air pollution harms fetus dna
Air pollution linked to chromosome damage in fetuses
Tue Feb 15, 5:57 PM ET
By Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Air pollution from traffic and power plants seems to cause genetic changes - the kind linked to cancer - in developing fetuses, a federally funded study released Tuesday has concluded.
A first-of-its-kind study of 60 pregnant women in poor areas of New York City used backpacks to monitor the women's exposure to airborne carcinogens and then tested their babies' umbilical-cord blood after birth. Babies whose moms were exposed to higher pollution levels had 53 percent more aberrations in their chromosomes. Other studies have shown that these types of chromosomal changes increase the risk of cancer.
"This finding shows the process can begin as early as the womb as a result of air pollution," said study author Frederica Perera, the director of Columbia University's Center for Children's Environmental Health. "We know that these pollutants make their way across the placenta."
Perera's study didn't determine what parts of the babies' genes changed or if they all changed in the same areas.
The peer-reviewed study - funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and published in this month's journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention - links in-the-womb chromosome damage to elevated exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
There are more than 100 PAHs, which are the byproducts of combustion, including car and truck exhaust, power plant emissions, tobacco smoke and even the smoke from grilling meats. Fifteen of the most common PAHs are listed as carcinogens in the official government list of cancer-causing agents.
PAHs get into the air usually as ultra-small particles - not smog - that can travel hundreds of miles and then lodge in the lungs, said Janet Arey, a University of California at Riverside atmospheric chemistry professor who's studied PAH affects for the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites). In many places, including Southern California, the highest levels are closest to traffic congestion.
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Tue Feb 15, 5:57 PM ET
By Seth Borenstein, Knight Ridder Newspapers
WASHINGTON - Air pollution from traffic and power plants seems to cause genetic changes - the kind linked to cancer - in developing fetuses, a federally funded study released Tuesday has concluded.
A first-of-its-kind study of 60 pregnant women in poor areas of New York City used backpacks to monitor the women's exposure to airborne carcinogens and then tested their babies' umbilical-cord blood after birth. Babies whose moms were exposed to higher pollution levels had 53 percent more aberrations in their chromosomes. Other studies have shown that these types of chromosomal changes increase the risk of cancer.
"This finding shows the process can begin as early as the womb as a result of air pollution," said study author Frederica Perera, the director of Columbia University's Center for Children's Environmental Health. "We know that these pollutants make their way across the placenta."
Perera's study didn't determine what parts of the babies' genes changed or if they all changed in the same areas.
The peer-reviewed study - funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and published in this month's journal Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention - links in-the-womb chromosome damage to elevated exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
There are more than 100 PAHs, which are the byproducts of combustion, including car and truck exhaust, power plant emissions, tobacco smoke and even the smoke from grilling meats. Fifteen of the most common PAHs are listed as carcinogens in the official government list of cancer-causing agents.
PAHs get into the air usually as ultra-small particles - not smog - that can travel hundreds of miles and then lodge in the lungs, said Janet Arey, a University of California at Riverside atmospheric chemistry professor who's studied PAH affects for the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites). In many places, including Southern California, the highest levels are closest to traffic congestion.
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