Love Canal women had higher pregnancy risks.

Austin, AA, EF Fitzgerald, CI Pantea, LJ Gensburg, NK Kim, AD Stark and SA Hwang. 2011. Reproductive outcomes among former Love Canal residents, Niagara Falls, New York. Environmental Research http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2011.04.002.

Thirty years after chemical pollution sparked a mass exodus from Love Canal, a new analysis finds that women who lived in the designated emergency zone while pregnant had a higher risk for early delivery than women from other regions of the state. Prior health studies of Love Canal identified lower birth weight and more congenital birth defects in infants but were not able to define the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes because of small sample sizes.

The findings, published in the journal Environment Research, may raise awareness of health concerns – especially for pregnant women – in other sites contaminated with hazardous waste.

The study reviewed birth records up to 18 years after the women moved away from Love Canal. Several birth outcomes varied in the infants born either before or after their mothers relocated. Fewer boys than girls were born before the moves, but more birth defects were seen in boys conceived and born after their mothers moved away.

The study is important because it is one of the first to look at sex ratios in children born in Love Canal and to define pregnancy outcomes after the women moved away from the polluted area.

Love Canal is located in Niagara Falls, N.Y. It was one of the first hazardous waste sites in the United States to receive significant environmental attention more three decades ago. The problem began when a trench that was used as a dumping pit for Hooker Chemical Company from 1942 through 1953 was later filled in. Later, an elementary school and hundreds of neighborhood houses were built next to the site.

State records show more than 200 chemicals – including pesticides, chlorinated solvents and naphthalenes – were dumped into the landfill. High exposures from the remnant volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) trapped in the homes led to evacuations and voluntary relocations between 1978 and 1980. After a massive cleanup, Love Canal was removed from the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund list in 2004 and was redeveloped into a neighborhood again.

In this study, researchers from the New York State Health Department and State University of New York carefully compared birth results in former Love Canal residents and others living in Niagara County and upstate New York. The researchers examined records of 1,799 births from 980 women who formerly lived close to Love Canal. The births spanned from 1960 to 1996. Before relocation, the researchers grouped the women as either living in the government-defined Emergency Declaration Area (EDA) or outside the EDA. After relocation, the women were considered as one group. Birth outcomes included preterm birth – a birth less than 37 weeks of pregnancy – low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds), birth defects and boy-to-girl birth ratio.

The pregnant women living in the EDA before relocation had higher risk of preterm birth and fewer male births compared with women in Niagara County and Upstate New York. For example, the preterm birth risk was 40 percent higher compared with upstate New York. The boy-to-girl ratio was lower – 0.95, or 95 boys per 100 girls – rather than the commonly found 1.05, or 105 boys to 100 girls. 

These birth risks were not significantly higher for women living outside EDA before relocation or for women after relocating from the EDA.

However, after moving, the birth defects in boys born to mothers who previously lived in Love Canal were about 50 percent higher than in boys born to mothers who lived in upstate New York. Birth defects were reported in more boys than girls and the defects differed among the children. Further studies will be needed to understand this connection.

Overall, this research suggests that living very close to Love Canal before its cleanup and while pregnant increased the risk of poor birth outcomes.

The above work by Environmental Health News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at www.environmentalhealthnews.org.