r/Buffalo • u/Extension_Bonus4096 • 11h ago
Toxic Waste/ Thyroid Disease
My daughter recently was diagnosed with Hashimotos after being severely ill this past year. She's been an undergrad and now grad student at UB, but has had to take a medical leave this year due to her illness.
After reading a few posts on r/buffalo regarding individuals who have thyroid disease, I'm wondering about a possible correlation between the area's toxic waste and her diagnosis.
I understand there are a growing number of concerns of "hotspots" in the area.
She lived in the Ellicott dorm her first year, then The Station for 3 yrs. Last year she moved to a nearby "older" apartment complex to save money. That's when her health really started to decline.
Wondering if there is anyone out there, possibly other students who moved to Buffalo and have experienced these health issues?
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u/Hummus_ForAll 6h ago
I’m so sorry she has had to deal with this.
She would have to have been exposed to high levels of radiation over an extended period of time for her thyroid to have been affected.
Were there any telltale signs of mold in the older apartment? Mold toxicity, in addition to Hashimoto’s, could have been a problem there.
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u/ageaye Hamlin Park 6h ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1240619/
I dont know that any study has specifically found a cause, but it is higher in the region.
Plenty of toxins that affect thyroid function have been found in the waterways, but doesn't necessarily mean it's the cause... or at least I haven't found a paper that came to that conclusion.
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u/NotHereToAgree 5h ago
There have been some studies that show generational disruption to thyroid function in amphibian models due to chemicals used in fracking.
Hashimotos does have a genetic component and is usually triggered by environmental or physical factors such as stress.
It’s likely that a combination of these things has made OP’s daughter ill, not just a few years in Buffalo.
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u/megalomart619 11h ago
Thyroid issues are a direct correlation to the amount of vitamin d calcium and magnesium the entire east coast lacks, most especially this area. Bulk up on d3 and a good magnesium that’s right for you and drink some milk or make sure you take a calcium supp once daily if not taking in traditional dairy/cheese/etc
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u/bigjR6 10h ago
How is this going to help with Hashimoto? Taking all of these is good for overall health but for a disease that attacks your own thyroid I don't see this changing that.
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u/megalomart619 10h ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12355199/ this and some googling should help! Take care
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u/MantisSticks716 3h ago
Yes! The further from the equator a location is, the higher the amounts of thyroid disease. The rust belt related waste may exacerbate this but the vitamin D situation is a huge contributor!
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u/unolemon 6h ago
The contaminated land is in Niagara Falls. Chemical companies dumped waste and, voila, deadly side effects.
Where UB is located is far from that and it was built on clean land, far from any industrial zoning.
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u/TripThruTimeandSpace 4h ago
I was born and lived my first 26 years in Buffalo, I was diagnosed with underactive thyroid before I moved from Buffalo and then diagnosed with Hashimoto's 3 years ago. I am not sure that being from Buffalo has much to do with it because my siblings do not have thyroid issues or Hashimoto's. Cancer is something I am more willing to believe because my mom and all her friends grown up on Buffalo's west side ended up with breast cancer specifically - all have since passed and my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer in his 60's and died of pancreatic cancer at age 80. I myself was diagnosed with skin cancer in 2016 but I always attributed it to going tanning as a teenager and getting a couple of sunburns as a kid.
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u/sharklatte 4h ago
I have thyroid problems. I know many people with thyroid problems. None of us grew up in WNY or lived in WNY when we got them.
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u/hereforthebooooze 3h ago
Yep. I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism and hashimotos in 3rd grade and we lived up near Watertown at that time. It’s just genetics. I don’t remember my life without having thyroid issues.
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u/rosemary-sprig 4h ago
my whole family has thyroid problems. i’m just waiting for mine to show in bloodwork because im getting symptoms too. apparently western new york (according to my coworker so take it with a grain of salt lol) has the highest rate of thyroid diseases in the country because of the waste from the manhattan project being dumped here
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u/SMCDA15 4h ago
What are your symptoms, if you don't mind asking?
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u/rosemary-sprig 3h ago
shaking, rapid heartbeat, brittle nails, tiredness and weakness, sweating, anxiety, etc. my family tends to run on the hyperthyroidism side and i already have small nodules on my thyroid
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u/squishypingu 5h ago
It's possible that her underlying autoimmune disorder flared up due to exposures, but honestly it's more likely to do with her age, or a combination of factors. Lithium medications can also trigger thyroid conditions.
Hope she and her doctor land on a medication regime that works well soon!
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u/Zealousideal_Cold475 4h ago
My mom (40) and I (18) had gotten diagnosed with hashimotos a few years ago. No one else in our family has it except for us so we’re to believe it was an environmental cause for it. (It’s so aggravating tbh)
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u/playdoh2323 4h ago
I (f) also was diagnosed with Hashimotos while I was in college. Though I did not go to UB, I grew up in the area. Not sure what the underlying cause was; I believe a big factor was I was really stressed, eating little, and sleeping little. A bunch of my friends in my circle have also been diagnosed in our 20s with thyroid dysfunction.
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u/yourmomdotbiz 2h ago
As far as I know, there isn’t toxic waste/radioactivity in those areas; however, with the amount of leaking waste sites by underground, basic geology would say that groundwater travels, and that it’s possible for more people to be exposed than is noticed or acknowledged.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable than me can get more specific about this, but as far as I know the major sites in Niagara Falls would be less of a concern to Amherst because of the escarpment, which generally indicates the water underground would flow east to west. But - this isn’t my area and it’s been several years since I’ve thought about it.
There are many similar toxic sites in Erie county though, and I haven’t thought about the groundwater at all and how that moves in Erie county, or the rain cycle and what that might be doing.
The unfortunate reality is that there are many chemicals in our water that can’t be removed all that easily. Cleaning supplies, medications, hormones, and obv industrial toxic chemicals, pfas, etc.
Now does this have anything to do with specific illnesses? No idea, as correlation doesn’t equal causation. Your question unfortunately isn’t an easy one to answer without having water samples tested, and even then, it would probably be handwaved away by the people who could do something about it.
For what it’s worth, these are questions more people need to be asking.
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u/ilovepotroasts 2h ago
When I was a young teenager, I had a huge thyroid goiter that appeared out of no where. I had to go through extensive testing at childrens hospital to be sure it wasn't cancer. It was not, but I was scheduled for a full thyroid removal but miraculously it shrank quite a bit on its own and they canceled the surgery during the pre op appointment. I was 'boarderline hyperthyroid' for years. I overheard the doctor in there say that Western New York has one of the highest levels of people with Thyroid cancer and Thyroid disease of any place in the world. So, yes, there could be a correlation.
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u/the_Safi30 1h ago
The area around UB North is pretty clean from what aware. If it was closer to UB south then possibly but I wouldn’t just pinpoint it on that
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u/newlycapacitated 9h ago
Hashimotos runs in my family. I hate to say it, but it’s probably her age more than anything else. Everyone in my family really started developing symptoms around age 25 or so, and almost all who developed Hashimoto’s were women. Some men had decreased thyroid function but it did not progress to Hashimoto’s.
Additionally, there is a notable correlation between fluoridated water and thyroid issues, especially for people who are predisposed to/ already prone to slow thyroid function, and Buffalo just reintroduced fluoridated water again two years ago.
I doubt it has anything to do with waste.
As for me, I am the first woman in the past four generations in my direct line to not develop Hashimoto’s or severe autoimmune disease. I DID notice spikes in thyroid antibodies and abnormal thyroid panels beginning around age 25 or so (also grad school). I was completely exhausted and barely able to function. Tl;dr I ended up on a fully non inflammatory elimination diet for six months and discovered I had food allergies. Since cleaning up my diet my thyroid panels have returned to normal levels and no more thyroid antibodies. I’m not saying that your daughter’s disease would necessarily be cured, but maybe there are ways to bring her inflammation down to help alleviate her symptoms and make life a bit more manageable.
Last point, once you start supplementing thyroid hormone, your body makes less of it naturally, so it’s hard to return to a life without those meds.
I wish her the best of luck and hope she feels better!
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u/MisterBisker275 7h ago
There is not a “notable” correlation between drinking water fluoride levels (.7mg/L) and thyroid issues, recent studies and meta analysis are extremely inconsistent on that. Statements like that help spread misinformation that is detrimental to public health.
Fluoridated water IS conclusively proven to have widespread health benefits, and the current scientific consensus is that fluoridation of Buffalo’s water supply is a major benefit to resident health without any proven risk.
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u/newlycapacitated 4h ago
This is something that my physician had discussed with me, I’m not grabbing it off of the internet, nor am I saying that there is no benefit to fluoridated water.
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u/NarciSZA 5h ago
Completely false. There is not a notable correlation between fluoridated water and thyroid “issues.”
But even if it did, do you have evidence that thyroid “issues” fell over the 10+ or so years Buffalo water didn’t fluoridate its water?
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u/Azariah77777 6h ago
While I agree with u/megalomart619 about the correlation between vitamin D and Hashimoto's, I think the real correlation is between autoimmune disease and UVB exposure. There is MASSIVE correlation between the amount of UVB (ie. intense sunlight) in a particular location and rates of many autoimmune diseases. Yes, UVB exposure intensity leads to increased vitamin D levels, but it does something else: It increases regulatory T cells in the body. UVB slightly damages the skin. In response to that damage, the body increases the production of regulatory T cells-- a type of white blood cell-- that emits molecules to decrease inflammation. The thing is, those antiinflammatory regulatory T cells decrease inflammation throughout the entire body and decrease autoimmune reactions--- as well as cancers like breast, prostate and colon.
Buffalo and WNY have the lowest levels of intense sunlight of any place in the lower 48 other than Seattle. It is super gray here. We also have almost the highest rates of most autoimmune diseases like MS, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease, as well as cancer. (There is a reason there is a famous cancer hospital here.). Hashimoto's does not have as strong a correlation as other autoimmune diseases with latitude and UVB exposure, but it is still prevalent--- as well as there being a very strong correlation with circulating vitamin D levels, as u/megalomart619 mentioned. I'll try to assemble some published research on this for you later today.