Pollution 'triggers leukaemia in children'

[joefree1]

Pollution 'triggers leukaemia in children'
By Rebecca Smith, Evening Standard Health Reporter
6 September 2004

Leukaemia in children could be triggered by pollution passing from the mother to the child in the womb, scientists said today.

Research being presented at a conference in London shows harmful environmental agents can cross the placenta to reach the developing foetus.

The study found that insecticides in food production and radioactive particles used in medical diagnosis during pregnancy had passed from the mother to the unborn child. The chemicals become more concentrated in the baby's body.

Cases of the cancer have rocketed and children are now at a greater risk of developing the disease. Between 480 and 500 children under the age of 15 are diagnosed with leukaemia every year and about 100 die. Cases in under fives have risen by more than 50 per cent in the past 40 years.
More ...
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/12999811?source=Evening%20Standard

Think this might wake up a few yuppies?

[skooooo]

1. Sorry..

...we don't do science in America.

[diamond14]

2. the REAL cost of bush* failures in environmental regulation....

arsenic in drinking water, mercury from coal-burning plants ALL OVER AMERICA in our air....and there's LOTS more....

under bush*, toxic chemicals are REMOVED from regulation, no new chemicals are added to regulation control, no studies are done...

what can you expect the end result is? people get sick, some die....

[Veggie Meathead]

3. In a post I made a few weeks ago, I wondered if some of the

chemicals we use in our households, gardens and in our agruculture, enter our bloodstream over many years and could be responsible for the increasing incidence of breast cancers we come across among our friends' wives and SOs.My post was prompted by the death of a friend's wife at an early age(51).My friend was not only distraught at the loss of a wife he loved dearly, but is also worried about his three daughters who now have to live with the possibility of this dread cancer striking them.I am so sick of our Republicans who ignore real life and death issues like this and decimate scientific enquiry by reducing funds for environmental and medical research.

[TO Kid]

4. I think they're jumping to conclusions

Childhood cancers are up ovoer the past forty years but they're ignoring the confounding factors. Infant mortality is far lower now and many high-risk pregnancies that would have ended in miscarriage or stillbirth back then are now leading to live births. Every medical and public health advance is subject to the law of unintended consequences; longer lifespans mean more age-related illness, lower infant mortality leads to more childhood illness, control for CF and diabetes means more sufferers of these conditions will have children who may inherit them. To cite pollution merely on the basis of statistical correlation and no causal mechanism is akin to claiming that roosters cause the sun to rise.

[Bridget Burke]

5. What about all the other studies linking pollution & cancer?

And not just juvenile leukemia.....

[kwolf68]

6. Please do some research

Find out what the infant mortality rate of the United States is as compared to other industrialized nations. You may be surprised.