NCD980602163_19820825_Warren County PCB Landfill_SERB C_Walter J. Rogan letter to Study Participants re special exposures-OCR

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH&. HUMAN SERVICES Public Health Service
August 25, 1982
Dear Study Participant:
National Institutes of Health
National Institute of
. ~{C ElVE,{)~ Environmental Health Sciences
( .0 . Box 12233
s:,; esearch Triangle Park, N.C. 27709
311982
~
As you know, we asked you during the first interview for the study
about any "special exposures" to chemicals that you may have had.
Twelve women told us that they had either lived on or had to cross the
parts of the highway where PCBs were spilled and you were one of them.
We checked at that time to see whether the amount of PCBs in your
breast milk was higher than other women in the study, and found no
difference •. Virtually all women that we test have some PCBs in their
milk, but there seemed to be no more in women who had been near the
spi 11.
As we enrolled more subjects and analyzed their milk samples, our
methods of analysis showed that the kinds of PCBs in different women
differed somewhat. Our chemists, using very sensitive methods, were
able to confirm that, even though the levels were not different, the
women \'lho had been near the spill seemed to have some of the kinds of
PCBs present in the spill mixed in with the PCBs that they had from
--·o tner-sources. Only about 25% of other women show this· pattern. The
amount of this extra PCB cannot be measured exactly, but it must be
quite small in comparison to the usual amount we find, since the total
·amo.\.mt in this special group of women is not different from others in
the study.
We do not think that this represents any particular danger to you or
your child; any illness caused by PCBs should depend on the total
amdUJ)t, and this has not changed. So far, we have seen no i 11 nesses
in ¢~ildren in the study that we think are caused by PCBs, and we are
now following closely almost ~00 children, some of whom are 4 years
old. We -do think that this fihding is i~portant for other scientists
concerned about the ways in which people get exposed to PCBs and other
chemicals, so we are sending a brief report about it to one of the
medical journals, where we hope it wi~l be published. If the report
is accepted, we \'Ii 11 send you a copy of exactly what wi 11 appear in
ptint. Editors usually take a fe~ months to decide about reports like
this. We have also told the Stat~'Health Department of our findings.
We will be happy to answer any questions you may have, either now or
at your next regular visit. Plea'se call if there is anything we can do.
Sincerely,
/If adt ?IJffa,v
Walter J. Rogan, M.D.
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Chromatographic ev i dence of PCB exposure from a spil 1.
W.J. Rogan, M.D .
B.C. Gladen, Ph.D .
J.D. McKinney, Ph.D.
P.W. Albro, Ph.D.
Biometry and Risk Assessme.nt Program
and
Laboratory of Environmental Chemistry
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences
P.O. Box 12233
Research Triangle Park, NC ·. 27709
_.
ABSTRACT
Women in a study in which polychlorinated biphenyls were measured in breast
milk were exposed accidentally to a PCB spill. While the overall level of PCB
found in their milk was not different from background, the chromatograms
showed unusual peaks that indicate the ~resence of heavily chlorinated PCBs of
the kind that were spilled.
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CHROMATOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE OF PCB EXPOSURE FROM A SPILL
Difficulties with documentation of chemical exp·osure hamper studies in
environmental and occupational health. We wish to report an incident in which
serendipitous conjunction of an illegal chemical dumping and an ongoing clinical
study occurred. This allowed use of very sensitive chemical analytic methods
to document what was probably very slight absorption by exposed persons. We
believe that this incident highlights the difficulties encountered in investi-
gating environmental exposures when background levels are present •
In June 1978, a tanker truck discharged hundreds of gallons of a used com-
mercial polychlorinated biphenyl mixture. a~ong more than 200 miles of North ..
Carolina roads. Chemical analysis at the time showed it to be a high ly
chlorinated PCB mixture, such as Aroclor 1250®. To date, the PCBs remain as a
strip of contaminated soil; removal has been hindered by, among other things,
-.. the sheer volume of the soil and difficulties with finding a permanent dump
site. No diseases have thus far been shown to result from t his exposure. The
soil is marked by activated charcoal and is for the most part avoidable by
thos~ who~e houses are n~~rby.
PCBs are clear colorless oily fluids that were sold as mixt~res of the
variously chlorinated congeners of the two linked phenyl rings. In the com-
mercial designation, the last two digits (i.e., the 1160") are the weight per-
centage of chlorine. PCBs are known to be toxic. When poisoned by industrial
(1) or used PCBs (2),-human beings have chloracne~ various alterations in
liver and nerve function, and low birthweight babies with excess skin pigmen-
-......
tation. In the laboratory, PCBs induce microsomal enzymes (3), alter tests of
immune cell function (4), and cause neoplastic liver nodules (5).
..
PCBs gained access to the general environment through accidents and
improper disposal practices. These compounds are lipophilic and relatively
resistant to excretion or metabolism. Small daily doses accumulate in fat at
levels above those found in the environment. With current technology, PCBs
can be detected with very high prevalence i~ fat tissue or the fat of breast
mjlk (6) from unselected populations in the US.
The presence of PCBs and other·chemicals in the fat of .human milk and the
lack of data on their effects on suckled children led to the Breast Milk and
Formula Project, which is a prospective birth cohort study of about 900
c'hildren born at three North r.:arolina hospft;ils beginning in April, 1978. At
birth and during follow up, samples of breast milk and formula are co1iected
and analyzed for PCBs. Two of the institutions had enrolled families who
reported that they either lived on the contaminated roads or had reason to be
on them regularly (i.e., visited with relatives there). We compared the
levels of PCBs in the milk samples of these exposed women with other study
participants, and found no difference. (Eight of the 12 women were below the
median).
The PCBs that appear in milk fat are not chromatographically (on a gas
chromatograph with electron capture detection) identical with any of the com-
mercial formulations, since some of the congeners do not bioaccumulate as
efficiently as others! The typical chromatogram .(i.e., the tracing produced
as :each eluting component of the mixture is detected} looksintermediate bet-
ween-1254 and 1260. Occasionally, a sample gives rise to a chromatogram in
which there is evidence of the more heavily chlorinated congeners found in
higher concentration in 1260: our routine analytic procedures sometimes
identified such samples as "resembling 1260.11 Since the PCBs on the
road resembled 1260, we compared the frequency of the 1260 notation
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--I
between the exposed women and others in the study. About 27% of women
in our study have the 1260 notation on one or more of their samples,
while 6/12 of the exposed women did. We examined the chromatograms
from 11 of these women, as well as those from 22 women whose sample
values were ranked immediately above and below when arrayed by level
of PCBs. Exposed women had peaks in their chromatog~ams that behave
· 1 i k'e congeners present in 1260 but that are not usually found in
human tissue; only about 25% of the other women had such pea~s, even
though the amount of PCB was about the same . As confirmation of this
-· ·-gual itative finding, we ran five archived samples from these exposed
" women, a control, and 2 each of 1254 and 1260 spiked samples (10 in
all) through capillary gas chromatograp~ic ~nalysis, which is designed
to give increased resolving power of components in mixtures. Six had
-the,--1260--pattern; 3/5 exposed, both -1260 · spikes and a-1254 spike.
We hypothesize that the PCB mixture with strong resemblance to Aroclor
1260® from this unusual exposure was present in the milk of these women in
amounts small enough not to change their levels appreciably but with enough of
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the unusual congeners present to alter their ch romatograms. Theoretically, a
_ 60 Kg woman with 20% body fat and 2 ppm fat concentration of PCBs ha_s a body
store of about 24 mg from background exposure. A few mg acute exposure would ~-
not increase body burden appreciably, but would be detectable if the
"' p~ttern was chromatographically distinct, as was the case here. Mass
spe~~roscopic confirmation of the identi t y of the peaks is not possible
in this retrospective inquiry using archived samples~
We have not seen illness in the children attributable to PCBs in their
milk. One of the children of the exposed women did have severe acne neonatorum,
,,,.
but the levels present in his milk were only about the 70th percentile in
our data, and on further questioning we found a strong family history of
neonatal acne among the father and his relatives. Whether PCBs played any
role in the presumably susceptible child's illness is conjectural; he has now
recovered and his growth and development are normal.
This incident demonstrates the problems of investigating environmental
exposures to complex mixtures when background levels are present. Levels of
chemicals, however exotic, are not interpretable without simultaneous control
control data. Conversely, levels for a class of chemicals in exposed groups
that are similar to controls are not absolute evidence that special exposure
"
has not taken place. Since exposure to and storage of a wide va~iety of
environmental chemicals is the rule, considerable ing~nuity will be required
of investigators attempting to link exposures with disease.
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1. ,:,-Kimbrough, RD~ Occupational exposure, in Kimbrough, RD., ed.,
Halogenated Biphenyls, Terphenyls, Naphthalenes, Dibenzodioxins and related
products. New York, Elsevier/North Holland, 1980, pp~ 373-98.
2. Kuratsane, M. Yusho, in Kimbrough, RD., ed., Ref 1, pp. 287-302.
3. Alvarez, AP., Kappas, A. Inducing Properties of PCBs on Hepatic
Monooxygenases. Clin Pharm Ther, 22:809-816, 1977 •
4. Dean, JH., Luster, M., Boorman, JA. Irrmunotoxicology, in I
Inmunology and Toxicology. Sirois, P., ed., Elsevier/North Holland,
New York, 1982, 353-40.
5. Mcconnel, EE. Acute and chronic toxicity, carcinogenesis, reproduction,
• teratogenesis, and mutagenesis in animals, in Kimbrough, RD., ed., Ref 1
pp. 109-150.
6. Rogan, WJ. Pesticides and PCBs in -Biological Monitoring for
Environmental Risk. Ann Rev Pub Health (in press).