Johns Hopkins University : Study finds harmful chemicals present in large sample of pregnant women; Researchers found highest level of toxins, including hormone disruptors, in Black and Latina Women.
ENPNewswire-August 12, 2022--Johns Hopkins University : Study finds harmful chemicals present in large sample of pregnant women; Researchers found highest level of toxins, including hormone disruptors, in Black and Latina Women
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Release date- 11082022 - Pregnant women are exposed to a wide variety of chemicals that may have adverse effects on maternal and child health. Despite the risks they pose, few of these chemicals are routinely measured in humans.
Jessie Buckley, associate professor of environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins University, set out to solve that problem. As part of the National Institutes of Health's Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes, or ECHO, Program, Buckley and a team of researchers analyzed urine samples from 171 pregnant women from nine ECHO cohorts across the United States. They used a new method to simultaneously measure more than 100 industrial chemicals and pesticides in each sample. Their research is published in Environment Science & Technology.
'Our goal was to measure both contemporary and emerging chemicals among a geographically, racially, and ethnically diverse sample of pregnant women and assess what factors are related to higher detection or levels of these chemicals,' Buckley said.
The team found that more than 80% of the chemicals in question were present in at least one of the women in the study, and more than one-third were found in a majority of the participants.
They also saw increasing exposure over time to certain chemicals used in plastics and pesticides. Many of these chemicals are replacements for chemicals that were previously banned or phased out.
'This is the first time we've been able to measure chemical exposures in such a highly diverse group of pregnant women over a long period of time, and we found higher levels of many chemicals than have been seen in earlier studies,' Buckley said. 'Our findings are important because they show that pregnant people are exposed to multiple chemicals during a very vulnerable time for both the pregnant person and the fetus.'
Hormone disruptors and 'regrettable substitutions'
When chemicals are removed from products due to concerns about their toxicity, new versions that are structurally similar are developed to take their place. Oftentimes, these replacements have similar harmful health effects-a phenomenon health experts call 'regrettable substitution.'
Buckley's study...
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