Work in Brief
LANDFILL SITES AND BIRTH ABNORMALITIES
Landfill sites are necessary repositories of domestic and hazardous waste; but living near them may carry a greater risk of congenital malformation, as evidenced over the past decade by a number of major European studies. In this issue, Elliot et al1 report a weak spatial association between risk of certain congenital abnormalities (notably cardiovascular defects, hypospadias and epispadias) and geographical density of waste sites. Research in this area is challenging, as an accompanying editorial explains,2 because of the problem of achieving an accurate assessment of exposures. The study by Elliot et al is of special interest in its use …
