The incidence of breast cancer in the United States has steadily increased for the past three decades. Exposure to excess estrogen, in both natural and synthetic forms, has been implicated as a risk factor for the development of this disease. Considerable interest has been focused on organochlorines, such as the triazine herbicides, and their possible role in the initiation or promotion of huma...

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have been reported in many different parts of the environment in this country (1-3). The purpose of this report is to present preliminary results from a monitoring program in which these materials are routinely sought and quantitated. The Human Monitoring Survey, established in 1967 by the Pesticides Program, DHEW (now Division of Pesticide Community Studies, EP...

Prenatal pesticide exposures may adversely affect children's health. However, exposure and health research is hampered by the lack of reliable fetal exposure data. No studies have been published that report measurements of commonly used nonpersistent pesticides in human amniotic fluid, although recent studies of pesticides in urine from pregnant women and in meconium indicate that fetuses are e...

The eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) developed neoplastic disorders when experimentally exposed both in the laboratory and field to chemically contaminated sediment from Black Rock Harbor (BRH), Bridgeport, Connecticut. Neoplasia was observed in oysters after 30 and 60 days of continuous exposure in a laboratory flow-through system to a 20 mg/L suspension of BRH sediment plus postexposure...

Hurricane Mitch hit Honduras on 30 October 1998, producing flooding and mud slides throughout the country and killing more than 6500 people. Balluz et al. (pp. 288–295) describe a study conducted shortly after the hurricane to determine whether the flooding, during which 300–400 barrels of pesticides were lost, had caused contamination of drinking-water. The study, conducted in the barrio of Is...

In 1996, a citizens group in Nogales, Arizona, reported to the Arizona Department of Health their concerns about a possible excess prevalence of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) due to exposure to environmental contamination in the area. The authors conducted a two-phase study in which the objectives of phase I were to identify potential SLE cases and to determine the prevalence of SLE and th...