Exposure to a specific toxin known as PCBs (technically called polychlorinated biphenyls), appears to effect the development of brain cells according to the results of three new studies.
These toxic substances in the environment have long been linked with problems in children, but research could not explain how PCB toxins affect the brain.
Once PCBs were used in a huge amount of goods, from pesticides, caulking, flame retardants and electronic components. The U.S. banned their use in the 1970s. However, these chemicals stick around in the environment because they do not easily break down.
They’re still found in the air we breath, found seeping into our water, the ground and contaminating foods like fish that we eat. This is why PCBs are still detectable in all of us, even today.
The latest group of studies has found that these environmental toxins negatively affect the development of brain cells and overexcite brain circuits. This has been linked by earlier work to developmental problems.
“We think we have identified the way in which a broad class of environmental contaminants influences the developing nervous system and may contribute to neuro-developmental impairments such as hyperactivity, seizure disorders, and autism,” stated researcher Isaac N. Pessah, PhD. The last of the studies appears in the April 2009 online issue of PLoS-Biology.
One interesting finding that came from the study is that lower levels of PCB exposures were sometimes more harmful than higher level exposures.
One of the studies uncovered that exposure to low doses of PCBs detrimentally effected animal subjects’ ability to learn to navigate a maze, a common way to check learning ability in the lab.
Even low doses of PCBs adversely affected the plasticity of the dendrites, which are vitally important to learning and memory. Problems like this have been linked to conditions like autism, schizophrenia and even mental retardation.
The initial study was published in the March 2009 issue of Environmental and Health Perspectives.
For the second of the studies, tissue from the animal’s hippocampus (part of the brain that manages memory and emotion) was examined in order to measure the excitability of neurons before and during exposures to two different PCBs.
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The normal brain strikes a balance between excitation and inhibition of the neurons, as too much excitability isn’t healthy. Disorders like autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) it has been suggested may in fact involve an imbalance between the two states.
The report on the second study appears in the March 2009 issue of Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology.
The third study looked at a cellular level, looking specifically at how PCBs might affect cell development (as they saw from the first study) and the level of excitement (what they found from that second study).
The researchers exposed receptors in the brain cells that control the release of calcium (key to keeping signalling normal from cell to cell) to PCBs. They found that PCBs bind to the receptors and hinders the release of calcium.
It’s this that could be the reason for the results found in the other two studies.
“I think that these studies represent a kind of a turning point for our recognition of how these chemicals, PCBs, can interfere with brain development,” says R. Thomas Zoeller, PhD, professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
With this research-backed explanation of how PCBs can potentially cause developmental problems it may open a new line of research to find better treatments.
It may also help us to arrive at a better way to evaluate the safety of chemicals that have replaced PCBs, and perhaps identify the dangerous ones before they become widely used.
The work shows us that even low dose exposures to PCB toxins aren’t always safe.
Next – Just head on over to the Daily Health Bulletin for more information on PCB toxins dangers, plus for a limited time get 5 free fantastic health reports. Click here for the video on how PCB toxins hurt the brain.