Sunday, April 28, 2002
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Sunday, April 28, 2002 |
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Expert: contaminated Fayette water from airport spill could harm unborn babies
By JOHN MUNFORD
A spill of 180,000 gallons of deicing fluid into one of Fayette County's main water supplies in January may pose a risk to unborn babies whose mothers drank the contaminated water, according to an Emory University pediatric health expert. At a forum in Peachtree City Wednesday night, Dr. Howard Frumkin said he "feels a little worried about the birth defect issue" since unborn babies were exposed to ethylene glycol in drinking water. "I think careful scrutiny during pregnancy is justified," Frumkin said to an audience that included several pregnant mothers. He suggested pregnant women who drank the contaminated water should work with their health care providers to monitor their pregnancies. Frumkin has calculated the possible exposure levels to Fayette residents to ethylene glycol, the most toxic of the chemicals found in the deicing fluid used at Hartsfield International Airport, which reported the spill in January. But in his "worst case" figures, the doses ingested by local residents were about 20 times lower than what caused reproductive problems in mice and rats during several clinical studies. In those studies, the mice and rats were exposed to ethylene glycol for longer periods of time than local residents were after the spill, he added. The spill into the Flint River was reported by Hartsfield officials in early January after the fluid was used to deice planes during a winter storm. Noting his calculations could change as more information becomes available, Frumkin said he assumed the "worst-case scenario" in the calculations. One factor working in Fayette's favor was that the exposure likely only lasted for several days, he added. "But I'm not standing here saying there was no exposure," Frumkin said. Any birth defects caused by the contamination would depend on the fetal age at the time of exposure, Frumkin said. The highest risk would be unborn children ranging from four to eight weeks old, he said. Only one case study of humans ingesting ethylene glycol has been done, Frumkin explained. In that study, birth defects were found in children whose mothers were exposed to the chemical when they worked in an electronics plant in Mexico. Those babies had misshapen faces, bone abnormalities and neurobehavioral abnormalities, Frumkin said. But the study didn't include just how much exposure the mothers had to ethylene glycol, he added.
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