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Chemical toxins are everywhere — in our water, food, air and soil. Exposure to those toxins during pregnancy can create serious health issues in elementary school children that can affect their lives for years to come, a new study found.
Children born to European mothers exposed to four families of chemicals that disrupt the body’s endocrine (hormone) system had elevated levels of metabolic syndrome at ages 6 to 11. Metabolic syndrome can include obesity, elevated blood pressure, and abnormally high cholesterol and insulin resistance, which is a precursor to type 2 diabetes.
Relaxed young Asian pregnant woman gently touching her belly while sitting on bed at home. Mother-to-be. Expecting a new life. Love and bonding. Pregnancy health and wellness concept d3sign/Moment RF/Getty Images
Within the group of children exposed to the highest levels of chemicals, 62% were overweight or obese, compared with 16% of children within the low-risk group, said first author Nuria Güil-Oumrait, a Fulbright scholar at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
“Moreover, the levels of blood insulin and triglycerides, as well as systolic and diastolic blood pressure, were significantly higher in the high-risk group than in the low-risk group,” Güil-Oumrait said in an email. “In contrast, HDL-cholesterol levels were lower in the high-risk group than in the low-risk group.” HDL cholesterol is considered a “good” blood fat as it helps clear ateries.
Metabolic syndrome is typically associated with adult cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and stroke, but the growing epidemic of childhood obesity has seen symptoms appearing in kids at younger and younger ages. Having metabolic syndrome as a child is highly predictive of chronic disease as an adult, experts say.
“This research stands out as one of the most comprehensive endeavors delving into early-life environmental origins of metabolic risk, further bolstering prior toxicological and epidemiological evidence in this area,” said Vicente Mustieles, Mariana Fernández and Carmen Messerlian in an editorial published with the study that appeared Thursday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
Mustieles and Fernández are investigators at the Biomedical Research Center at the University of Granada, Spain. Messerlian is an assistant professor of environmental reproductive, perinatal, and pediatric epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
CNN reached out to the International Council for Chemical Associations for comment but did not hear back before publication. A spokesperson for the American Chemistry Council, however, provided the following statement.
“We will review the details of this study once it’s released. ACC’s members are serious about their responsibility to produce chemistries that offer important safety, product performance and durability benefits and that can be used safely. Our members undertake extensive scientific analyses to evaluate potential risk of their chemicals, from development through use and safe disposal.”
Dangers of endocrine-disrupting chemicals
The research team behind the new study performed blood and urine tests on 1,134 mothers during their pregnancies and later repeated those tests on their children between the ages of 6 and 11. The tests were looking for mixtures of nine chemical classes of endocrine-disrupting chemicals commonly found in the environment.
Endrocrine-disrupting chemicals are environmental pollutants with the “ability to cross the blood-placenta barrier and interfere with human metabolism and hormonal balance,” the study said.
These and other chemicals “end up in the blood, tissue, and organs of fetuses and infants through maternal transplacental and breastfeeding pathways in a never-ending cycle,” Mustieles, Fernández and Messerlian wrote.
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The study tested for pesticides; heavy metals; flame retardants; plasticizers such as phthalates and phenols; and PFAS (perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances), which are found in surface and groundwaters around the world at levels much higher than many international regulators allow.
Called “forever chemicals” because they fail to break down fully in the environment, PFAS have been used since the 1950s to make consumer products nonstick, oil- and water-repellent, and resistant to temperature change. Some of the most studied PFAS, such as PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid) and PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonic acid), have been linked to serious health problems such as cancer, obesity, thyroid disease, high cholesterol, decreased fertility, liver damage and hormone disruption, according to the EPA.
Toxic heavy metals in the soil and water include lead and arsenic — studies have found alarming levels in manufactured baby food. There is no safe level of lead, while arsenic, mercury and other heavy metals can harm the body and brain at relatively low doses, experts say.
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A December 2014 meta-analysis of studies on arsenic found that a 50% increase in arsenic levels in urine would be associated with a 0.4-point decrease in the IQ of children between the ages of 5 and 15.
Flame retardants have been linked to a 300% higher risk of cancer. These chemical toxins are the greatest contributor to intellectual disability in children worldwide, resulting in a total loss of 162 million IQ points and more than 738,000 cases of intellectual disability, according to an August 2020 study.
Phthalates, found in hundreds of consumer products such as food storage containers, shampoo, makeup, perfume and children’s toys, have been connected to premature death among people ages 55 to 64 in the United States. Prior research has connected phthalates with reproductive problems, such as genital malformations and undescended testicles in baby boys and lower sperm counts and testosterone levels in adult males. Phthalates are also linked in studies to childhood obesity, asthma, cardiovascular issues and cancer.
In the study, phthalates were the only group of chemicals that were associated with a lower level of metabolic syndrome. All of the other chemical families increased risk.