Children of parents exposed to chemicals have heightened risk of rare eye cancer

The research, anating from the Children’s Oncology Group, suggests the risk of developing ‘sporadic’ retinoblastoma increased substantially when fathers or mothers were exposed to workplace chicals such as paints, pesticides and metals.“Retinoblastoma is an bryonal tumor, meaning that it arises from tissues of the bryo,” UCLA Associate Professor Julia Heck told Reuters. “Six to 10% of retinoblastoma is ‘familial’ where the child inherits a mutated gene from a parent. The rainder is ‘sporadic’ meaning that these are new mutations that occur in a child’s eye cell, which end up causing the cancer.”The findings were made following a study that included 282 children with sporadic retinoblastoma, along with 155 of their healthy friends, as well as all of the parents.{{quote-A:R-W:450-I:2-Q: Our study … Provides another reason to suggest that protections are taken. -WHO:Julia Heck, Associate Professor at UCLA}}Fathers were asked to report all jobs held in the decade prior to conception, while mothers reported jobs held the month prior to conception in addition to any jobs they had while pregnant. Researchers then assigned an overall ‘exposure’ score to each job, which was related specifically to nine hazardous agents.The children of fathers who were exposed to workplace paint in the past 10 years were more than 8x more likely to have retinoblastoma than children whose fathers were not exposed. Fathers who were at least 30-years-old when they were exposed to at least one of the nine agents also had a nearly 7x higher risk of having a child diagnosed with retinoblastoma.Meanwhile, if a mother was exposed to at least one of the nine hazardous agents in the month prior to conception or during pregnancy, they were associated with more than 5x higher odds that their child would have retinoblastoma.Researchers defined exposure to chical agents as including welding fumes, sulfur dioxides, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are commonly used in agriculture, coal mining, and aluminum reduction. They have also previously been associated with an increased risk of childhood brain cancers and leukia.However, despite the heightened risk, retinoblastoma is very rare, with just one case recorded in every 200,000 births.“This cancer is rare and some may argue that it is hard to make broad policies to impact the incidence of such a rare disease. I would say that our study contributes to the literature examining the health risks in workers and their offspring from occupational chical exposures and provides another reason to suggest that protections are taken,” Heck said.The authors of the report suggested that couples actively trying to conceive should be aware of the potential connection and, if possible, ask for a tporary reassignment from ployers to avoid further exposure, at least in the short-term.