Toxic chemical risk for pregnant women

PREGNANT women are being exposed to more and more toxic chemicals that could harm their babies, according to a new study.

Researchers found mothers-to-be were being exposed to increasing levels of chemicals from plastics and pesticides over a 12-year period.

Many of the chemicals women were exposed to were replacement chemicals – new substances replacing chemicals that have been banned or phased out.

The toxins were often just as harmful as the noxious chemicals they had replaced.

Many women had also been exposed to neonicotinoids, a pesticide that is toxic for bees.

More than 80 per cent of the chemicals were found in at least one woman in the study, while more than a third of them were found in a majority of participants.

Alarmingly, some of these chemicals were found in higher quantities than in earlier studies.

Exposure to industrial chemicals in pregnancy can come from air, food, water, plastics and other industrial and consumer products. Few of these chemicals are routinely monitored in people but could be harmful to pregnancy and child development.

For the study, academics looked at 171 women from the US states of California, Georgia, Illinois, New Hampshire, New York and Puerto Rico – all part of the US National Institutes of Health Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes programme.

Study senior author Dr Tracey Woodruff said: “This is the first time we have been able to measure the amounts of chemicals in such a large and diverse group of pregnant women – not just identify chemicals. Our findings make clear that the number and scope of chemicals in pregnant women are increasing during a very vulnerable time of development for both the pregnant person and the foetus.”