Toxic chemicals finding their way into the womb
Submitted by
Drew Kaplan on June 9, 2010
Five years ago Molly and Zachery Gray were in the
midst of a dark, lonely spiral. It began with Molly’s first miscarriage.
“It was a really emotional process of being so joyful and so happy and
ready to make that step into parenthood and that being pulled away from
you,” said Molly, 32. “[The pregnancy is] happening and all of a sudden
it’s gone. It’s really hard.”
After a second miscarriage the Grays were on a desperate hunt for
answers. After Molly got pregnant a third time, she heard about a small
study to test the blood of pregnant women for chemicals. She signed up.
The Grays wondered, as many do, if chemicals in the environment could be
to blame. The science on this matter cannot yet give them an answer.
A growing number of studies are finding hundreds of toxic chemicals in
mothers’ and, subsequently, their babies’ bodies when they are born.
While there is no science yet that demonstrates conclusive cause and
effect between this mix of toxic chemicals children are born with and
particular health problems, a range of studies are finding associations
between elevated levels of chemicals in a baby’s body and their
development. Not definitive cause and effect, but association.
Despite her best efforts to avoid anything unhealthy while she was
pregnant with her son, Molly’s blood tested high for mercury, a heavy
metal that can cause brain damage to a developing fetus.
“It’s really scary and disheartening,” said Molly. “Somehow my son was
being exposed to mercury and that’s a weight to carry because I feel
like our jobs as parents is to protect them, to care for them, to
nurture them and to keep them out of harm’s way.”
Scientists at the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health in
New York City have been following hundreds of pregnant women over the
past 12 years to measure chemicals entering the womb during pregnancy.
Special backpacks with vaccuum devices measure pollutants in the air
breathed by pregnant women.The women trudge through the city for 48
hours wearing special backpacks, each with a long tube that is slung
over the shoulder. The tube, resting inches below the pregnant mom’s
mouth, sucks air into a special filter, giving an approximate
measurement of the air that she is breathing. The backpack is designed
to measure ambient toxics spewed by vehicles, pesticides, and chemicals
from common household products.
“It surprised me when we analyzed the air samples [from the backpacks]
and found 100 percent of them had detectable levels of at least one
pesticide and the air pollutants we were interested in,” said Dr.
Frederica Perera, director of the CCCEH and professor at the Columbia
University Mailman School of Public Health. “Every single one.”
The concern does not stop with mothers breathing in toxics. The CCCEH
study suggests moms are passing on those toxic chemicals to their
babies. So far, the toxics measured in the backpacks match what
scientists are finding in the cord blood of the babies once they are
born.
It is a finding that begs questions for scientists like Perera about how
these chemicals might be influencing the baby – whose ability to fend
off toxic chemicals is considerably less than adults – while it develops
in utero.
Small studies by other groups are also finding common household
chemicals in babies.
“We’ve measured hundreds and hundreds of toxic chemicals in the blood of
babies that are still in the womb,” said Ken Cook, president of the
Environmental Working Group, a non-profit environmental advocacy
organization. “Flame retardants, the chemicals in consumer products like
personal care products, makeup, shampoos. It’s a very long list.”
The EWG study found an average of 232 chemicals in the cord blood of 10
babies born late last year.
They are chemicals found in a wide array of common household products —
a list that is as long as it is familiar — shampoos and conditioners,
cosmetics, plastics, shower curtains, mattresses, electronics like
computers and cell phones, among others.
“For 80 percent of the common chemicals in everyday use in this country
we know almost nothing about whether or not they can damage the brains
of children, the immune system, the reproductive system, and the other
developing organs,” said Dr. Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and director
of the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai School of
Medicine. “It’s really a terrible mess we’ve gotten ourselves into.”
Landrigan demonstrated the dangers of lead
“Paxton and all of our future generations are carrying around this
burden that we don’t know what it means yet,” says Molly Gray, with baby
Paxton and husband ZacheryPerera and her colleagues are following the
children in their study from in utero, to birth, up to their first
several years of life. They recently published a study in the journal
Pediatrics demonstrating an association between the chemicals they found
in babies’ cord blood, and later problems on IQ tests and development.
“Fifteen percent of children [in our study] have at least one
developmental problem,” said Perera.
The amount of chemicals measured in the cord blood of the babies seems
to matter. The higher the concentration, the more the IQ among children
seems to dip. The study is also being conducted among pregnant women in
Poland and China, and finding similar results.
Molly Gray still struggles with the idea that mercury from her blood may
have been passed to her baby. This concern about chemicals is something
she can’t shake.
“There’s plastics, there’s mercury, there’s pesticides,” said Molly
Gray, who is also a practicing midwife. “The things that we’re cleaning
our homes with, the things we’re building our houses with. I think the
sheer volume of the things we have to worry about is a little
overwhelming.”
Even when their son Paxton, now 11 months old, was born healthy, the
Grays remained vigilant. As Paxton grows and develops, they steer clear
of any products with potentially toxic chemicals. Still, they worry
about what is out there in the environment that they cannot control.
“Knowing that he got these chemicals from my blood it’s really scary,”
said Molly Gray. “Scary that we don’t know what this means. Paxton and
all of our future generations are carrying around this burden that we
don’t know what it means yet. It’s the huge sea of unknown.”
While studies continue about potential health risks to children from
chemicals, experts suggest ways to protect them from potential toxics,
ranging from incorporating organic food into their diet, to keeping the
home relatively dust-free (many toxic chemicals are conveyed in dust),
to avoiding using toxic chemicals found in common household products.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/06/01/backpack.cord.blood/index.html?hpt=C2
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