Exposure to the commonly used chemical benzene, even at levels below current guidelines deemed to be safe, could still have harmful health effects, a new study says.Researchers have found that workers in China who were exposed to benzene at concentrations below the current U.S. occupational standard experienced damage to their blood cells.Whether those biological changes actually translate into health problems down the line remains to be seen. “We do not know the health consequences,” said Dr. Nat Rothman, co-author of the study and a senior investigator in the division of cancer epidemiology and genetics at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). “These findings need to be independently confirmed. This is not a done deal, but it does raise a question about whether there are more serious effects occurring in the bone marrow."The paper, which appears in the Dec. 3 issue of Science, represented a collaboration between the NCI, the University of California at Berkeley, and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
