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| Vol. 23, No. 11 |
| June 15, 2001 |
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Link Between Industrial Pollution and Birth Defects? By JACQUELINE PRESTON The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Is a polluted environment mainly to blame for deadly birth defects in babies born on the Texas-Mexico border? That's the question Dr. Irina Cech wants answered. Dr. Cech is leading a study that looks at the effects of industrial pollution on expectant mothers and their unborn children. A professor of environmental sciences at The University of Texas-School of Public Health at Houston and principal investigator of the study, Dr. Cech has spent several years in the Lower Rio Grande Valley looking at possible causes for the perplexingly high number of neural tube defects, or NTDs. NTDs - abnormalities in the early development of a fetus' brain and spine usually resulting in underdeveloped brains or spinal cord defects - have been reported in the past at higher-than-average rates along the Texas-Mexico border and in Brownsville and surrounding Cameron County. UT-Houston researchers want to know if exposure to toxic chemicals like lead, arsenic, mercury and certain organic chemicals found frequently near abandoned hazardous waste sites and in sewage, coupled with microbiological pollutants, may explain the increased risk of NTDs. "We suspect that maternal infection during the first month of pregnancy and exposure to toxic chemicals, alone or combined, increase the risk of NTDs," Dr. Cech said. "Nutritional deficiencies, maternal diabetes and lack of proper prenatal care may be co-factors." Until the past two decades, anence-phaly, or absence or underdevelopment of the brain, was a rare disorder in the United States. But from 1986 to 1991, an anencephaly rate of 13 per 10,000 live births was reported in Cameron County by the Texas Department of Health - a rate four times greater than the national average. From 1990 to 1991, the rate increased to 19.7 per 10,000 births. Nearly 400 U.S.-Mexico border-area women have been recruited to provide blood, urine and hair samples to check for antibodies that can harm the central nervous system. The women were enrolled at the time of prenatal diagnosis at participating border-area clinics and at delivery rooms in area hospitals. Cord blood from infants with NTDs also was collected.The UT-Houston researchers have teamed up with Environmental Protection Agency scientists to effectively check the hair samples for metals. As part of the study, the UT-Houston team visited more than 160 Texas and Mexico homes where babies were conceived to collect soil, water and indoor and outdoor air samples. Questionnaires were used to assess participants' demographic, socioeconomic, occupational and family health background. Dr. Cech says the information collected will bring the researchers one step closer to uncovering possible factors that contribute to NTDs. "We have collected a large quantity of high quality data and we've done lots of thinking through," she said. "Our next job is to analyze and report our findings and inform the community of our findings through environmental health seminars." Dr. Cech added that the upcoming community seminars recently have been funded by the EPA and will be designed to reach border residents and medical professionals. The UT-Houston study has compiled one of the largest environmental and health databases in the U.S.-Mexico border region. The study is sponsored by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. Dr. Cech conducted an earlier feasibility study between 1992 and 1996 and won a $748,000 grant from the agency in 1996 to continue her work.
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