Daily Archives: February 25, 2011

Just published online in Environmental Health Perspectives is a study attempting to link failed in vitro fertilization with PCBs. But the researchers ignored the classic multiple comparisons problem. Here, 57 congeners were tested and only one produced significantly elevated dose-dependent odds of failed implantation — less than you’d expect by chance at a 5% error level. Moreover, the association between all PCB congeners and failed implantation wasn’t significant. Finally, the researchers considered no other confounding risk factors for the failed implantation. No wonder this was published in EHP.

Faced with a $700 million remediation effort, Mayor Bloomberg says school kids are exposed to more PCBs from a tuna fish sandwich than the light fixtures in city schools. But when cash-strapped New Yorkers turned to local waterways for food in 2009, the Mayor said “common sense” dictated that anglers shouldn’t eat fish from PCB-contaminated water.