Robert Preidt
Bloomberg Businessweek
06/20/2010
Children exposed early in life to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) may have a reduced immune response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccines, a new study indicates.
The findings suggest that exposure to the environmental pollutants in the first years of life (a critical time in immune system development) could undermine the effectiveness of childhood vaccinations and possibly weaken immune system responses to infection, the Danish and U.S. researchers reported.
They studied 587 children born between 1999 and 2001 on the Faroe Islands, located in the North Atlantic between Norway and Iceland. Residents of the islands have widely varying PCB exposure because of different patterns of consumption of PCB-contaminated foods, such as pilot whale blubber.
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