Chemical used in nonstick coatings may cause obesity in region's kids: study

Cincinnati children tended to put on more weight faster when their mothers had been exposed during pregnancy to a chemical used in fire suppressant and nonstick surface coatings, a new study released Wednesday has found.

Led by a researcher at Brown University, the study echoes findings from a 2013 University of Cincinnati study that found the same chemical in the blood of young girls in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky.

The Brown University study is significant for adding evidence that human-made chemicals appear to trigger obesity, even when the chemical passes from the pregnant mother to her child. Excess weight in children can be a harbinger of Type 2 diabetes later in life.

The new study was published Wednesday in the journal Obesity. Epidemiologist Joseph Braun of Brown University led the research team, which included Drs. Aimin Chen of UC and Kimberly Yolton of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

“Pregnant women in the homes studied had a higher concentration of this chemical in their blood, in fact, two times higher than pregnant women in the United States,” Braun said. “And children born to these women have a higher body mass index and waist circumferences.”

The research team followed 204 pregnant women in Cincinnati from 2003 until 2006, through their deliveries and as their children grew to age 8. In the pregnant women and later in their children, the researchers measured the amount of perfluorooctanoic acid, the chemical agent. The women were put in three groups, depending on the amount of the chemical in their blood.

The children in the study were measured as they grew. Children whose mothers were in the middle group of chemical exposure had 2.5 pounds more body fat, the study found. The children whose mothers were in the top group of chemical exposure had almost a pound more body fat.

Perfluorooctanoic acid was among the chemicals dumped into the Ohio River at DuPont’s Washington Works plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, from the 1950s until the early 2000s. The chemical is used in the manufacture of fire extinguisher material and nonstick coatings for cookware. In 1992, the Greater Cincinnati Water Works installed special filters on river intakes to clean the chemical from the water. Water Works officials said this week the chemical levels in Cincinnati water are better than the federal government requires for safety.

The Brown study released Wednesday speculated that the pregnant mothers may have been exposed to the chemical through drinking water. But Braun added that exposure could have come from the environment in other ways.

“Exposure isn’t an all-or-nothing thing. It’s not like you have it or you don’t,” Braun said. “It’s a continuum. There’s a perception that it’s a minority problem, a poor people’s problem, if you live near the power plant or the freeway. For some of these chemicals, the chemical doesn’t respect how much money you have or where you live.”

The mothers in the Brown survey had an average age of 29 and an average annual household income of $55,000. Sixty percent were Caucasian, 62 percent were married and 45 percent had at least a college degree.

The 2013 UC study checked the blood of girls between ages 6 and 8 in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky and San Francisco for perfluorooctanoic acid and other chemicals in that family. The girls in Cincinnati, however, had lower levels of the chemical in their blood than the Northern Kentucky girls, which prompted water officials in Northern Kentucky to adopt a similar water filtration system.