Central nervous defects in two children of mothers exposed to chemicals in the reinforced plastics industry. Chance or a causal relation?

With the use of a specially designed questionnaire, with the emphasis on occupational exposure to chemical agents at work, a case-referent study was started on 1 June 1976. The series comprised mothers of all children with central nervous defects notified to the Finnish Register of Congenital Malformations and their matched-pair referents. Information was gained by personal interview. By 1 March 1977 information had been gathered from 43 cases and their referents. Two case mothers had been employed in the reinforced plastics industry and had been exposed at work to a combination of styrene, polyester resin, organic peroxides, and acetone. When the number of fertile women in this industry is considered (some 250), along with the low rate of anencephaly and hydrochephalus in the general population--diagnoses made of the children of these case mothers (0.5/1,000 live births in Finland)--this occupational group is strongly overrepresented in the material. The paper is a more-detailed report regarding the two cases. Moreover a third case is mentioned in which the pregnant mother, a juvenile diabetic, had been exposed at home to styrene, polyester resin, and organic peroxides.