Cluster of fatal birth defects in Washington goes unexplained

Couples in south central Washington face a difficult reality. They are four times more likely to conceive a child with a fatal birth defect.

Since 2010, 31 babies in Yakima, Benton and Franklin counties have been diagnosed with anencephaly, an absence of a large part of the brain and the skull.

“It’s a very tragic, harsh birth defect in which brain development isn’t complete,” explains Donn Moyer with the Washington State Department of Health. “It happens very, very early in pregnancy, and it’s always fatal. This is devastating for families.”

Many mothers are forced to choose between aborting the fetus or carrying the baby to term, only to see their child die shortly after birth.

The cluster of anencephaly cases in Washington has prompted a study of the mothers’ medical records, according to Moyer.

“We decided, when we found out this was happening, to try to determine what the common exposures, or sources, or problems that these mothers would be running into,” he says. “And we tried to find either common experiences or other types of exposures in the environment, other types of commonalities. And actually, as we look through them, there has not been any source that makes any sense.”

Moyer says so far the health department cannot pinpoint a cause: the mothers lived in a mix of rural and urban locations, and they all drank from the public water system, which was tested and is safe.

But they might be missing an important clue.

Andrea Jackson says the heath department hasn’t spoken directly with any of the mothers affected by the cluster of birth defects.

“Anything that will help another mother to not have to go through what I went through – I would have been fine with it,” says Jackson. “What are you researching if you haven’t physically called the families?”

A health department spokesperson told CNN that they haven’t spoken with the mothers because they don’t want to be invasive during a difficult time.

But Jackson says she wants to talk to the health department.

“If it just happened to one person, it could be random. But that fact that there are so many different people that it’s happened to, there has to be something you can pinpoint, that caused this,” says Jackson.

Moyer wants to reassure people that the state is still investigating.

“Because we haven’t been able find a common source, we have convened an advisory committee that includes national experts on birth defects people who work in the state and the local community on those topics, and our own staff and we’re going to try and get those people together and find out what those next steps might be.”

The advisory committee met with concerned parents in Yakima in late May, but many parents complained they left with more questions than answers.

One expert on the panel said most anencephaly cluster cases go unexplained, although some research has pointed to insufficient folic acid in the mother’s diet. And in Texas, an outbreak in the 90’s was associated with mothers eating moldy corn.

A team of experts on this mold offered help to Washington investigators back in February, but says they haven’t yet received a response.