Published on
“Forever chemicals” may be taking their toll on our health before we are even born, new research suggests.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, are a group of chemicals used in everyday products like food packaging and non-stick cookware. They’re known as “forever chemicals” because they don’t degrade easily and can build up in the environment – and in our bodies.
Scientists have detected PFAS in people’s blood, breast milk, semen, livers, and even brains. They suspect these chemicals harm human health, with studies linking them to higher cholesterol, some cancers, and fertility problems, among other issues.
The new research adds another complication to that list: high blood pressure during adolescence.
The analysis followed more than 1,000 children in the US. It used maternal plasma collected shortly after they were born to identify their level of prenatal PFAS exposure, and matched it to doctors’ records up until their 18th birthdays.
Prenatal exposure to PFAS was linked to a higher risk of developing high blood pressure later in childhood, particularly in the teenage years, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The findings indicate that “these forever chemicals can have long-lasting and potentially harmful effects that may only become apparent years after birth,” Zeyu Li, the study’s lead author and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the US, said in a statement.
The risk of elevated blood pressure was even higher for boys and Black children with higher PFAS levels at birth, the study found.
In a surprise to researchers, a handful of forever chemicals were actually linked to lower diastolic, or bottom number, blood pressure in early childhood, though that changed when they entered their teenage years.
Difficult to gauge forever chemicals’ impact
Evidence on the health effects of PFAS has been mixed so far.
While researchers believe these chemicals pose risks, it’s difficult to pinpoint their exact impact because there are thousands of PFAS that could all interact in different ways, and because people’s exposure changes over time.
Even so, Li said the latest study underscores the need for researchers to track people’s health and their PFAS levels over a long period of time, from early childhood to adolescence and beyond.
Meanwhile, Mingyu Zhang, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, said stronger environmental protections are needed to protect people from PFAS, given they are so ubiquitous that people cannot meaningfully limit their exposure on their own.
That could include phasing out forever chemicals from consumer products and in industrial settings, he said, as well as better surveillance and limits on PFAS in water systems.
“This is not something individuals can solve on their own,” Zhang said.