measuring levels of a BPA metabolite in urine samples taken during the third trimester of pregnancy and in the children at ages 3, 5 and 7.

Physicians diagnosed asthma at ages 5 to 12 based on asthma symptoms, a pulmonary function test and medical history. A validated questionnaire was used to evaluate wheeze, Donohue said.

The study, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, found after adjusting for secondhand smoke and other factors known to be associated with asthma, post-natal exposure to BPA was associated with increased risk of wheeze and asthma.

BPA exposure during the third trimester of pregnancy was inversely associated with risk of wheeze at age 5, the study found.

“Asthma prevalence has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, which suggests that some as-yet-undiscovered environmental exposures may be implicated,” Donohue said in a statement. “Our study indicates that one such exposure may be BPA.”

Toxic Tide

From Living On Earth (portions of radio discussion of the “the health effects of the deepwater disaster”):

GELLERMAN: . . . . It’s been more than six months since BP finally capped its runaway oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. But now come reports of a wave of illnesses and puzzling symptoms from some residents along the Gulf Coast. Their blood contains high levels of chemicals found in oil and the dispersants that were used to clean up the mess.

Many who are suffering say firm answers and adequate treatment are hard to come by, and there’s a growing sense of frustration with government agencies and the medical community. Living on Earth’s Jeff Young has the first part of our special report: “Toxic Tide – Discovering the Health Effects of the Deepwater Disaster”.

[HEARING: OIL SPILL COMMISSIONER DON BOESCH Okay, questions and comments from the floor…]

YOUNG: When the National Oil Spill Commission presented its final report in New Orleans, commissioners expected to get an earful from rig workers and fishermen worried about their jobs. Instead they heard speaker after speaker worried about something else: their health.

SPEAKER 1: I worked 60 days on the frontline for BP out here. I’m sick today, nobody wants to take care of me.

SPEAKER 2: The issue is ongoing; people are getting sick and dying.

SPEAKER 3: I have seen small children with lesions all over their body. We are very, very ill. And there’s a very good chance now that I won’t get to see my grandbabies.

YOUNG: Some had worked cleaning up the oil, others lived in or had visited places where oil washed ashore. All complained of mysterious ailments that arose after the spill.

Robin Young was one of those who spoke out. She manages vacation rental properties in Orange Beach, Alabama, where she has lived for 10 years.

When the spill started, Young helped form a citizen group called Guardians of the Gulf. At first, the group was not focused on health issues. Then, people, including Young, started getting sick.

R YOUNG: Headaches, I would get nauseous – and these are all things that I don’t normally experience at all, I’ve always been very, very, very healthy. Then the coughing – I coughed up so much nasty looking mess.

J YOUNG: Young says symptoms started after she spent a day near the water in June and she still hasn’t fully recovered. She heard from others in her community and across the Gulf coast with similar problems.

* * *

J YOUNG: Young’s group paid for more blood sampling. The Louisiana Environmental Action network asked biochemist and MacArthur grant winner Wilma Subra to analyze the results. The blood samples came from cleanup workers, crabbers, a diver who’d been in oiled water, and at least two children who live on the coast. All had reported recent health problems. Subra compared the levels of volatile organic compounds in those samples to a national database of VOC’s in blood compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics.

SUBRA: They’re as much as 5 to 10 times what you’d find in the normal population. And again, these are chemicals that relate back to chemicals in the BP crude and the dispersants.

* * *

SUBRA: I think it’s demonstrating that the chemicals they are being exposed to are showing up in their blood. We’ve briefed the federal agencies on it, tried to get them interested – they are evaluating the results. And I think there’s a lot of frustration in the community members across the coastal areas. They are really requesting answers.

* * *

YOUNG: Solid answers will take time. There’s little in the scientific literature on long term health effects of oil spills. In March the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences plans to start enrolling Gulf spill cleanup workers in a long-term health study. The principal investigator is Dale Sandler, chief of epidemiology at NIEHS. She hopes to track some 55,000 subjects for at least five years.

SANDLER: This will be by far the largest study of individuals exposed during an oil spill disaster that’s ever been conducted. So we have been moving heaven and earth to make this go quickly.

YOUNG: Sandler’s study has funding, thanks in part to BP. The study is a few months behind its original schedule. But researchers face another hurdle that may prove more difficult. Signing up tens of thousands of participants and getting people to accept results depends on credibility and trust. After the BP spill and Hurricane Katrina, trust is in low supply on the Gulf Coast. Here’s how Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kinnon sums up the attitude.

KINNON: The bottom line is very few people trust governmental agencies. They think there’s this incestuous relationship between BP and the government, and I tend to agree with them.

J YOUNG: And even as Robin Young asks the government to help her community, the plea comes with a note of deep suspicion.

RYOUNG: I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist – that’s what I’m starting to feel like. Because it’s hard to believe that something like this is going on in the United States and no one’s helping.

More . . .

Link to Living on Earth podcast.

Wilma Subra’s analysis of blood samples from sick Gulf Coast residents.

The NIEHS plan for a large-scale, long-term study of cleanup workers.

Erin Clayton on BPA’s Effect on Immune Syste

Erin Clayton at the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health wasrecently interviewed about her leading-edge research on the effect of BPA and other chemicals on people’s immune systems.

You can link to the podcast here.

The CHAMACOS Study

Professor Brenda Eskenazi discusses the “Environmental Chemical Influences on Neurobehavioral Development of Children: The CHAMACOS Study.”

Upstream Experts on BPA & Obesity

From NPR.org (an article about, and interview of, among others, Upstream Experts Leo Trasande and Frederica Perera):

BPA could be making kids fat. Or not.

That’s the unsatisfying takeaway from the latest study on bisphenol A — the plastic additive that environmental groups have blamed for everything from ADHD to prostate disease.

Unfortunately, the science behind those allegations isn’t so clear. And the new study on obesity in children and teens is no exception.

Researchers from New York University looked at BPA levels in the urine of more than 2,800 people aged 6 through 19. The team wanted to know whether those with relatively high levels of BPA were more likely to be obese.

But the results, published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, didn’t offer a simple answer to that question.

Among white kids and teens, higher BPA levels were associated with more than twice the risk of obesity. With black and Hispanic youth, though, BPA levels didn’t make a difference.

“When we find an association like this, it can often raise more questions than it answers,” says the study’s lead author, Leonardo Trasande, an associate professor of pediatrics at New York University. There’s no obvious reason why one group of kids would be affected by BPA while another group wouldn’t, he says.

Also, there’s no way in this study to know whether BPA is actually causing kids to put on weight, says Frederica Perera, who directs the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health. “Obese children may be simply eating and drinking foods that have higher BPA levels,” she says.

And even if BPA is playing a role in weight gain, it may be just one of many chemicals involved, Perera says.

“Our center has recently published a study showing that exposure to another group of endocrine disruptors, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAH, was associated with obesity in the children,” Perera says. Those hydrocarbons are typically a part of air pollution in cities.

Some of the uncertainty about BPA may come because the researchers had no way of knowing how much exposure kids in the study may have had in the womb — the time many scientists believe chemical exposure is most likely to have a lifelong effect.

“Clearly we need a longer term study that examines exposure in the earliest parts of life,” Trasande says. Even so, he says, it may be time to rethink childhood obesity.

“Diet and physical activity are still the leading factors driving the obesity epidemic in the United States,” Trasande says. “Yet this study suggests that we need to also consider a third key component to the epidemic: environmental factors that may also contribute.”

* * *

Read entire story and transcript of NPR interview here.

Global Ocean Warming

From UCtelevision:

A new study comparing past and present ocean temperatures reveals the global ocean has been warming for more than a century. Join Dean Roemmich, Scripps physical oceanographer and study co-author, as he describes how warm our oceans are getting, where all that heat is going, and how this knowledge will help scientists better understand the earth’s climate. Learn how scientists measured ocean temperature during the historic voyage of the HMS Challenger (1872-76) and how today’s network of ocean-probing robots is changing the way scientists study the seas.

Burn Pits Threaten Immune Systems

From Wired:

Since returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, an untold number of soldiers have come down with puzzling health problems. Chronic bronchitis. Neurological defects. Even cancer. Many of them are pointing the finger at a single culprit: The open-air “burn pits” that incinerated trash — from human waste to computer parts — on military bases overseas.

Pentagon officials have consistently reassured personnel that there was no “specific evidence” connecting the two. But now, only days after Danger Room uncovered a memo suggesting that Army officials knew how dangerous the pits were, an animal study is offering up new scientific evidence that links burn pits to depleted immune systems.

“The dust doesn’t only appear to cause lung inflammation,” says Dr. Anthony Szema, an assistant professor at Stony Brook School of Medicine who specializes in pulmonology and allergies, and the researcher who led this latest study. “It also destroys the body’s own T-cells.” Those cells are at the core of the body’s immune system, “like a bulletproof vest against illnesses,” Szema tells Danger Room. When they’re depleted, an individual is much more prone to myriad conditions.

For scientists, trying to establish a definitive connection between those diffuse health problems and the pits has been exceedingly difficult to do. Most notably because the Department of Defense, as a report issued by the Institutes of Medicine noted last year, didn’t collect adequate evidence — like what the pits burned and which soldiers were exposed — for researchers to draw any meaningful conclusions about the impact of the open-air incinerators. Szema’s study is only on 15 mice, so it’s by no means definitive. But it is an important first step.

Regardless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Pentagon officials were aware of the risk posed by the pits. Another memo (.pdf), written by Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis in 2006 and obtained by Danger Room, warned of “an acute health hazard” to personnel stationed at Iraq’s Balad air base. “It is amazing,” he noted, “that the burn pit has been able to operate … without significant engineering controls being put in place.”

But as recently as yesterday, when asked about the leaked Army memo obtained by Danger Room (which cited a risk of ”long-term adverse health conditions” from the pits), Pentagon spokesperson George Little told reporters that “we do not have specific evidence that ties these kinds of disposal facilities to health issues.”

Perhaps not. But researchers just got way, way closer. A team, led by Dr. Szema at Stony Brook University, this week revealed to Danger Room the results of their ongoing investigations that are trying to directly link health problems to the air emitted by burn pits. And the results should cause those who served near the pits — which burned trash at most major bases in Iraq and Afghanistan during at least some period over the last decade — to be concerned.

More.

BPA and Mammary Glands

From The DailyMail (quoting Upstream Expert Dr. Ana Soto):

Cancer fears have grown over a chemical widely used in plastic packaging and food-can linings after new research showed that it affected the development of monkey breasts.

Various studies have linked Bisphenol A (BPA) to breast cancer – and now teams at Washington State University and Tufts University have added weight to these findings.

They found that foetal exposure to the plastic additive alters mammary gland development in primates.

Lead author Patricia Hunt said: ‘Previous studies in mice have demonstrated that low doses of BPA alter the developing mammary gland and that these subtle changes increase the risk of cancer in the adult.

‘Some have questioned the relevance of these findings in mice to humans. But finding the same thing in a primate model really hits uncomfortably close to home.’

For the research the structure of newborn mammary glands from BPA-exposed and unexposed female rhesus macaques were compared.

Pregnant monkeys were fed a piece of fruit containing a small amount of BPA each day during the gestational period corresponding to the human third trimester of pregnancy, resulting in blood levels of BPA comparable to those of many humans today.

The researchers found that, at birth, the density of mammary buds was significantly increased in BPA-exposed monkeys, and the overall development of the mammary gland was more advanced compared to unexposed monkeys.

Previous studies have shown that exposing rodents to tiny amounts of BPA can alter mammary gland development, leading to pre-cancerous and cancerous lesions when the animals exposed in utero reach adult age.

The researchers said the primate research makes them confident that the rodent mammary gland is a reliable model to study developmental exposures to chemicals like BPA that disrupt a mammal’s estrogen activity.

Tufts University School of Medicine researcher Ana Soto said: ‘This study buttresses previous findings showing that foetal exposure to low xenoestrogen levels causes developmental alterations that in turn increase the risk of mammary cancer later in life.

‘Because BPA is chemically related to diethylstilbestrol, an estrogen that increased the risk of breast cancer in both rodents and women exposed in the womb, the sum of all these findings strongly suggests that BPA is a breast carcinogen in humans and human exposure to BPA should be curtailed.’

The research appears in the latest Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.

More.

Plastics and Obesity

From The Independent:

Man-made chemicals present in homes, schools, offices, cars and food are probably contributing to the sharp rise in obesity and diabetes in western societies, according to a review of scientific literature published today.

Until now lifestyle factors such as lack of exercise and poor diet were believed to be the primary causes of the increased incidence of both conditions, whose proliferation has strained global health budgets.

While these remain undisputed factors, the review of 240 scientific papers by two leading experts, Professor Miquel Porta of Spain and Professor Duk-Hee Lee of South Korea, suggests chemicals in plastics and other surfaces play an important and avoidable role.

Their study assessed the impact of chemicals including the now banned PCBs, the plastic-softeners phthalates, and the plastic-hardener Bisphenol A, or BPA, a common substance in food packaging and plastic bottles which The Independent has written widely about. All 240 studies they reviewed – whether in test-tubes, on animals or on humans – had been peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals.

The paper, the Review of the Science Linking Chemical Exposures to the Human Risk of Obesity and Diabetes, found some of the chemicals appeared to have a causal effect on obesity, some on diabetes and some on both.

Many are endocrine disruptors, which can change human hormones, including the stimulation of appetite and fat storage and regulation of sugar.

* * *

One of the study authors, Professor Miquel Porta, of the Hospital del Mar Research Institute, Barcelona, said: “The epidemics in obesity and diabetes are extremely worrying.

“The role of hormone disrupting chemicals in this must be addressed. The number of such chemicals that contaminate humans is considerable.

“We must encourage new policies that help minimise human exposure to all relevant hormone disruptors, especially women planning pregnancy, as it appears to be the foetus developing in utero that is at greatest risk”.

* * *

BPA is commonly found in the plastic lining inside tinned foods, on thermal till receipts and in consumer electronics such as mobile phones and televisions, while phthalates are present in vinyl flooring, shower curtains and children’s toys.

CHEM Trust (Chemicals Health & Environment Monitoring Trust), the British pressure group which commissioned the research, urged the UK Government and the EU to press industry to find safer alternatives.

Elizabeth Salter Green, director of CHEM Trust, said: “If exposure to hormone disrupting chemicals is programming us to be fat, it is high time that public health policy takes into account cutting edge science. Obesity and diabetes are examples of the adverse health trends linked with endocrine disruption which need to be urgently addressed.

“We are talking about prevention, not cure here, and in this time of financial squeeze, anything that can help with prevention, reducing NHS spending, is a good idea.”

More.

Pesticides Linked to Attention Deficit Disorders

From PBS’s Need to Know (2010):

Does eating organic really make a difference? A new study says it does.

The study, published in the May 2010 issue of the journal Pediatrics, revealed that children exposed to toxic pesticides known as organophosphates are at increased risk for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ADHD is one of the most common neurobehavioral disorders in children, with diagnoses increasing 3 percent a year between 1997 and 2006, and totaling 4.5 million children. Symptoms include difficulties paying attention and controlling impulsive behavior, and they can be caused by genetics as well as exposures to environmental toxins.

The study’s research team, led by Maryse Bouchard, a researcher at the University of Montreal, analyzed urine samples from 1,139 children ages 8 to 15. Children with higher urinary levels of dialkyl phosphate metabolites (DAP), which are markers of organophosphate exposure, were more likely to be diagnosed as having ADHD. With each tenfold increase in DAP, the odds of having ADHD rose by more than half.

“What was surprising was that we saw there was an increased risk of ADHD even at low levels of exposure,” Bouchard said in a recent phone interview. “We saw that children with above-average levels of exposure had twice the risk of ADHD as those with undetectable levels.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), organophosphate pesticides were first used as nerve agents in World War II. Today, they are the most widely used insecticides available, with more than 40 types registered for use. In 2001, approximately 73 million pounds of organophosphates were used in the U.S. The EPA states that all organophosphates “run the risk of acute and subacute toxicity” and “pose significant health risks to people who are exposed to them through their work.”

But CropLife America, which represents pesticide manufacturers, said in response to the study that “more research is needed” to ascertain if there is a direct link between pesticide exposure and ADHD: “The class of crop protection compound that is the subject of this study has been approved and registered by the U.S. EPA, and when used according to the label, the EPA has determined it to be safe.”

Organophosphates have already been proven to have adverse health effects in infants and children, Bouchard and her research team reported, including behavioral problems, developmental delays and poorer short-term memory. According to the National Academy of Sciences, infants and children receive most of their exposures to pesticides through diet. Because of their lower body weight and developing brains, they are more susceptible to pesticide toxicity than adults. A 2008 report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Pesticide Data Program found detectable levels of the organophosphate insecticide malathion in 28 percent of frozen blueberry samples, 25 percent of fresh strawberry samples and 19 percent of celery samples.

The Union of Concerned Scientists writes that the growth of industrial agriculture, which views the farm as a factory, has led to a rise in pesticide use. According to the group, a key feature of industrial agriculture is cultivating a single crop, or monoculture, which depletes the soil and invites pests, resulting in an increased need for more herbicides and pesticides. The U.S. grows all of its major commodity crops in monoculture, a practice bolstered by government subsidies and agribusinesses that manufacture seeds, pesticides and fertilizers.

“This is the first study on the subject so we can’t be definitive, but I think it’s fair for parents to want to be prudent and reduce exposure to pesticides,” said Bouchard. She recommended not using pesticides in or outside of the home and washing all fruits and vegetables carefully, even with a little soap, to get rid of pesticide residues in produce like apples or bell peppers.

But even the organic label isn’t a guarantee. “Buying organic is a good idea, but I know it’s hard for a lot of families because it’s so expensive,” Bouchard said. As an alternative, she suggested buying fruits and vegetables at a farmers’ market. “Even if it’s not labeled organic, the produce from a small producer will contain less pesticides, since they don’t do monocultures.”

Related: Read the study

Image from Flickr.

The Growing Costs of the Nitrogen Century

From PRI’s “The World”:

Robert Law raises sheep and grows sugar beets, wheat, barley oats and rye on his farm about an hour north of London.

It’s a big operation set on nearly 4,000 acres of rolling hills near the town of Royston. One key ingredient makes it all flourish — nitrogen fertilizer. Law said he uses it for almost all his crops, because his land is inherently very low in naturally-available nitrogen, which plants need to thrive./p>

Law is hardly alone. The invention of nitrogen-based fertilizer in 1909 helped fuel a global agricultural boom, and it’s been crucial in feeding a growing population ever since.

But a growing number of scientists say that boon to our food supply has come at a big cost — massive, nitrogen-based pollution.

Mark Sutton, of the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in the United Kingdom, said the threat to the environment is large

“We’ve known for many years that using nitrogen for fertilizer is a great thing for farming to increase productivity,” Sutton said. “But there’s a whole range of threats resulting from this nitrogen leaking into the environment.”

Nitrogen is an inert gas that’s necessary for life. But we’re changing it into forms that are harmful, overloading the environment with it, and throwing the natural nitrogen cycle out of whack, Sutton said. Nitrogen compounds running off farmland have led to water pollution around the world, while nitrogen emissions from industry, agriculture and vehicles make a big contribution to air pollution.

Sutton said the cost is immense. Last year he was part of a team of 200 scientists from 21 countries who studied the problem in the European Union. They calculated the dollar value of the damage from nitrogen pollution at between $90 billion and $400 billion per year.

That’s “a massive number,” Sutton said.

The cost comes to both the environment and human health. For instance, Sutton said, particulate air pollution caused in part by nitrogen shortens the lives of many Europeans by more than a year. Overall, the EU report estimated that the cost of nitrogen pollution in the EU is more than double the value that nitrogen fertilizers add to European farm income.

“So these are significant issues,” Sutton said.

The EU study is the first to calculate these costs in Europe. But Alan Townsend, an ecologist at the University of Colorado, insists nitrogen pollution is “unquestionably” a global problem.

The U.S. is also a major hotspot, and big problems are emerging in China, Southeast Asia and Latin America. The impacts of nitrogen pollution can be hard to recognize. Big environmental disasters like oil spills tend to grab all the attention, Townsend said, but “there is essentially a nitrogen spill everyday.”

The irony is that in the right places and chemical forms, nitrogen is valuable stuff. Every ounce of fertilizer that runs off a field into a river is a waste of resources and money. But Townsend said it’s a problem that shouldn’t be that hard to solve.

“This is not one of those problems where we sit around scratching our heads and say, ‘Man this is going to be a disaster, how are we going to deal with it, there’s nothing we can do,’” he said. “A lot of the solutions are right in front of us. It’s just about moving down that path.”

That path includes increasing the use of technology to cut nitrogen pollutants from power plants and vehicles, which is already widely used in the U.S. and Europe.

Cutting nitrogen pollution from food production is a more complicated challenge, but Townsend says on the farm field itself, it comes down to a simple principle: use fertilizer more efficiently.

“We have to approach it as an efficiency problem,” he said. “How do we maximize the benefits that we’re going to get from this stuff and minimize the unwanted consequences?”

Law is trying to rise to that challenge. He prides himself on running a farm that’s not only productive, but environmentally sensitive.

His tractor now sports a small computer console that his farmhands use to ensure each field gets only the exact amount of fertilizer it needs, depending on the crop, the season and the weather.

“We just program each individual field as we come to it,” said farm worker Mark Moule. ”Just press start and finish and one minute you’ll be putting 50 kilos on per hectare, next minute it’s 150.”

That kind of precision helps reduce the amount of nitrogen that runs off farm fields into nearby streams. It can also help save money on fertilizer.

But this kind of technology is expensive, and many smaller farms can’t afford it.

For his part, Law is willing to look for even more efficient ways to use fertilizer. But he warns that Britain and the rest of the world face a growing challenge when it comes to feeding a growing population.

“The area available for farming in this country is getting smaller each year,” Law laments. “Roads are being built, towns are being built.”

It’s a global trend — less farmland and more mouths to feed. And that will only add to the challenge of getting rid of the excess nitrogen we’ve been putting into the environment.

Listen to the story and get more information here.

Dry-Cleaning Chemicals Linked to Bi-Polar Disorder

From Toronto Star:

A new study has found early exposure to a chemical commonly used in dry-cleaning can increase the risk of developing bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress syndrome.

The study, published in the open access journal Environmental Health, examined the impact of the solvent — known as tetrachloroethylene or PCE — which leached into the water supply from vinyl-lined water pipes used in the Cape Cod area.

PCE and vinyl resin were used to attach liners to the water pipes. The pipes were dried for 48 hours before being shipped for use. It was thought that the PCE would evaporate before the pipes were installed. But that didn’t appear to be the case.

Quantities of PCE seem to have stayed on the liner and ended up leaching into the public water supply, said Ann Aschengrau, a professor and epidemiologist at Boston University School of Public Health who conducted the study.

Aschengrau and a team of researchers did a retrospective cohort study on 1,500 subjects, born between 1969 and 1983 in the Cape Cod area. They were traced through their current address and telephone number, credit bureau records, telephone books and the Internet.

Eight hundred and thirty-one of them were identified as being exposed to the solvent through drinking water either prenatally or in early childhood, Aschengrau said in an interview with the Star.

Through data linked to their mothers’ addresses and the water distribution companies’ information on where the pipes were located, the researchers were able to find who had been exposed to the PCE-laden water.

They sent questionnaires to all the participants, asking about a variety of things, including mental illness. They were asked if a doctor or health-care provider ever said they had depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder.

In sifting through the data, the researchers found a high increased risk for bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress disorder.

“There was an 80 per cent increased risk for bipolar disorder in those who were exposed to PCE,” Aschengrau said.

“And there was a further increase risk in those who were highly exposed — a 170 per cent increase for bipolar disorder.”

There was also a 50 per cent increased risk for those who were exposed to the PCE for post traumatic stress disorder and it rose to 70 per cent amongst those who were highly exposed, she said.

The number of cases of schizophrenia was too small to draw reliable conclusions, the study said. Nor was the risk of depression associated with prenatal and childhood PCE exposure.

“Prior studies have found increases in risk of depression and anxiety and mood disorders among people who are occupationally exposed to PCE. I think it’s the first time it has been examined,” said Aschengrau.

More research needs to be done and her study corroborated, she said. The study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Superfund Research Program.

In the meantime, she said that people should be wary of PCE, which is considered a serious carcinogen and a “well recognized animal and human neurotoxicant.”

More.

Pollution and Disease in Los Angeles

From Reuters:

In a study of more than 4,000 black women in Los Angeles, those who lived in areas with higher levels of traffic-related air pollution were at increased risk of developing diabetes and high blood pressure.

The researchers, led by Patricia Coogan at Boston University, found that black women living in neighborhoods with high levels of nitrogen oxides, pollutants found in traffic exhaust, were 25 percent more likely to develop diabetes and 14 percent more likely to develop hypertension than those living in sections with cleaner air.

Previous research has linked air pollution to health problems such as diabetes, stroke, heart disease and even higher rates of death.

“The public health implications are huge,” said Dr. Jiu-Chiuan Chen, who studies the effects of air pollution at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, especially for black women, who have higher rates of diabetes and high blood pressure than white women. He was not involved in the current work.

Forty-four percent of all black women in the U.S. have high blood pressure and about 11 percent have diabetes compared with 28 percent and roughly seven percent, respectively, of white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Black Americans also experience higher levels of air pollution than white Americans, according to the study authors.

For their investigation, published in Circulation, the researchers followed participants in the ongoing Black Women’s Health Study for 10 years. The women were mainly recruited from subscribers to Essence magazine, and none had diabetes or high blood pressure when the study began in 1995.

Over the course of a decade, 531 women developed high blood pressure and 183 women were diagnosed with diabetes.

The findings on their relative risks for those conditions take into account several other potential influences, including how heavy the women were, whether they smoked and other stressors, including noise levels at participants’ homes.

Although researchers measured average pollution levels near participants’ homes for only one year of the ten-year study, Coogan told Reuters Health that air pollution patterns remained relatively constant over the entire study period.

While Coogan and her colleagues estimated nitrogen oxide concentrations near participants’ homes, they did not account for commuting habits or exposure to air pollution at work. According to the researchers, Americans, on average, spend about 70 percent of their time at home.

In addition to measuring nitrogen oxides, a proxy for traffic pollution, the researchers evaluated levels of fine particulate matter. Many sources contribute to this type of air pollution, including traffic, power plants and industrial processes.

Women who lived in areas with higher fine particulate exposures also faced an increased risk of diabetes and high blood pressure, although statistically the link was weak and could have been due to chance.

Previous reports have suggested that air pollution particles small enough to make their way into the blood stream may contribute to a narrowing of blood vessels, which can lead to high blood pressure and reduce sensitivity to insulin.

More.

Image from Flickr.

Miscarriages Among Nurses

From Reuters:

Nurses who worked with chemotherapy drugs or sterilizing chemicals were twice as likely to have a miscarriage as their colleagues who didn’t handle these materials, in a new study.

Lead author Christina Lawson, a researcher at the National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH), said she was not too surprised that exposure to certain chemicals would be tied to lost pregnancies.

“What surprised me the most was that (chemotherapy) drugs are something we’ve been trying to educate nurses on, about the hazards, and we’re still finding exposures during the first trimester,” Lawson told Reuters Health.

Because chemotherapy drugs typically target rapidly dividing cells, such as those in a tumor — or a fetus, they have been a concern for pregnant women who come into contact with them, Lawson said.

Not all previous research has agreed on whether nurses’ exposures at work are tied to more miscarriages, though.

To help resolve the issue, Lawson and her colleagues set out to do a larger study than the earlier ones.

They surveyed nearly 7,500 nurses who had had a pregnancy between 1993 and 2002.

The nurses were asked to remember how often they worked with certain chemicals or equipment, such as X-rays, anesthesia, anti-cancer drugs and disinfectants, during each trimester.

One out of every 10 nurses ended up losing her pregnancy before the half-way point, 20 weeks.

Lawson said that number seems similar to the rate of miscarriages in the general population.

However, among nurses who handled chemotherapy drugs for more than an hour a day, that rate was double – about two out of every 10 nurses lost her pregnancy.

NIOSH is the organization that provides safe-handling recommendations for workers who use chemicals.

Barbara Sattler, a nursing professor at the University of Maryland, said the results reflect a lack of adherence to those safety guidelines.

“I know most hospitals try to do the best they can, but if all these nurses are lining up with spontaneous abortions…it’s a significant issue to be addressed,” said Sattler, who was not involved in this study.

Nurses who gave patients X-rays had a slightly higher risk of miscarriage too, about thirty percent larger than nurses who didn’t work with X-rays.

And nurses who handled sterilizing agents, such as ethylene oxide or formaldehyde, more than an hour a day also had a doubled risk of miscarriage, but only during the second trimester.

Lawson said that miscarriages during the second trimester might result from a toxin affecting the mother’s ability to carry the baby, whereas a miscarriage in the first trimester suggests the toxin is affecting the fetus.

She added that it’s difficult to determine the cause of the miscarriages seen in the study because the researchers don’t know which chemicals each woman had contact with, and for how long.

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