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Matthew P. Longnecker,¹ Mary S. Wolff,² Beth C. Gladen,³ John W. Brock,⁴ Philippe Grandjean,⁵ Joseph L. Jacobson,⁶ Susan A. Korrick,⁷ Walter J. Rogan,¹ Nynke Weisglas-Kuperus,⁸ Irva Hertz-Picciotto,⁹ Pierre Ayotte,¹⁰ Paul Stewart,¹¹ Gerhard Winneke,¹² M. Judith Charles,¹³ Sandra W. Jacobson,¹⁴ Éric Dewailly,¹⁰ E. Rudy Boersma,¹⁵ Larisa M. Altshul,¹⁶ Birger Heinzow,¹⁷ James J. Pagano,¹⁸ and Allan A. Jensen¹⁹

¹Epidemiology Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; ²Department of Community and Preventive Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA; ⁴Biostatistics Branch, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, USA; ⁴National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; ⁵Institute of Public Health, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark; ⁶Psychology Department, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan; ⁷Channing Laboratory, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; ⁸Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology, Erasmus University and University Hospital/Sophia Children's Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands; ⁹Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA; ¹⁰Department of Social and Preventive Medicine, Laval University and Public Health Research Unit, CHUQ Research Center (CHUL), Beauport, Québec, Canada; ¹¹Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, New York, USA; ¹²Medical Institute of Environmental Hygiene at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; ¹³Department of Environmental Toxicology, University of California, Davis, California, USA; ¹⁴Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, Michigan, USA; ¹⁵Perinatal Nutrition and Development Unit, Department of Obstetrics/Pediatrics, University Hospital Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands; ¹⁶Department of Environmental Health, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; ¹⁷Institute of Environmental Toxicology, Kiel, Germany; ¹⁸Environmental Research Center, State University of New York at Oswego, Oswego, New York, USA; ¹⁹DK-Teknik Energy and Environment, Søborg, Denmark

Abstract

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent pollutants that are ubiquitous in the food chain, and detectable amounts are in the blood of almost every person in most populations that have been examined. Extensive evidence from animal studies shows that PCBs are neurotoxins, even at low doses. Interpretation of human data regarding low-level, early-life PCB exposure and subsequent neurodevelopment is problematic because levels of exposure were not similarly quantified across studies. We expressed the exposure levels from 10 studies of PCB and neurodevelopment in a uniform manner using a combination of data from original investigators, laboratory reanalyses, calculations based on published data, and expert opinion. The mainstay of our comparison was the median level of PCB 153 in maternal pregnancy serum. The median concentration of PCB 153 in the 10 studies ranged from 30 to 450 ng/g serum lipid, and the median of the 10 medians was 110 ng/g. We found that a) the distribution of PCB 153 exposure in most studies overlapped substantially, b) exposure levels in the Faroe Islands study were about 3-4-fold higher than in most other studies, and c) the exposure levels in the two recent U.S. studies were about one-third of those in the four earlier U.S. studies or recent Dutch, German, and northern Québec studies. Our results will facilitate a direct comparison of the findings on PCBs and neurodevelopment when they are published for all 10 studies. Key words: child development, environmental exposure, environmental pollutants, neurotoxins, polychlorinated biphenyls. Environ Health Perspect 111:65-70 (2003) . doi:10.1289/ehp.5463 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 2 December 2002]