So I if walked over to your house and dumped something over your fence, that’s probably trespassing, unless that something happened to be a box of Krispy Kreme, then it’s just tasty. If it’s grass clippings, you’d be pissed off; if it’s an industrial chemical, you might sue. If I came over with said chemical and spoon-fed it to your newborn, I’m pretty sure I’d be looking at a 12/12 bid in the joint.
Which leads me to a paper in Environmental Health Perspectives that is a follow up to a paper published on-line in the American Chemical Society journal, Environmental Science & Technology by Apelberg et al ($ required for the full paper). The researchers from Johns Hopkins and the CDC reported in the first paper that 100% of serum samples from the umbillical cord of 299 newborns from 2004-2005 were contaminated with PFOA (more what this is in a sec), and 99% with PFOS. Asians and Blacks had higher levels than whites but lifestyle attributes (smoking, urban-dweller, rich/poor) made no statistically significant difference.
The follow up paper which is in press now (available here), found that PFOA was associated with reduced birth weight, ponderal index (a weight for length measurement; i.e. skinniness) and head circumference. Head circumference and birth weight were only affected in natural born babies. Those babies made up 78% of the babies, however, so the lack of an association may be due to other confounding factors and complications that lead to C-section deliveries. This should be replicated in another study just to be sure, though. Roughly, for every 3 fold increase in PFOA concentration, the weight decreased 3 percent, so the effect isn’t dramatic, thank God.
Decreased ponderal index is associated with higher risk of perinantal harm and head circumference is sometimes used as a measure of brain growth and development. Most significantly, the serum levels here are a couple thousand-fold lower than the levels that caused decreased birth weight in rats. So either humans are more sensitive to PFOA than rats, or it’s a result of the rat studies not adequately looking at low dose chronic health effects, or both. Either way this is pretty significant as this is the first epi study to look at the general public. It’s also significant because it confirms what a lot of people have been saying for a long time: this stuff can affect people.
PFOA is the Teflon chemical. This is really complex but I’ll try to break it down here.
PFOA is a starting product to make Teflon pans but it’s not in the final pan product. Teflon is also a tradename used for all kinds of things like stain-resistant clothes. PFOA isn’t in the clothes necessarily, but coating used in the clothes or food wrappers or carpet can break down into PFOA once it gets into the body; that’s probably how it got into me, and also you. There are many reasons not to like PFOA and it’s cousin PFOS: the Science Advisory Board to the EPA called it a likely human carcinogen, it raises bad cholesterol, causes developmental effect in animals, is an immune system suppressant, and has been linked to stroke in workers who work with the stuff. PFOA and PFOS have been found in the rain, polar bears, the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and over 90% of Americans. Oh, and no breakdown of these chemicals has ever been measured in numerous tests under various conditions likely to happen in nature or our bodies.
Perhaps the most important thing to know is this: about 6-7 years ago, 3M, the maker of PFOS (related to the old Scotchgard, etc) found out how wide spread the pollution of the chemical was and got out of the business. DuPont, the maker of PFOA, filled the void by ramping up production. Nice.
Back to the trespass scenario: So when a chemical DuPont made in a factory (it can not occur naturally) ends up in your baby, and they know it’s happening, isn’t that trespassing? Should you have to wait for something bad to happen to your child or your neighbor’s before they do something? Shouldn’t they have to explain why it’s okay for these chemicals to be in your baby? Or at least ask permission?
Note: The background and first paper are a partial recycle of an old post on the old site.