Metals concentrations in maternal tissue, drinking water, and herbal remedies: An exploratory exposure assessment

The objective of this study was to evaluate the hypothesis that arsenic was a causative factor in the elevated incidence of neural tube defects in the northern provinces of China. This study also investigated potential sources of arsenic exposure within the study population by evaluating drinking water from the area along with several herbal remedies for total arsenic concentration.; Placenta tissue from seven infants born with a neural tube defect and from seven infants of normal birth was collected from four hospitals in the Shanxi province of China. The median arsenic concentrations of these two groups were evaluated using a one-tailed Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test and a statistically significant p-value of 0.0487 was found. The arsenic concentrations in the drinking water and herbal remedies were not found to be beyond the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) daily reference dose, and subsequently posed no elevated risk of short terms health effects to the population.; The results of this study are similar to previous studies on neural tube defects in that it confirmed arsenic's relationship to the incidence of neural tube defects. This study, however, not only showed arsenic's ability to accumulate in placenta tissue, but also found a significant difference between the concentration of arsenic in placenta tissue within the defect and non-defect groups of a human based study. Additional trace metals aluminum, barium, cadmium, manganese, mercury, strontium, and zinc were also found to be significantly elevated in the placenta tissue of the defect study group when compared to the non-defect control group. Cadmium, however, was elevated in the non-defect group. This study was also successful in using arsenic concentrations in human placenta tissue as a biomarker in evaluating the incidence of neural tube defects.