Organochlorines in New York and the Hudson River: Sources, Environmental Distribution, and Health Risks

Overview

Accomplishments

• We have developed the most comprehensive picture to date of contamination of the lower Hudson River with PCBs and other persistent organochlorine pollutants. This unique watershed-wide effort has mapped the principal sources, plotted the environmental fate and transport, and noted the persistence of these compounds in the Hudson River and New York Harbor.
• We completed a detailed study of in situ reductive dechlorination of PCBs at two sites on the Hudson. At a highly contaminated site near an electrical manufacturing plant in Hudson Falls, NY, initial first-order rate constants were similar to those reported for in vitro studies. However after years to decades of in situ incubation, the overall PCB compositions were not nearly as dechlorinated as typical in vitro incubations after a few months. At the moderately contaminated site, only the initial stages of dechlorination had occurred, even after several decades. These findings have major implications for the environment and for public health. They have received major attention in local and national press. The principal implication is that PCB contamination of the Hudson River will persist decades longer than originally hypothesized and that fish from the river will therefore pose continuing hazards to health and to fetal development.
• We have found that chlordane fluxes to the tributaries of the western harbor are increased, even though chlordane use has been banned for decades. The suspected sources are the thousands of houses and apartments in northern New Jersey where chlordane was applied for control of termites.
• A major methodologic advance is the finding that the ratio of different chlorinated fractions of total dioxins can be used as a fingerprint for tracing transport of dioxins. This technique has been used to document movement of dioxins from the Diamond Alkali Superfund Site in the western harbor up the tidal Hudson as far north as the George Washington Bridge.
• We have shown in a pilot study of Hudson River anglers that body burdens of organochlorines are elevated and that cumulative consumption of fish correlates with serum organochlorine levels. This finding is the basis for proposed Project 5, Exposure Levels of Persistent Pollutants in Urban Anglers, and for the Community-Based Prevention and Intervention Research Study (CBPI) being proposed in the next cycle of this grant.
• We have established that there are racial and ethnic disparities in body burdens of organochlorines. Both African-American and Latina women were found to have higher DDT levels than Caucasians, while PCB levels were higher in African-American and white women than in Latinas.
• We have developed and validated two carcinoma cell lines (Ishikawa and T47D) as a platform for assessing the ability of environmental chemicals to disrupt endocrine function. The data from these systems have established that compounds found in the environment of the lower Hudson watershed exhibit a wide range of both hormonal and anti-hormonal activities. Compounds found to have estrogenic action include: Aroclor 1221 (a commercial grade of PCB), technical grade DDT, Kepone, and the plasticizer bisphenol A. The organochlorine pesticide dieldrin was found to be weakly progestagenic.
• We made the new observation that several widely distributed environmental toxins exhibit anti-progestagenic activity. These toxins include endosulfan, dieldrin, methozychlor, and certain PAHs. This finding suggests a new and extremely important mechanism of endocrine disruption.
• We found that certain pyrethroid insecticides have estrogenic potential in the Ishikawa and MCF7 cell lines. This finding may have important implications for public health, since pyrethroid insecticides are used extensively in residential settings and in schools.
• Preliminary data from this program suggest that some organochlorines may alter intracellular endocrine levels by blocking cell membrane efflux, a new mechanism of endocrine action that may lead to elucidation of the molecular genetic basis of individual susceptibility to these chemicals. This novel finding will be pursued in the next funding cycle in proposed Project 2. In sum, the findings from these studies on endocrine disruptors suggest a series of mechanisms, some of them newly discovered through the work of this program, by which environmental toxins may contribute individually and in complex mixtures to the genesis of cancer, reproductive impairment, and developmental toxicity.
• One WTC study, conducted by Dr. Trudy Berkowitz, has found that women who were in and near the WTC on September 11 were twice as likely as an unexposed comparison group in northern Manhattan to give birth to babies who were small for their gestational age (SGA). This statistically significant finding remained evident even after all likely confounding factors such as maternal age, race, ethnicity, previous number of pregnancies and smoking history were considered in the analysis. The likely cause is the mothers’ exposures to smoke and particulates released to the environment by the destruction of the Towers. Elucidation of the long-term consequences on the babies’ health will require continuing follow-up. These findings were published as a Research Letter in JAMA on August 5, 2003, Vol. 290 No. 5. These findings were also highlighted in the December 2003, Vol.111-116 of Environmental Health Perspectives. (Landrigan PJ, Lioy PJ, Thurston G, Berkowitz G, Chen LC, Chillrud SN, Gavett SH, Georgopoulos PG, Geyh AS, Levin S, Perera F, Rappaport SM, Small C; NIEHS World Trade Center Working Group. Health and Environmental Consequences of the World Trade Center Disaster. Environ Health Perspect. 2004 May;112(6):731-9.)
• Our Hudson River geochemical studies, conducted by Dr. Richard Bopp, have produced the most comprehensive map in existence today of patterns of PCB and heavy metal contamination in the River and New York Harbor. These data have been invaluable to EPA and state agencies in the planning of the massive dredging project that will remove PCBs from the upper Hudson.
• Our Anglers study continues to demonstrate that those who continue to eat Hudson River fish continue to have higher levels of PCBs. An especially strong dose response relationship has been seen between serum PCB levels and consumption of locally caught crabs and between body mercury levels and fish consumption.
• Our Training Core, directed by Dr. Lloyd Sherman, continued its extraordinary work of environmental education of inner city youth. This year 158 students, most of them from economically disadvantaged communities completed course work and hands-on laboratory experiences in environmental health research at Mount Sinai. In particular, they studied the impacts of organochlorines and other Hudson River pollutants in Zebra fish and wrote up their observations. These are the scientists of the future.