A major study to investigate the exposure of unborn local babies to contaminants will begin at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital (KEMH) this week.

It aims to discover whether levels in the Bermudian population are within the normal range of populations in other countries.

?This is a unique opportunity for Bermuda to get some extremely important baseline data that can tell us of the presence of elevated levels of any of a number of chemicals to which a developing baby may be exposed,? said Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR) adjunct scientist and project leader Dr. Philippe Rouja.

The study will be conducted by staff at the maternity and laboratory units at KEMH, local doctors and Health Department staff.

They will be working alongside a team of scientists from the BBSR and the Atlantis Mobile Laboratory Programme. The Atlantis Programme is a new global project that arrived at BBSR on October 12 for two months of local research into human and environmental health. Atlantis equipment, including state-of-the-art mobile human toxicology and environmental chemistry laboratories, will be used for the foetal study.

Chemicals that could be affecting unborn babies include mercury, lead, industrial chemicals and agrochemicals which the mother may receive through water and food such as some types of fish, said Dr. Rouja.

?Some of these chemicals may have originated locally or been brought to the Island by atmospheric transport, an area BBSR has been researching for decades.?

A Press statement from the BBSR stated that many of these chemicals are persistent and present in varying degrees in all pregnant mothers. ?High levels of these contaminants may affect the developing foetus and this emphasises how important it is that we establish the extent of chemical exposure,? said Atlantis Programme organiser Dr. Eric Dewailly, from the Public Health Research Unit at Laval University in Quebec City, Quebec.

The BBSR Press statement also said nurses in the maternity ward at KEMH were central to the success of the study.

They would be sampling blood from umbilical cords immediately after babies were born, before the cords were thrown away. ?The procedure presents absolutely no health risk to either mother or baby, and mothers enter the study on a purely voluntary basis,? the statement said.