A national American university study reveals an increase in their exposure to chemicals.
Earlier this week, the magazine Environmental Science & Technology relayed the results of a study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. The study reveals an increase in exposure to chemical products from plastics and pesticides which can be harmful to the developing foetus.
The study involved 12 years and 171 women from different states in the country, and among them, one-third were white women, 40% of Latin origin and the rest from multiple other ethnic groups.
103 chemicals
Researchers measured 103 chemicals, mostly from pesticides, plastics and chemical replacements for BPA and phthalates, using a new method that captures dozens of chemicals or traces from a single urine sample.
Many of the chemicals to which the women had been exposed were substitutes, in other words new forms of chemicals that have been banned or phased out and which can be just as harmful as those they replace. The study also found that many women had been exposed to neonicotinoids, a type of pesticide that is toxic to bees.
A warning statement
More than 80% of the chemicals were found in at least one of the women participating in the study, and more than 33% of the substances were found in the majority of the participants. And some of these chemicals were present in greater amounts than in previous studies.
Tracy J. Woodruff, head of the Program on Reproductive Health and the Environment at the University of California and lead author of the study, comments on these findings: “This is the first time we can measure the amounts of chemicals in such a large and diverse group of pregnant women – and not just identify the chemicals”.
More parabens in women of Latin origin
She adds : “Our results clearly show that the number and magnitude of chemicals present in pregnant women increase during a very vulnerable developmental period, both for the person pregnant only for the fetus”.
Another fact raised this time by a co-author of the study, Jessie Buckley, who studies environmental chemical exposures in early life: “While pesticides and chemical substitutes were prevalent among all women, we were surprised to find that Latin women had significantly higher levels of parabens, phthalates and bisphenols”.