Babies are exposed to many more «forever chemicals» before birth than previously believed, new research suggests, as research continues the possible harm of these substances.
Perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been widely used in industry and manufacturing over the past decades and have infiltrated our environment and organisms. They are known as «forever chemicals» because They take a long time to decompose and disappear.
Researchers from the United States and Canada wanted to investigate previous findings that had shown that more PFAS are present in the placenta of a mother’s firstborn than in that of any subsequent child, reports Science Alert.
In the new study, the team analyzed umbilical cord blood samples from newborns, rather than placental tissue, as an indicator of childhood exposure to PFAS. Initially, their results reiterated the first-child effect.
When they expanded the testing technique to detect more types of PFAS, that difference between first-born children disappeared.
«Our findings suggest that the way we measure PFAS really matters,» says biostatistician Shelley Liu of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the United States. Science Alert.
«When we look more closely, we see that babies are exposed to many more PFAS chemicals before birth than we thought, and some of the patterns we thought we understood may change.»
They studied 120 babies
The researchers analyzed blood samples collected from the umbilical cords from 120 babies between 2003 and 2006, using a newer, untargeted chemical scanning technique.
The broader analysis detected 42 PFAS, compared to 8 detected by the specific analysis, and only 4 overlapped. This represents a lot of additional chemicals, says Science Alert.
The fact that the differences between first-born and next-born children disappeared when the new technique was used indicates that we may have underestimated the severity of the PFAS problem.
PFAS are found everywhere, from food packaging to furniture fabricsand although some countries impose increasingly strict restrictions on its use, when one type of chemical is removed from circulation, it is often replaced by a compound that has a similar chemical structure.
That was one of the motivations behind the current study: quantifying prenatal exposure to PFAS compounds, some of which have not been adequately studied or even identified at this stage, he says Science Alert.
There is also some uncertainty about the actual health impact of PFAS. This particular study did not measure any health outcomes, but there is growing evidence of their danger: They have previously been linked to reduced kidney function and increased risk of cancer, for example.
Researchers are interested in expanding this new PFAS analysis technique to evaluate actual levels of exposure to these permanent chemicals and track how that exposure could affect long-term health.
GML
