"Is food packaging compromising the effectiveness of your child's vaccines? A recent Harvard School of Public Health study suggesting that it might be has rocked parents and pediatricians nationwide."

"The study looked at PFCs - perfluorinated compounds - a group of chemicals that are used in many kinds of food packaging. ... But PFCs don't go away. They persist in the environment, including fish, and they're in us. ...

The Harvard scientists, led by Philippe Grandjean, of the school's department of environmental health, decided to study 656 children born in the Faeroe Islands - in the Norwegian Sea between Scotland and Iceland - because the people there eat a lot of fish known to have lots of PFCs.

They looked at prenatal and postnatal exposure and then measured how well the diphtheria and tetanus vaccines worked at ages 5 and 7.

They concluded that when the postnatal exposure doubled, the "antibody concentration" in the child, an indication of the vaccines' effectiveness, was halved."

Sandy Bauers reports for the Philadelphia February 22, 2012. [2]