Nunavik kids still studied for contaminants

While some children in Nunavik continue to suffer visual and learning problems because their mothers eat too much contaminant-loaded marine mammals and fish, researchers continue to study whether the fatty acids in these same foods from the sea offered these children some protection.

A researcher at the University of Quebec in Montreal recently received $1.1 million from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to continue studying the impact of contaminants on Nunavik children, said a July 12 news release from an agency called GaiaPresse.

The money will allow Dave Saint-Amour and other researchers to continue their study of 483 Nunavik children born in the 1990s who have been examined from birth.

When these children, who are now in Nunavik’s school system, were born in the 1990s, researchers took blood from their umbilical cords: this can show which harmful industrial contaminants like polychlorinated byphenols (PCBs) and methyl mercury are present in the blood.

PCB is contained in the fat many marine mammals like beluga and seals, while mercury can be found in Arctic char. The contaminants are passed from a pregnant woman, who eats these foods, to her baby, before birth, through the umbilical cord.

Saint-Amour, who heads up a laboratory at Montreal’s Ste-Justine Hospital, wants to see how the contaminants these children received through their mothers continue to affect brain development through a magnetic resonance imaging, which can look inside the body, and other exams.

The children have already been examined at various intervals to see how they’re developing, because contaminants can affect the nervous system and other parts of the body.

So far researchers have determined that some of their PCB levels were four times higher than normal at birth, mercury levels were up to 20 times higher, and that there’s a connection between these higher contaminant levels and poor development, particularly during the first year of a baby’s life.

But they have’t been able to establish a direct connection between the presence of contaminants with poor performance in school or other problems with social development.

However, some tests show these higher contaminant levels can impact vision and reaction time.

Saint-Amour was involved in a study reported on earlier this year in the Journal of Pediatrics that looked at the long-term effects on visual development in 136 school-age Nunavik children.

Those children whose mothers passed on omega-3 fatty acids, also found in fish and beluga, were found to have a better visual function as school-age children.

A study published in NeuroToxicology in 2010 concluded that the beneficial role of consuming these foods during pregnancy seemed to offset the the risks of harm from their contaminants.

However, prenatal PCB exposure appears to affect information processing at later stages, when the information is being “consciously evaluated.”

Breastfeeding over an extended period of time also appears to offer some protection.

In the Faroe Islands, public health officials told women of childbearing age to no longer eat any whale blubber after an increasing number of harmful impacts were linked to contaminants found in the fat.