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PCB article in NY Times
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>Date: Thu, 12 Sep 1996 00:40:12 -0700
>From: "Alex J. Sagady" <"asagady@sojourn.com"@sojourn.com>
>Organization: A. J. Sagady & Associates
>Subject: PCB article in NY Times
>X-URL: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/national/pcb-fetus.html
>
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>> September 12, 1996
>>
>> Report Links Prenatal PCB Exposure With Child
>> Development
>>
>> By JANE E. BRODY
>>
>> [E] xposure before birth to relatively small
>> amounts of PCBs, a kind of industrial
>> pollutant, can result in long-lasting deficits in
>> a child's intellectual development, a new study
>> has shown.
>>
>> The researchers found higher than expected rates
>> of "low normal" IQ scores, poor reading
>> comprehension, memory problems and difficulty
>> paying attention in 11-year-old children who had
>> been prenatally exposed to polychlorinated
>> biphenyls, or PCBs, in concentrations only
>> slightly higher than those found in the general
>> population.
>>
>> Children with the highest levels of exposure were
>> three times as likely to have low normal IQ scores
>> and twice as likely to be behind in reading
>> comprehension as the group as a whole.
>>
>> The researchers, Dr. Joseph L. Jacobson and his
>> wife, Dr. Sandra W. Jacobson, psychologists at
>> Wayne State University in Detroit, concluded that
>> the fetal brain damage caused by environmental
>> exposure to PCBs was comparable to the damage
>> found in children exposed to low levels of lead.
>>
>> But exposure to these chemicals after birth,
>> through breast milk, did not seem to cause any
>> further harm to the children's mental abilities,
>> the study showed. In their report, published in
>> Thursday's issue of The New England Journal of
>> Medicine, the researchers concluded that "the
>> developing fetal brain is particularly sensitive
>> to these compounds."
>>
>> A pregnant woman with PCBs in her body can
>> transfer the chemicals through the umbilical cord
>> to her fetus. Even if she eats no contaminated
>> foods during her pregnancy, PCBs from foods eaten
>> before she becomes pregnant will remain in her
>> body for years and can be transferred to her
>> unborn children, Dr. Joseph Jacobson said in an
>> interview.
>>
>> The Jacobsons had previously linked prenatal PCB
>> exposure to poor short-term memory in infants and
>> young children. The new findings, in older
>> children, are consistent with reports of reduced
>> IQ scores among more heavily contaminated children
>> in Taiwan whose mothers, while pregnant with them,
>> ingested rice oil accidentally laced with PCBs and
>> other chemicals.
>>
>> Dr. Walter Rogan, an epidemiologist with the
>> National Institute for Environmental Health
>> Sciences at Research Triangle Park, N.C., said the
>> new study had been very carefully done and had
>> used highly refined measures to detect the effects
>> of the PCBs.
>>
>> "There's no question that PCBs are deleterious to
>> the developing mammalian nervous system; the only
>> question is dose," Rogan said in an interview.
>>
>> PCBs were once widely used in the manufacture of
>> electrical equipment and in paper recycling.
>> Although their production and their use in newly
>> manufactured equipment have been banned in the
>> United States and most other Western nations since
>> the 1970s, and although environmental levels have
>> since declined, they still contaminate the
>> sediments of many lakes and rivers, including the
>> Hudson, and remain prominent if diminishing
>> pollutants in some freshwater fish. Once ingested,
>> they are stored in body fat, and they dissipate
>> only slowly after ingestion ceases.
>>
>> Because of PCB contamination, the New York state
>> Health Department advises people not to eat some
>> species, like river catfish, and to eat other
>> species, like striped bass, no more than once a
>> month. Women of child-bearing age and children
>> under 15 are advised to eat no fish from the
>> Hudson.
>>
>> In the interview, Dr. Joseph Jacobson cautioned
>> that "the majority of PCBs manufactured are still
>> in use," in old equipment, and that "even though
>> we are not making more there is still the
>> potential for getting a lot more PCBs into the
>> environment unless more care is taken in disposing
>> of them than in the past," when they were often
>> dumped into waterways.
>>
>> The main source of exposure to PCBs by the women
>> in the study was the consumption of contaminated
>> fish from Lake Michigan. But the authors pointed
>> out that "women who eat no fish may accumulate
>> these compounds from other food sources, including
>> dairy products such as cheese and butter and fatty
>> meats, particularly beef and pork," because many
>> animal feeds have become PCB-contaminated as a
>> result of soil leaching.
>>
>> "The significance of these findings goes way
>> beyond women eating Lake Michigan fish," Jacobson
>> said. "Virtually everyone who eats has some PCBs
>> stored in body fat. Unlike other exposures, which
>> predominate in economically disadvantaged
>> families, prenatal exposure to PCBs is unrelated
>> to socioeconomic status."
>>
>> Jacobson said the study "shows the wisdom" of the
>> ban that was adopted on PCBs.
>>
>> "Most environmental legislation has been driven by
>> cancer risk," he said. "But this may not be the
>> most significant or the most costly consequence of
>> environmental pollution. If large numbers of
>> children are functioning below their native
>> capacity, this would cost society a lot more than
>> a few cancers."
>>
>> In the study, the Jacobsons tested 212 children
>> who had been selected as newborns in 1980 and
>> 1981. Of the group, all studied at the age of 11,
>> 167 had been born to women who had eaten Lake
>> Michigan fish contaminated with PCBs. At the time
>> of birth, the amount of PCBs in the mothers' blood
>> serum and breast milk was slightly higher than is
>> found in the general population.
>>
>> The children were assessed for a wide variety of
>> intellectual skills important to learning and
>> success in school, including general intelligence,
>> achievement in spelling and arithmetic, and
>> reading comprehension. Those prenatally exposed to
>> PCBs, especially those with the highest levels of
>> exposure, had significantly lower general and
>> verbal IQ scores than would otherwise have been
>> expected.
>>
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