‘Forever chemicals' exposure before birth raises teenage health risks

Euronews

a day ago

'Forever chemicals' may be taking their toll on our health before we are even born, new research suggests.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of chemicals used in everyday products like food packaging and non-stick cookware. They're known as 'forever chemicals' because they don't degrade easily and can build up in the environment – and in our bodies.
Scientists have detected PFAS in people's blood, breast milk, semen, livers, and even brains. They suspect these chemicals harm human health, with studies linking them to higher cholesterol, some cancers, and fertility problems, among other issues.
The new research adds another complication to that list: high blood pressure during adolescence.
The analysis followed more than 1,000 children in the US. It used maternal plasma collected shortly after they were born to identify their level of prenatal PFAS exposure, and matched it to doctors' records up until their 18th birthdays.
Prenatal exposure to PFAS was linked to a higher risk of developing high blood pressure later in childhood, particularly in the teenage years, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The findings indicate that 'these forever chemicals can have long-lasting and potentially harmful effects that may only become apparent years after birth,' Zeyu Li, the study's lead author and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the US, said in a statement.
The risk of elevated blood pressure was even higher for boys and Black children with higher PFAS levels at birth, the study found.
In a surprise to researchers, a handful of forever chemicals were actually linked to lower diastolic, or bottom number, blood pressure in early childhood, though that changed when they entered their teenage years.
Evidence on the health effects of PFAS has been mixed so far.
While researchers believe these chemicals pose risks, it's difficult to pinpoint their exact impact because there are thousands of PFAS that could all interact in different ways, and because people's exposure changes over time.
Even so, Li said the latest study underscores the need for researchers to track people's health and their PFAS levels over a long period of time, from early childhood to adolescence and beyond.
Meanwhile, Mingyu Zhang, the study's senior author and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said stronger environmental protections are needed to protect people from PFAS, given they are so ubiquitous that people cannot meaningfully limit their exposure on their own.
That could include phasing out forever chemicals from consumer products and in industrial settings, he said, as well as better surveillance and limits on PFAS in water systems.
'This is not something individuals can solve on their own,' Zhang said.
The Trump administration is facing backlash from climate scientists who say the US government is bungling basic facts about the impact of industrial emissions on air quality.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a new proposal this week that would roll back restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants for power plants that rely on fossil fuels.
The agency claimed in the proposal that heat-trapping carbon gas emissions "from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution".
But 19 scientists – experts in climate, health, and economics – told the Associated Press the agency's statement was scientifically incorrect. Many of them called it disinformation.
Here's what five of them said.
"This is the scientific equivalent to saying that smoking doesn't cause lung cancer," said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech firm Stripe and the temperature monitoring group Berkeley Earth, adding that the administration's conclusion was "utterly nonsensical".
"It's basic chemistry that burning coal and natural gas releases carbon dioxide, and it's basic physics that CO2 warms the planet. We've known these simple facts since the mid-19th century," said Philip Mote, an Oregon State climate scientist.
Dr Howard Frumkin, former director of the US' National Center for Environmental Health and a retired public health professor at the University of Washington, said "coal-and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change," which "increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms, infectious diseases, and many other health threats".
'These are indisputable facts,' he added.
"Their statement is in direct conflict with evidence that has been presented by thousands of scientists from almost 200 countries for decades," University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs said.
Stanford climate scientist Chris Field, who coordinated an international report linking climate change to increasingly deadly extreme weather, summed it up this way: "It is hard to imagine a decision dumber than putting the short-term interests of oil and gas companies ahead of the long-term interests of our children and grandchildren".