Landfills Linked to Risk of Birth Defects

Risk, while small, demands more research, says study

THURSDAY, Aug. 16, 2001 (HealthDayNews) -- Not just the smell makes living near a landfill site undesirable. New research suggests that pregnant women living within a mile of a landfill have a slightly higher risk of having a child with birth defects and low birth weights.

Although the link is not as strong as in as several previous studies, the researchers say their findings make a strong argument for more research and more stringent testing of the environment around landfills.

The report appears in the Aug. 18 issue of the British Medical Journal.

The researchers looked at babies born to people living within 1.24 miles of 9,565 landfills in the United Kingdom between 1982 and 1997, comparing them to babies born to people living farther away from the sites.

Among the 8.2 million live births in that period, the researchers found 43,471 stillbirths and 124,597 complications, including low birth weight (less than 5.5 pounds) and very low birth weight (less than 3.3 pounds).

Infants born to women living close to the landfill sites were 1.05 times more likely to have neural tube defects; 1.08 times more likely to have abdominal wall defects; 1.07 times more likely to have an abnormal placement of the urinary outlet of the penis; 1.05 times more likely to have a low-birth-weight baby, and 1.04 times more likely to have a very low-birth- weight baby. However, no increased risk of stillbirth was associated with living near a landfill.

"There is a very small excess risk of congenital anomalies in populations living near landfill sites," says senior study author Dr. Lars Jarup of the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at Imperial College, London. However, the study could not say the landfill sites were responsible for the birth defects, he says. "We don't know if the reason for this is anything coming out of the landfill sites, or if it is [something else] characteristic to those areas."

"It's possible, of course, that you get exposure through air or water if there's leakage," he says.

The risk apparently was the same whether the landfills were designated for hazardous waste or for traditional municipal waste. The study did not compare the safety of older and newer sites, Jarup says.

The researchers say, strangely, the risk of certain birth complications, especially abdominal wall defects, appeared to be higher just before a landfill site opened compared to after it became operational.

That finding caught the attention of Helen Dolk, a professor of epidemiology and public health research at the University of Ulster in Ulster, U.K., and the co-author of an accompanying editorial.

"That analysis would suggest that if there were excess risks in those areas, they also existed before the opening of the landfill," says Dolk. "One could see that obviously as evidence against the landfill being the important factor."

She says, "It would be nice to find some indication that [the] more hazardous the landfill, the higher the risk around the landfill. That would be stronger evidence of a causal association, but that hasn't yet really been demonstrated."

Still, Dolk says though the risks noted in this study were small, the findings call for more research and vigorous monitoring of environmental contamination due to landfill sites.

What To Do:

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reports on birth complications and landfill sites.

And while the Environmental Justice Activists Web site has a decidedly anti-landfill slant, it provides basic information about how landfills are designed.

For an overview on landfills, check the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Solid Waste.

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