When the Columbia University study on urban air pollutants came in, I
had trouble deciding whether it was within the scope of CPEO's
Brownfields Internet Forum. The study focuses on polycyclic aromatic
hydrocarbons from "car, truck, or bus engines, residential heating,
power generation, or tobacco smoking," not the contamination released in
soil, groundwater, or surface water.
This is not a new dilemma. When I visit communities, from the San
Fernando Valley to the Bronx, it is often not clear if vapors
originating in old industrial spills OR contamination from vehicular
traffic are the primary health risk to the communities.
The answer should be obvious: YES. That is, in urban (and many
non-urban) environments people are exposed to a variety of contaminants
from many sources. Their risk is derived from multiple, cumulative, and
perhaps even synergistic exposures.
Sophisticated risk assessors are beginning to understand this, but our
environmental protection system generally doesn't. That is, there are a
few place-based programs that try to take a holistic approach, but the
laws and bureaucracies that oversee mobile sources, and often stationary
air pollution sources, are distinct from those that regulate emissions
and other discharges that originate with old, underground pollution.
We need a system of environmental protection that recognizes that once
pollutants are inhaled, ingested, or otherwise absorbed, the body
doesn't care where they came from.
LS
Lenny Siegel wrote:
Press release
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health
April 25, 2006
In utero exposure to urban air pollutants can increase risk
Prenatal exposure to air pollutants in New York City can adversely
affect child development, according to the results of a study released
today by the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH)
at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. Previous
studies have shown that the same air pollutants can reduce fetal growth
(both weight and head circumference at birth), but this study, which
examined a group of the same children at three years of age, is the
first to reveal that those pollutants can also affect cognitive
development during childhood.
The study will be published online Monday, April 24, 2006, and can be
accessed at the following URL:
http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2006/9084/abstract.html.
Investigators at the Center studied a sample of 183 three-year-old
children of non-smoking African-American and Dominican women residing in
the neighborhoods of Washington Heights, Central Harlem, and the South
Bronx. They found that exposure during pregnancy to combustion-related
urban air pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)
were linked to significantly lower scores on mental development tests
and more than double the risk of developmental delay at age three. Such
delay in cognitive development is indicative of greater risk for
performance deficits in language, reading, and math in the early school
years.
In the study, the mothers' exposure during pregnancy to varying levels
of airborne PAHs was measured by personal air monitoring. PAHs enter the
environment when combustion occurs – such as from car, truck, or bus
engines, residential heating, power generation, or tobacco smoking.
Following inhalation by the mother, the pollutants can be transferred
across the placenta to reach the fetus. Children were tested at age
three using a standardized test of mental and psychomotor development.
For the entire press release, see
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-04/cums-iue042506.php
--
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org
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