Comunità Tanzaniana in Italia

Fallout of Seveso disaster

Dioxin poisoning causes health problems for new generations

(ANSA) - Rome, July 29 - One of the world's worst-ever environmental disasters, which took place in Italy over three decades ago, continues to damage human health, a new study reports. Children born of women who were girls when exposed to toxic chemical pollution released during the 1976 Seveso Disaster are 6.6 times more likely to suffer from thyroid dysfunction than others their age, according to research led by Andrea Baccarelli of Milan University. The explosion in a chemical factory north of Milan in July 1976 released a cloud containing a highly toxic carcinogenic dioxin known as TCDD, affecting 11 communities and immediately killing hundreds of animals. Although not known to have caused any direct human deaths, many of those exposed to the pollution still suffer from severe skin lesions known as chloracne, while other studies have revealed genetic impairments. The incident is considered one of the world's worst environmental disasters after the 1984 gas leak in the Indian city of Bhopal and the 1986 explosion at the Ukranian nuclear power plant of Chernobyl. SEVESO DISASTER LED TO INTRODUCTION OF EUROPEAN REGULATIONS. The environmental disaster led to the introduction of European regulations on industrial accidents, known as the Seveso Directive. The latest study, details of which are published in this month's edition of the PLoS Medicine journal, is one of the most extensive pieces of research into the long-term effects of the disaster. The study involved over 3,400 women: 1,772 living in areas near the site categorized as Zone A (extremely high levels of contamination) and Zone B (high contamination), as well as 1,772 women from uncontaminated nearby areas. Researchers then looked at 1012 babies born of these women between 1994 and 2005, measuring their levels of thyrotropin or TSH, a hormone used to assess whether the thyroid is functioning properly. Overly high levels of TSH indicate thyroid dysfunctions that can cause permanent damage to the development of the child's brain or body. Children born of women living in Zone A were 6.6 times more likely to have high levels of TSH in their blood, while Zone B babies had above normal, if somewhat lower, levels. The study concluded the thyroid dysfunctions were a direct result of the mother's exposure to the TCDD dioxin in the 1970s. It based this conclusion on a much smaller sample of 51 of the participating women, for whom data was available regarding the concentration of TCDD in their blood at the time they gave birth. This revealed that babies with the highest levels of TSH were those whose mothers had the highest concentration of TCDD during labour. The report's authors say this clearly shows that maternal exposure to the chemical pollution continues to damage the health of their babies, decades after the disaster took place. They have called for ongoing research to monitor the impact on the children as they grow up. Photo: Scientists take samples of earth near Seveso after the chemical factory explosion in 1976.