Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Benzene Exposure Near the US Permissible Limit Is Associated With Sperm Aneuploidy

Here is an interesting study on the effects of benzene on male sperm in Chinese factories.

“Our results also lend support to the growing evidence that parental exposure to benzene may predispose an offspring to childhood leukemia,” write Xing and colleagues.

They conclude that given the results of this study, current occupational air standards for benzene in the USA may not be low enough to protect men from adverse reproductive health effects."

This was the objective:
To investigate whether occupational exposures to benzene near 1 ppm induce aneuploidy in sperm. Methods: We used multi-color fluorescence in situ hybridization to measure the incidence of sperm with numerical abnormalities of chromosomes X, Y and 21 among 33 benzene-exposed men and 33 unexposed men from Chinese factories.

Here is conclusion:
Benzene appeared to increase the frequencies of aneuploid sperm for chromosomes associated with chromosomal abnormality syndromes in human offspring, even in men whose air benzene exposure was at or below the US PEL.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Doesn't Benzene only come from liquid gas? Why is all this "chicken little stuff" on this blog?

Anonymous said...

The government just released the finding for the 126 wells in Ft Worth and found no harmful gases. 126 wells?

Anonymous said...

They only tested 126 sites out of 1600! And Benzene does not only come from wet gas. Diesel fumes can have benzene. Compressor stations emit benzene whether the gas is wet or dry. By the way, many residents aren't convinced that FM is all dry gas. Read the article above that was just posted. Most of the sites that registered high are in Wise and Denton County. Hello FM is not far from these areas.