Fw: PCB's

[Guest guest]

From: " ilena rose " <ilena@...>

Sent: Saturday, June 23, 2001 10:42 PM

Subject: PCB's

> Thanks Nurse Boone

> Elevated PCB Levels Blamed for Mental Decline Reuters Friday, June 22,

> 2001 By Mulvihill

>

> NEW YORK, Jun 21 (Reuters Health) -

>

> For the first time, researchers have found that adults with high blood

> levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) may have more memory and

> learning problems compared with people with lower blood levels of the

> chemicals. Once used in everything from fluorescent lights and appliances

> to insulation and insecticides, PCBs were banned in 1977 as health

hazards

> and carcinogens.

>

> But PCBs tend to linger in the environment, accumulating in the fatty

> tissue of birds, fish and mammals, and potentially having adverse health

> consequences in humans. In a new study, investigators found that people

> who routinely ate PCB-contaminated sport-caught fish had more problems

> with learning and memory than people the same age with lower levels of

> PCBs in their body. " The main finding was that older people--who ate

> sport-caught Great Lakes fish and had elevated body burdens of PCBs--did

> more poorly than non-fish eaters with lower PCB exposure on tests of

> verbal memory, " said lead author Dr. L. Schantz, of the University

> of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. " Specifically, they did not remember a

> short story that had been read aloud to them as well as the less-exposed

> people when they were asked to recall it 30 minutes later, " she

explained.

> " Also, when asked to recall items from a shopping list that was read

aloud

> to them, they tended not to group words by their meanings--a strategy

that

> helps to boost recall, " Schantz added.

>

> In the study, Schantz and her colleagues evaluated the mental functioning

> of 101 adults aged 49 to 86 who ate more than 24 pounds of fish from Lake

> Michigan each year. This group was compared with 78 similarly aged adults

> who ate 6 pounds or less of fish from Lake Michigan every year. On

> average, the men had blood PCB levels of 15.2 parts per billion (ppb) and

> women had 9.2 ppb. Non-fish eaters had much lower levels of the chemical

> in their blood, according to the report published in the June issue of

> Environmental Health Perspectives. " Previously, researchers felt it was

> primarily children exposed to PCBs in utero who were at risk for

> neurological problems. This study suggests that mature adults who have

> elevated exposure may also be at risk, " Schantz told Reuters Health.

> Although the researchers do not fully understand the mechanisms through

> which PCBs impair brain function, there are some new studies showing that

> PCBs disrupt calcium signaling in nerve cells and this may turn out to be

> related to the learning and memory problems that have been seen in

> laboratory animals, children and now adults exposed to PCBs, she

> explained.

>

> PCB levels vary from person to person, and largely depend on an

> individual's diet, life style and where they live. The average PCB blood

> level for young adults living in the United States is around 2 ppb. Older

> people tend to have higher levels of PCBs in their blood as do people who

> eat fish from contaminated waters such as the Great Lakes or the Baltic

> Sea for example, Schantz noted. What's more, Shantz pointed out that the

> only treatment is prevention. " Once PCBs are in the body they get stored

> in body fat and remain for a very long time. That's why older people tend

> to have higher levels of PCBs--they gradually build up (bio-accumulate)

> over the life span, " she said. " There are no known drugs or procedures to

> increase excretion (of PCBs). That is why it is so important for people

to

> be aware of the fishing advisories in the Great Lakes and avoid eating

> fish that are contaminated, " Schantz concluded.

>

> SOURCE: Environmental Health Perspectives 2001;109:605-611.

>

>