Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Environmental pollutant has sex-skewing effect

A study published today in BioMed Central’s open access journal Environmental Health found that among women from the San Francisco Bay Area, those exposed to higher levels of PCBs during the 50s and 60s, were significantly more likely to give birth to female children.

Similar exposure is thought to have occurred in Wales, after a quarry on the edge of Groesfaen village near Cardiff was used as a toxic dumping ground from 1965 to 1972.

PCBs are persistent organic pollutants identified worldwide as human blood and breast milk contaminants. They were widely used in industry as cooling and insulating fluids for electrical equipment, as well as in construction and domestic products such as varnishes and caulks. PCBs were banned in the 1970s because of their general toxicity and persistence. They are associated with effects on immune, reproductive, nervous, and endocrine systems. Given the high quality measurements, this research provides the strongest evidence to date that PCBs affect sex ratio in human children.

Irva Hertz-Picciotto, the lead author of the study, explains how marked the effect was, “The women most exposed to PCBs were 33% less likely to give birth to male children than the women least exposed”. The researchers measured the levels of PCBs in blood taken from pregnant women during a Bay Area study in the 1960s. When they compared these levels to the children’s sex, they found that for every one microgram of PCBs per litre of serum, the chance of having a male child fell by 7%.

As Hertz-Picciotto states, “These findings suggest that high maternal PCB concentrations may either favour fertilization by female sperm or result in greater male embryonic or fetal losses. The association could be due to contaminants, PCB metabolites or the PCBs themselves”.

This investigation will be useful for assessing problems likely to be faced by populations currently exposed to high levels of PCBs, such as those that rely on fish from contaminated lakes or who live near former manufacturing facilities. Furthermore, other chemicals with a similar structure to PCBs, such as the flame-retardants PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers), are currently widely used in plastic casings and foam products. According to the authors, “PBDEs share many of the biochemical and toxicologic properties of PCBs. As levels of these substances rise in wildlife and human populations, studies like ours provide an indication of the potential effects of these newer compounds”.

Graeme Baldwin | alfa
Further information:
http://www.biomedcentral.com

Im Focus: (Re)solving the jet/cocoon riddle of a gravitational wave event

An international research team including astronomers from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has combined radio telescopes from five continents to prove the existence of a narrow stream of material, a so-called jet, emerging from the only gravitational wave event involving two neutron stars observed so far. With its high sensitivity and excellent performance, the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg played an important role in the observations.

In August 2017, two neutron stars were observed colliding, producing gravitational waves that were detected by the American LIGO and European Virgo detectors....

Im Focus: Light from a roll – hybrid OLED creates innovative and functional luminous surfaces

Up to now, OLEDs have been used exclusively as a novel lighting technology for use in luminaires and lamps. However, flexible organic technology can offer much more: as an active lighting surface, it can be combined with a wide variety of materials, not just to modify but to revolutionize the functionality and design of countless existing products. To exemplify this, the Fraunhofer FEP together with the company EMDE development of light GmbH will be presenting hybrid flexible OLEDs integrated into textile designs within the EU-funded project PI-SCALE for the first time at LOPEC (March 19-21, 2019 in Munich, Germany) as examples of some of the many possible applications.

The Fraunhofer FEP, a provider of research and development services in the field of organic electronics, has long been involved in the development of...

Im Focus: Regensburg physicists watch electron transfer in a single molecule

For the first time, an international team of scientists based in Regensburg, Germany, has recorded the orbitals of single molecules in different charge states in a novel type of microscopy. The research findings are published under the title “Mapping orbital changes upon electron transfer with tunneling microscopy on insulators” in the prestigious journal “Nature”.

The building blocks of matter surrounding us are atoms and molecules. The properties of that matter, however, are often not set by these building blocks...

Im Focus: University of Konstanz gains new insights into the recent development of the human immune system

Scientists at the University of Konstanz identify fierce competition between the human immune system and bacterial pathogens

Cell biologists from the University of Konstanz shed light on a recent evolutionary process in the human immune system and publish their findings in the...

Im Focus: Transformation through Light

Laser physicists have taken snapshots of carbon molecules C₆₀ showing how they transform in intense infrared light

When carbon molecules C₆₀ are exposed to an intense infrared light, they change their ball-like structure to a more elongated version. This has now been...