Ubiquitous Chemical Linked to Heart Disease

First, the silver lining: it turns out having heart disease isn't all your fault, and it's not entirely the fault of your imperfect genes; astonishing new research (published in the gold-standard Archives of Internal Medicine) now fingers a ubiquitous industrial chemical known as PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic Acid) as playing a roll in the modern epidemic of heart disease.A simple water filter can reduce your exposure to a chemical linked to heart disease.

It's so easy to come in contact with PFOA (it's in the drinking water in much of the U.S.) that the authors of the Invited Commentary in the Archives said: "Perfluorooctanoic acid does not occur naturally but is present in the serum of most residents of industrialized countries." According to the research 98% of Americans have measurable levels of PFOA in their blood.

Researchers did not feed people PFOA to see what happens; they looked at blood levels of PFOA and disease patterns in more than 1,300 people.

What they found is that the higher a person's blood levels of PFOA the more likely they were to have cardiovascular disease.

Importantly, the researchers were able to use statistics to separate out other key risk factors like obesity, smoking and diabetes. So the association between levels of the chemical and heart disease is distinct from other risk factors. The study explains the biological mechanisms behind the troubling effects.

Let us count the ways PFOA finds its way into people's bodies. Widely used in consumer products (including stain- and water-resistant coatings for carpets and fabrics, food packaging, fire-resistant foams, paints, and hydraulic fluids) PFOA has seeped into water tables so that the most common route of exposure is through drinking water; but it is also found in outdoor and indoor air and dust.

According to the Archives study, researchers recently have shown that commonly consumed meat, fish, and plant products in US supermarkets are contaminated by PFOA.

A chemical used to make carpets and other fabrics stain resistant is implicated in heart disease.Bottom line: The stuff is everywhere. it's been found not only in the majority of Americans' blood, but also in breast milk, semen and umbilical cords. The Archives research may very well start the ball rolling on regulatory action to get PFOA out of the environment.

But until then, here is a tip buried in the Archives commentary: "Families whose tap or well water contains PFOA may choose to drink and cook with bottled water or to install activated carbon water filters to minimize exposure."

Of course, most of us have no idea what's in our drinking water. An activated carbon filter (as simple as a Brita filter, though other more sophisticated systems will filter more) is a relatively inexpensive way to at least reduce exposure to PFOA and, for that matter, many other pollutants that undoubtedly have similarly destructive systemic effects.