A Small Chinese Study Demonstrates a Remarkable Elevation in the Risk for Neural Tube Defects, due to Environmental Pollutants’ Effects on Fetal Development — a Reminder of the General Case to Be Made for Government Regulation

© 2011 Peter Free

 

20 October 2011

 

 

An interesting finding — with merit as a parable that opposes the American Lunatic Right’s opposition to all things regulatory

 

As I listen to the Republican presidential candidate debates (and to many Republicans in Congress) — I am repeatedly struck by the aggressive lunacy that this increasingly extreme and fantasy-oriented group of people manifests.  The common sense political party of my youth has completely disappeared.

 

In watching this nationally self-destructive farce, it helps to remind ourselves of the proven value of sensible government regulation in financial and environmental affairs.

 

In that vein, what follows is an example that indirectly makes this regulation-favoring point.  It comes from China and documents the negative effect that environmental pollution has on fetal development.

 

There, but for our environmental laws, would we also be.

 

 

A 450 percent elevation in neural tube defects should get anyone’s attention

 

University of Texas scientist Richard Finnell and his Chinese colleagues found that selected envrionmental pollutants escalated the risks of human embryological neural tube defects by as much as 450 and 1167 percent, depending on the chemical compound and its dose.

 

Note

 

Spina bifida and anencephaly are the most common “neural tube defects” and are attributed to errors in closing the human embryo’s neural tube early in the embryological process.

 

 

About the study

 

Finnell initiated a decade-long collaboration with Chinese colleagues to study selected pollutants’ relationship to neural tube defects in the northern province of Shanxi.

 

He chose China because it experiences a higher prevalence of these embryological defects (probably due to industrial pollution) and does a better job of tracking births than the United States.

 

The team collected placentas from 80 new or stillborn fetuses — all of which suffered from anencephaly or spina bifida — and compared their chemical content to placentas from 50 normal babies (collected in the same hospitals):

 

Placental concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), organochlorine pesticides, polychlorinated biphenyls, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers were analyzed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.

 

© 2011 Aiguo Rena, Xinghua Qiub, Lei Jina,  Jin Mab, Zhiwen Lia, Le Zhanga, Huiping Zhuc, Richard H. Finnell, and Tong Zhub, Association of selected persistent organic pollutants in the placenta with the risk of neural tube defects, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS] 108(31): 12770-12775 (02 August 2011) (from the abstract)

 

 

What the study found

 

Take a look at these numbers — for medicine, they are pretty extreme:

 

PAH [polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons] concentrations above the median were associated with a 4.52-fold . . . increased risk for any NTDs [neural tube defects], and 5.84- . . . and 3.71-fold . . . increased risks for anencephaly and spina bifida, respectively.

 

A dose–response relationship was observed between PAH levels and the risk of NTDs, with odds ratios for the second, third, and fourth quartiles, compared with the first, of 1.77- . . . , 3.83- . . . , and 11.67-fold . . . , respectively.

 

A dose–response relationship was observed for anencephaly and spina bifida subtypes.

 

© 2011 Aiguo Rena, Xinghua Qiub, Lei Jina,  Jin Mab, Zhiwen Lia, Le Zhanga, Huiping Zhuc, Richard H. Finnell, and Tong Zhub, Association of selected persistent organic pollutants in the placenta with the risk of neural tube defects, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [PNAS] 108(31): 12770-12775 (02 August 2011) (from the abstract, paragraph split)

 

 

Translating the jargon

 

An excellent piece of lay science writing (from the University of Texas-Austin’s media center) explains the study’s significance:

 

Two of the pesticides found in high concentrations in the placentas of affected newborns and stillborn fetuses were endosulfan and lindane.

 

Endosulfan is only now being phased out in the United States for treatment of cotton, potatoes, tomatoes and apples. Lindane was only recently banned in the United States for treatment of barley, corn, oats, rye, sorghum and wheat seeds.

 

Strong associations were also found between spina bifida and anencephaly and high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are byproducts of burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal.

 

Common POPs [persistent organic pollutants] include agricultural pesticides, industrial solvents and the byproducts of burning fuels such as oil and coal.

 

They found strong associations between the birth defects and high levels of a number of compounds present in commonly used pesticides. They also found elevated placental concentrations of PAHs.

 

“This is a region where they mine and burn a lot of coal,” says Finnell.

 

“Many people cook with coal in their homes. The air is often black. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to say that maybe there’s something in there that isn’t good for babies.”

 

© 2011 News Media Center, Study Links Pollutants to a 450 Percent Increase in Risk of Birth Defects, University of Texas at Austin (19 October 2011)

 

 

Explaining the “parable” in this story

 

Dr. Finnell introduces my general point:

 

Finnell says although the environmental conditions in Shanxi are dramatically worse than they are in most areas of the United States, they are comparable to what the United States was like a century ago, and the neural tube defects are not solely a Chinese problem.

 

Every year about 3,000 pregnancies in the United States are complicated by neural tube defects. Many other congenital conditions, including autism, may one day prove to be related to environmental pollutants.

 

© 2011 News Media Center, Study Links Pollutants to a 450 Percent Increase in Risk of Birth Defects, University of Texas at Austin (19 October 2011)

 

Put more baldly, if we let unregulated free markets do their thing, we’ll regress a hundred years to be back in the same boat that China is.

 

The lunatic Right’s plutocrats may want that, but most Americans don’t.

 

 

The moral? — anti-regulatory fantasies are not good ways forward

 

Common sense integrates knowledge of history with the known parameters of human nature to come up with sensible governance.

 

Stupid over-regulation is certainly bad.  And there is no doubt in my mind, having dealt with it as an attorney, that the United States has its share of that.  But regulation, sensibly done, is an absolute necessity on this arguably over-populated planet.

 

Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.