Background: Findings from national surveys suggest that everyone in the United States is exposed to perchlorate. At high doses, perchlorate, thiocyanate, and nitrate inhibit iodide uptake into the thyroid and decrease thyroid hormone production. Small changes in thyroid hormones during pregnancy, including changes within normal reference ranges, have been linked to cognitive function declines in the offspring.
Objectives: We evaluated the potential effects of low environmental exposures to perchlorate on thyroid function.
Methods: Serum thyroid hormones and anti-thyroid antibodies and urinary perchlorate, thiocyanate, nitrate, and iodide concentrations were measured in 1,880 pregnant women from San Diego County, California, during 2000–2003, a period when much of the area’s water supply was contaminated from an industrial plant with perchlorate at levels near the 2007 California regulatory standard of 6 μg/L. Linear regression was used to evaluate associations between urinary perchlorate and serum thyroid hormone concentrations in models adjusted for urinary creatinine and thiocyanate, maternal age and education, ethnicity, and gestational age at serum collection.
Results: The median urinary perchlorate concentration was 6.5 μg/L, about two times higher than in the general U.S. population. Adjusted associations were identified between increasing log10 perchlorate and decreasing total thyroxine (T4) [regression coefficient (β) = –0.70; 95% CI: –1.06, –0.34], decreasing free thyroxine (fT4) (β = –0.053; 95% CI: –0.092, –0.013), and increasing log10 thyroid-stimulating hormone (β = 0.071; 95% CI: 0.008, 0.133).
Conclusions: These results suggest that environmental perchlorate exposures may affect thyroid hormone production during pregnancy. This could have implications for public health given widespread perchlorate exposure and the importance of thyroid hormone in fetal neurodevelopment.
1Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, California Environmental Protection Agency, Oakland, California, USA; 2School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California, USA; 3Sequoia Foundation, La Jolla, California, USA; 4Environmental Health Investigations Branch, California Department of Public Health, Richmond, California, USA; 5Division of Laboratory Sciences, National Center for Environmental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 6Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco, California, USA; 7Section of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Nutrition, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 8Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California, Oakland, California, USA; 9Department of Lab Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA
Recommended Citation:
Craig Steinmaus,1,2 Michelle Pearl,et al. Thyroid Hormones and Moderate Exposure to Perchlorate during Pregnancy in Women in Southern California[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2016-01-01,Volume 124(Issue 6):861