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Abstract
Shanxi province in northern China has one of the highest reported prevalence rates of neural tube defects (NTDs) in the world. The current study selected Heshun, the county with the highest rate of NTDs in Shanxi, as a study area and tested whether residence in a coal mining area was a contributing factor. A NTD cluster was detected in an area within 6 km of the coal mines for almost every year during 1998–2005. Poisson regression analysis revealed that there may be an association between production in coal mines and prevalence of NTDs in coal mine areas. Future work identifying factors independently correlated with NTDs in coal mining regions may provide further insights into the health effects of coal mines on NTDs.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Project of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (70571076 & 40471111), the Hi-Tech Research and Development Program of China (2006AA12Z15), the National Basic Research Priorities Program (2001CB5103, 2007DFC20180) of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China, and the Knowledge Innovation Program of the CAS (KZCX2-YW-3-8). The authors also thank Ms Li Zhao for collecting the socio-economic data of the study area.