Necessity to Measure PCBs and Organochlorine Pesticide Concentrations in Human Umbilical Cords for Fetal Exposure Assessment

Three types of tissue samples—umbilical cord (UC), umbilical cord serum (CS), and maternal serum (MS)—have often been used to assess fetal exposure to chemicals. In order to know the relationship of contamination between mothers and fetuses, we measured persistent chemicals in comparable sets of the three tissue samples. Also, we analyzed the association between the chemicals in maternal and fetal tissues to know which tissue is the best sample for fetal exposure assessment. On a wet basis, the chemical concentrations were of the order MS > CS > UC, except for some chemicals such as cis-chlordane and endosulfan. On a lipid basis, the concentrations in UC were nearly equal or often higher than in MS, but the concentrations in CS were usually lower than in others. Hexachlorocyclohexanes and penta-, hexa-, and heptachlorinated biphenyls showed an association between the concentrations in UC versus MS, and UC versus CS. These chemicals also showed high correlation coefficients between the chemical concentrations in UC of first babies and maternal age. These chemicals were closely related to each other when grouped on the basis of their concentrations using cluster analysis. In conclusion, we insist that UC is the best sample to assess fetal contamination status of persistent chemicals. There is a possibility that the assessment based on the contamination levels in CS result in an underestimation

Necessity to Measure PCBs and Organochlorine Pesticide Concentrations in Human Umbilical Cords for Fetal Exposure Assessment-0

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Necessity to Measure PCBs and Organochlorine Pesticide Concentrations in Human Umbilical Cords for Fetal Exposure Assessment"</p><p>Environmental Health Perspectives 2004;113(3):297-303.</p><p>Published online 14 Dec 2004</p><p>PMCID:PMC1253755.</p><p>This is an Open Access article: verbatim copying and redistribution of this article are permitted in all media for any purpose, provided this notice is preserved along with the article's original DOI.</p