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Friday, 1-Sep-2006
Women's Health News
All pregnant women have at least one kind of pesticide in their
placenta
Human beings are directly responsible for more than 110,000 chemical
substances which have been generated since the Industrial Revolution.
Every year, we "invent" more than 2,000 new substances, most of them
contaminants, which are emitted into the environment and which are
consequently present in food, air, soil and water. Nonetheless, human
beings are also victims of these emissions, and involuntarily (what is
known in this scientific field as "inadvertent exposure"), every day
humans ingest many of these substances which cannot be assimilated by
our body, and are accumulated in the fatty parts of our tissues.
This is especially worrying for pregnant women. During the gestation
period, all the contaminants accumulated in the organism have direct
access to the microenvironment where the embryo/foetus develops. The
doctoral thesis "Maternal-child exposure via the placenta to
environmental chemical substances with hormonal activity", written by
Mar?José L? Espinosa, from the Department of Radiology and
Physical Medicine of the University of Granada, analyzes the presence
of organochlorine pesticides -normally used as pesticides- in the
organisms of pregnant women. The analysis was developed at San Cecilio
University Hospital , in Granada, with 308 women who had given birth to
healthy children between 2000 and 2002. The results are alarming: 100%
of these pregnant women had at least one pesticide in their placenta,
but the average rate amounts to eight different kinds of chemical
substances.
Fifteen different pesticides in the organisms of pregnant women
In her study, through the analysis of the placentas, L? studied the
presence of 17 endocrine disruptive organochlorine pesticides (i.e.,
pesticides which interfere with the proper performance of the hormonal
system). The results showed that the most frequent pesticides present
in the placenta tissue are DDE (92.7%), lindane (74.8%), endosulfan
diol (62.1%) y endosulfan-I (54.2%). Among these, the most prevalent
was endosulfan-diol, with an average concentration of 4.15 nanograms
per gram of placenta (156.73 ng/g lipid). Surprisingly, the UGR [http://www.ugr.es] researcher discovered
that some patients' placentas contained 15 of the 17 pesticides
analyzed.
A total of 668 samples from pregnant women were used in this study,
which was approved by the Ethical Commission of the San Cecilio
University Hospital. Mothers were informed of the study's goals before
giving their express consent.
Thanks to the gynaecologists, the nurses and the midwives who
participated in the study, biological samples were extracted from the
blood, the umbilical cord and the placenta during childbirth. The
following day, an epidemiological survey was carried out by trained
survey statisticians. The survey contained questions on the general
data of the parents, their places of residence, profession, medical
history, anthropometric information, age, tobacco habits, lifestyle and
diet during pregnancy, among other factors.
The study made at the UGR has facilitated research into the association
of the characteristics of parents, newborn babies and childbirth with
exposure to pesticides found in the mothers' placenta. Among the
aspects associated with a higher presence of pesticides we find an
older age, higher body mass index, less weight gained during pregnancy,
lower educational level, higher workplace exposure, first-time
motherhood and lower weight in babies.
"Serious effects on the baby"
According to Mar?José L?, "we do not really know the
consequences of exposure to disruptive pesticides in children, but we
can predict that they may have serious effects, since this placenta
exposure occurs at key moments of the embryo's development". The
research group to which Mar?José L? belongs, directed by Prof.
Nicolás Olea Serrano, has conducted several studies which
associate exposure to pesticides with neonatal malformations if the
genito-urinary system, such as cryptorchidism (undropped testicles) and
hypospadias (total fusion of the urethral folds).
The UGR researcher underlines the fact that, in spite of "inadvertent
exposure", "it is possible to control pesticide ingestion by means of a
proper diet, which should be healthy and balanced, through consumption
of food whose chemical content is low. Moreover, daily exercise and the
avoidance of tobacco (which could also be a source of inadvertent
exposure) are very important habits which help to control the presence
of pesticides in our organisms.
The UGR researcher's work is framed within the objectives established
in the research project "Increasing incidence of human male
reproductive health disorders in relation to environmental effects on
growth-and sex steroid-induced alterations in programmed development"
(Environmental Reproductive Health), directed and carried out by a
multidisciplinary group of clinicians, basic researchers and
epidemiologists at several institutions from countries such as Denmark,
Finland or England and financed by the European Union (QLK4-1999-01422).
http://www.ugr.es
http://prensa.ugr.es/prensa/research/verNota/prensa.php?nota=377
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