Fire retardant chemicals found in Californians
Source: mercurynews.com
A new study -- the first of its kind (if you can believe that) -- released Wednesday shows that a small group of people carry in their bodies traces of chemicals in flame retardants that for decades have been used in the manufacturing of furniture and children’s products.
The study, while small, offers the first glimpse of how these chemicals, which have been shown to cause cancer, neurological diseases and developmental disorders, have been absorbed into people’s bodies simply by sitting on a couch or breathing in dust, and offers a strategy for state and local bio-monitoring programs to test larger populations, experts say. The better people’s exposure to these harmful chemicals can be tracked, advocates say, the better experts can understand how they make people sick, offering more ammunition for legislative change to regulate toxic chemicals.
The findings also underscore the possible consequences of a California law passed in 1975 that set fire safety standards that effectively required furniture manufacturers to inject flame-retardant chemicals into all upholstered furniture sold in the state for the last 40 years. The bill was revised Jan. 1 to remove the flame retardant requirement, but some experts caution that Californians will be dealing with the public health fallout for several years.
"We might have been really naive about the health effects of these chemicals," said Dr. Catherine Thomasson, executive director for Physicians for Social Responsibility
The study, by Silent Spring Institute, an environmental nonprofit in Massachusetts, and university researchers in Belgium, found traces of a chemical that has been named a carcinogen on the state’s Proposition 65 list in 15 out of 16 people from Richmond and Bolinas, who had their urine and homes tested for chemicals in 2011.
"If you have something that’s listed on Proposition 65 as a carcinogen and we’re finding it in Californians, that’s kind of disconcerting," said Robin Dodson, a research scientist at Silent Spring and the study’s lead author.
The concern, researchers say, is that the chemicals in flame retardants, which are in more than 80 percent of the furniture sold in the state, don’t just stay inside the upholstered furniture -- they end up in household dust, are inhaled, and can turn up in a person’s urine, blood and breast milk.
"If you touch something (like a couch), then put food in your month, you’ve eaten (the chemicals)," Thomasson said. "These flame retardants stay in the fat of people. They don’t leave the body very readily."
And the same chemicals have been linked to disproportionately high incidents of cancer among California firefighters, who are exposed to them when houses burn, as well as to neurological disorders, cardiovascular health effects, obesity and infertility in children and adults, according to research from UC San Francisco, North Carolina State University, physicians organizations and other academic groups. Toddlers are at especially high risk of exposure because they are crawling on the floor, where they have more contact with dust, and put their hands in their mouth.
Silent Spring researchers worry in particular about the high rates of two chemicals they found -- TCEP and TDCIPP, both on the Proposition 65 list. TDCIPP was banned from children’s pajamas in the 1970s after concerns were raised about its effects on children’s development, but has since become a staple in couches, carpet padding, sleeping pads and other common household goods.
"It’s having this resurgence," said Connie Engel, the science and education senior manager for San Francisco health advocacy group the Breast Cancer Fund. "If we don’t ban a chemical for multiple uses they have a rebirth for different uses, and that is not necessarily smart policymaking."
TDCIPP was found in 94 percent of people tested and TCEP was found in 75 percent. Researchers also tested the dust in people’s homes, and found in many cases that the chemical content increased between 2006 and 2011, the two years they tested. Six homes had a level of TDCIPP that exceeded the level of safe exposure outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and four had unsafe levels of TCEP.
The North American Flame Retardant Alliance, the industry trade group, said flame retardants have an important place in furniture manufacturing.
"They have been shown to be an important element of a comprehensive fire-safety tool kit," said spokesman Bryan Goodman in a statement. "This particular study, which includes an exceptionally small sample size, does not suggest that the flame retardants mentioned caused any adverse health effects."
Although the study was small, experts deduced that a study of all Californians would show similar results. Because of the 1975 bill, Californians have had much more exposure to these chemicals than others. A study in 2011 by the Center for Environmental Research and Children’s Health showed that Mexican-American children in California had traces of flame retardant chemicals that was seven times higher than their counterparts in Mexico.
Source: mercurynews.com
Comment: Flame retardants such as PCB’s, PBDEs and others are primarily Xenoestrogens. They are everywhere. These and other estrogen mimicking chemicals causes a host of issues among both males and females. They are believed to the leading cause of lower testosterone levels in males, increased risk of cancer in females and infertility in both sexes. We know that BPA Screws Up Reproductive Hormones, Causes Low Sperm Counts, but there are many others that are part of the chemical assault that you are under each day.
Fracking Chemicals Interfere With Hormone Function, Contaminate Groundwater With Endocrine-Disrupters
Study: Exposure to Endocrine disrupting Chemicals Can Affect Future Generations
