What are the symptoms of PCB polychlorinated biphenyls poisoning in canines?

Answer 1

Compromised Immune Systems

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Dolphins ALL over the world are suffering from compromised immune systems due to accumulation of POPs. These chemicals bioaccumulate up the ocean food web and are especially concentrated in apex predators such as dolphins. Some of the best-known POPs are PCBs, DDT, and dioxins.

Autism linked to PCB exposure in children : [the Research]

Friday, June 5, 2009 at 5:25pm

Med Sci (Paris). 2007 Oct;23(10):868-72.

[Developmental neurotoxicity of industrial chemicals]

De'partement de ge'ne'tique, de'veloppement et pathologie mole'culaire, Institut Cochin, 24, rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques, 75014 Paris, France. labie(@)cochin.inserm.fr

"A Silent Pandemic : Industrial Chemicals Are Impairing the Brain Development of Children Worldwide"

Fetal and early childhood exposures to industrial chemicals in the environment can damage the developing brain and can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs)--autism, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), and mental retardation.

In a new review study, published in The Lancet, Philip Grandjean and Philip Landrigan from the Harvard School of Public Health systematically examined publicly available data on chemical toxicity in order to identify the industrial chemicals that are the most likely to damage the developing brain.

The researchers found that 202 industrial chemicals have the capacity to damage the human brain, and they conclude that chemical pollution may have harmed the brains of millions of children worldwide.

The authors conclude further that the toxic effects of industrial chemicals on children have generally been overlooked. In North Amercia, the commission for environmental cooperation, and in European Union the DEVNERTOX projects had reached to the same conclusions. We analyse this review and discuss these rather pessimistic conclusions.

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Basic Clin Pharmacol Toxicol. 2008 Feb;102(2):146-54.

Prenatal exposures to persistent and non-persistent organic compounds and effects on immune system development.

Hertz-Picciotto I, Park HY, Dostal M, Kocan A, Trnovec T, Sram R.

Center for Children's Environmental Health and Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. ihp@ucdavis.edu

Immune system development, particularly in the prenatal period, has far-reaching consequences for health during early childhood, as well as throughout life. Environmental disturbance of the complex balances of Th1 and Th2 response mechanisms can alter that normal development. Dysregulation of this process or an aberrant trajectory or timing of events can result in atopy, Asthma, a compromised ability to ward off infection, or other auto-immune disease. A wide range of chemical, physical and biological agents appear to be capable of disrupting immune development. This MiniReview briefly reviews developmental milestones of the immune system in the prenatal period and early life, and then presents examples of environmentally induced alterations in immune markers. The first example involves a birth cohort study linked to an extensive programme of air pollution monitoring; the analysis shows prenatal ambient polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) and fine particle (PM2.5) exposures to be associated with altered lymphocyte immunophenotypic distributions in cord blood and possible changes in cord serum immunoglobulin E levels. The second example is a study of prenatal-polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) exposures and the foetal development of the thymus, the organ responsible for lymphocyte maturation. Mothers with higher serum concentrations of PCBs gave birth to neonates having smaller indices of thymus size. Finally, this report underscores the tight connection between development of the immune system and that of the central nervous system, and the plausibility that disruption of critical events in immune development may play a role in neurobehavioural disorders.