Blue babies and nitrate-contaminated well water.
By L. Knobeloch, Barbara Salna, Adam J. Hogan, J. Postle, H. Anderson. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2000
754 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The use of nitrate-contaminated drinking water to prepare infant formula is a well-known risk factor for infant methemoglobinemia. Affected infants develop a peculiar blue-gray skin color and may become irritable or lethargic, depending on the severity of their condition. The condition can progress rapidly to cause coma and death if it is not recognized and treated appropriately. Two cases of blue baby syndrome were recently investigated. Both cases involved infants who became ill after being fed formula that was reconstituted with water from private wells. Water samples collected from these wells during the infants' illnesses contained nitrate-nitrogen concentrations of 22.9 and 27.4 mg/L.
Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health, Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c218971745664797165646017a1ce1be91b2905f
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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis
In Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health
In Pulmonary and Respiratory Medicine
Citations in the corpus
- State-of-the-art lab chip sensors for environmental water monitoring (2011, background): “N L −1, nitrate in infants under six months is reduced to nitrite, which combines with hemoglobin in the blood to form methemoglobin, a process known as blue baby syndrome (Powlson et al 2008, Knobeloch et al 2000).”
- Factors Affecting Water Pollution: A Review (2017, background): “It is observed that when nitrates concentration exceeds above 10 mg/L (10 ppm) in ground water chances of blue baby syndrome increases [15,16].”
- Chemolithotrophic denitrification in biofilm reactors (2015, positive): “If over-discharged, NO3 favors the eutrophication of receiving waters [4] and increases the risk of severe diseases such as methemoglobinemia [5].”
- Workgroup Report: Drinking-Water Nitrate and Health—Recent Findings and Research Needs (2005, positive): “A better understanding of the conditions under which nitrate in drinking water poses a risk of methemoglobinemia is clearly needed, particularly in light of recent cases of methemoglobinemia associated with well water levels between 20 and 30 mg/L nitrateN (Knobeloch et al. 2000).”
- Drinking Water Nitrate and Human Health: An Updated Review (2018, background): “between 1979–1999 only one of which was reported in the literature [96,97].”
- A review: Biofertilizer - A key player in enhancing soil fertility and crop productivity (2018, background): “Bio-fertilizers are environment friendly and do not cause pollution unlike inorganic fertilizers which often ‘run off’ into water bodies causing eutrophication and ‘blue baby syndrome’ (acquired methemoglobinemia) when the nitrate level is above 10 mg/L (28).”
- Ecological and toxicological effects of inorganic nitrogen pollution in aquatic ecosystems: A global assessment. (2006, background): “N/L) (Nash, 1993;WorldHealthOrganization, 1996;Ayebo et al., 1997; Knobeloch et al., 2000;Wolfe and Patz, 2002).”