High levels of prenatal exposure to PFAS has been linked to increased likelihood of developing chronic respiratory illness in younger years.
The study, which looked at children born in Blekinge County, Sweden, isn’t the first to suggest a connection between so-called forever chemicals — or Perfluoroalkyl substances — and asthma. However, previous results have been inconclusive, largely thanks to their focus on low level exposure to the contaminants.
This latest investigation goes much further thanks to known, decades-long PFAS contamination of municipal waterworks at Ronneby. The work, led by Annelise Blomberg at Lund University, is therefore the first to assess the impact of public exposure to the chemicals over many years, at relatively high levels. Based not this, a link has been identified between exposure of mothers during pregnancy and the diagnosis of asthma in their children in the years after birth.
‘We found that children whose mothers were exposed to very high levels of PFAS during pregnancy had a substantially higher incidence of clinically diagnosed asthma,’ said Blomberg. ‘The association was not observed at lower exposure levels, which may help explain why previous studies in general populations have reported mixed results.
‘Most previous research has examined populations exposed only to background levels of PFAS,’ she continued. ‘In Ronneby, drinking water contamination resulted in exposure levels hundreds of times higher than the general population. This allowed us to evaluate potential health effects across a much broader exposure range.’
More investigation is needed to determine the exact connection, although this is the latest evidence to suggest PFAS chemicals — which take hundreds of years to breakdown (hence the ‘forever’ nickname) — are a major public heath concern. Currently, the US Environmental Protection Agency is fast-tracking a review of PFAS use at data centres due to evidence to suggest the tech hubs are responsible for high levels of chemical output, emitted in gaseous form.
Image: Aakash Dhage / Unsplash
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