A Link Worth Sharing relating to CHD Awareness

 I tried to post a link to this article on FB but I received this message "The privacy settings for this attachment prevent you from posting it to this Timeline."

So...I figured out another way to share it, since it just annoyed me that it wouldn't let me place it on my FB wall...Here it is:

Environmental Toxins Linked to Heart Defects (One Study in Canada)
  "Congenital heart defect rates have gradually decreased in Canada since 2006, which is about the time the government tightened regulations to reduce industrial air emissions, Ngwezi said. The heart defect decreases were mainly associated with heart defects resulting in holes between the upper and lower heart chambers (septal defects) and malformations of the cardiac outflow tracts (conotruncal defects), according to Ngwezi.

" 'Although still in the early stage, this research suggests some chemical emissions - particularly, industrial air emissions - may be linked to heart abnormalities that develop while the heart is forming in the womb,' said lead researcher Deliwe P. Ngwezi, M.D., a Ph.D., student and research fellow in pediatric cardiology at the University of Alberta in Canada.

     The study is based on congenital heart defects diagnosed in 2004-11 and chemical emissions recorded by a Canadian agency tracking pollutants."

   For now, consumers and healthcare providers should be educated about the potential toll of pollutants on the developing heart,” she said. “As we have observed in the preliminary results, when the emissions decrease, the rates of congenital heart defects also decrease.” 
-- End of my pull-quotes --

I was just telling my mom today how this is something that got on my radar years ago while researching CHD's and here it is in the news today... (Gwen's defect, Truncus Arterious, was a conotruncal defect...and I have no clue if there was any environmental cause such as pollution...I quote this article because it is interesting, not because I think I suddenly have answers.)

It's not good news, but it is GOOD that it continues to be studied. As if it's not obvious - pollution is bad for our health, so I'm all for "greening-up" - it's beneath our intelligence as a species to not at the very least, TRY to lessen the toxic output of our way of living.