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Environmental research study seeks moms-to-be

BY TRACEY DUGUAY As many as 250 Greater Sudbury women will be asked to participate in a research study looking at environmental chemicals in the bodies of pregnant women and their babies.
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Around 250 Greater Sudbury women in the first trimester of pregnancy will be recruited to participate in one of the largest environmental biomonitoring studies of its kind ever conducted in Canada.

BY TRACEY DUGUAY

As many as 250 Greater Sudbury women will be asked to participate in a research study looking at environmental chemicals in the bodies of pregnant women and their babies.

It’s the largest study of its kind ever conducted in Canada, spanning every province, with a goal of recruiting 2,000 women in total.

“For the first time in Canada, we will have some indication of levels of environmental chemicals in the bodies of pregnant women and their babies, which can be used as a baseline and to guide decisions on further research,” stated Health Canada in a news release in late November.

The Maternal-Infant Research on Environmental Chemicals (MIREC) study is being funded by Health Canada ($2.7 million), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research ($1.2 million) and the Ontario Ministry of the Environment ($200,000).

“There hasn’t been a study done like this for 30 years in Canada. And, 30 years ago, they determined lead was harmful,” said Barb Ward, the director of Medicor Research Inc., a Sudbury-based medical research company.

Ward is managing the local component of the MIREC study on behalf of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine.

She’s waiting for the final ethic approval from Sainte-Justine Hospital in Montreal, which is the co-ordinating centre for the study.

Once this approval comes in, Ward will submit a proposal to do the study at Sudbury Regional Hospital (SRH), which will have to be passed by its ethics committee before they proceed. If all goes according to plan, she hopes to get the approval from SRH by mid-January.

Two physicians from Sudbury will be acting as the principal investigators for the MIREC study. Tim Zmijowskyj, a family physician who is also the head of clinical sciences at the medical school, will be the primary researcher, along with Kandiah Vijayakanthan, an obstetrician/gynaecologist.

The study will recruit women in the first trimester of their pregnancy and follow them through until six weeks after the birth of their child. Blood and urine samples will be collected in each trimester, along with a questionnaire about chemicals they may have been exposed to, areas of the city they’ve lived in and nutritional information.

Following delivery of the babies, the researchers will take samples of their meconium (first bowel movement) and umbilical cord blood. Then, six weeks later, blood, urine and hair samples will be collected from the mothers, along with breast milk if they are nursing.

“That’s how we’re measuring the exposure,” said Ward, adding the sampling doesn’t involve “invasive” procedures. The samples collected will also be used for normal prenatal blood and urine tests.

Family physicians in the city will tell women about the study, and if they’re interested, once they have their informed consent, they will be enrolled in the program.

Other recruitment efforts may involve the Sudbury & District Health Unit, nurse practitioner clinics, native health agencies and posters that will be placed at Vale Inco.

Ward said employees at the mining company have expressed concern about chemicals or metals like nickel dust that they bring home with them.

The findings of the MIREC study may either alleviate these concerns or result in positive changes to policies and procedures.

According to Greg Ross, the associate dean of research at the medical school, the people running the MIREC project were “very excited” to have Greater Sudbury women participate in the study.

“It is about metals in the environment, and there certainly is some unique aspects to metals in the environment here in our area. A lot of it could be from natural sources, a lot of it from mining or smelting operations or contamination from industrial activities,” he said.

“There are all kinds of different sources but even in natural sources, there’s lots of metal ions that are abundant in really pristine environments.”

Metal ions are the by-products of metals found in the environment. When they dissolve, they transform into ionic form, which can get into water or form particles in the air.

“When you’re exposed to lead for example, it’s not metallic lead that gets into your body, but maybe organic complexes with lead or lead ions,” Ross explained.

He said there’s been evidence that suggests specific toxicants can be passed from mother to child during pregnancy or breast-feeding, but there’s not enough research about exposure levels, combinations of toxins or methods of transmission.

“The only way to do that is with these really big, multi-centre studies where you assess a whole bunch of different, in this case, mothers and babies, to see what they were exposed to. We’re going to try to correlate that with environmental levels in drinking water or particles in the air.

“That’s what this study is all about, it’s trying to assess, depending on your environment, where the (metal ions) could come from and how much it will likely impact an infant.”

Exposure to metal ions has been linked to a variety of ailments including development disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHT) and movement disorders to mention a few.

Ross also uses the example of the controversy surrounding aluminum cookware that was the focus of a lot of attention 20 years ago. At that time, questions were raised about a link between the digestion of aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease.

“That story hasn’t gone away. Nobody knows what the link is between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease but there are still a lot of researchers who believe there is a link.”

He said the MIREC study has “tremendous potential,” even though, as with most research studies, it could just be a shot in the dark and might not produce any substantive results.

On the other hand though, as with the lead study 30 years ago, it could produce results that dramatically change or improve the health of future generations.

“It’s hard to predict what the results are going to be with these studies. It could be everywhere from ‘it’s kind of interesting we did that but there are no results’ right through to ‘we have to change standards with respect to metal ions in our air, in our water, what we’re exposed to’.”

For more information on the MIREC study, phone Medicor Research Inc. at 566-0005.


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