Birth defects: no clear landfill link. (The Beat).After the 1998 EuroHazcon study found a 33% increase in the risk of neural tube defects Neural tube defects A group of birth defects that affect the backbone and sometimes the spinal chord. Mentioned in: Birth Defects , cardiac septal defects Septal defects These are holes in the septum, the muscle wall separating the right and left sides of the heart. Atrial septal defects are openings between the two upper heart chambers and ventricular septal defects are openings between the two lower heart chambers. , and malformations of major blood vessels Blood vessels Tubular channels for blood transport, of which there are three principal types: arteries, capillaries, and veins. Only the larger arteries and veins in the body bear distinct names. among babies born to residents living within 3 kilometers of hazardous waste Hazardous waste Any solid, liquid, or gaseous waste materials that, if improperly managed or disposed of, may pose substantial hazards to human health and the environment. Every industrial country in the world has had problems with managing hazardous wastes. landfills, its authors decided to develop a scoring method to more precisely determine the hazard potential of such sites. Four landfill specialists were enlisted to assess the air, water, and overall environmental hazards surrounding 20 landfill sites in five Western European countries. The group found little evidence to suggest a causal relationship between living near a site ranked by the scoring method as being more hazardous and birth defects. If validated externally, the scoring method may be useful in future risk assessment studies. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion