The 'New PCB'
Flame retardant toxins show up in BC mothers' bodies.
Could common household items--such as couches, carpets, and computers--pose a threat to your family's health?
Unfortunately, it's quite possible.
Now, I'm not talking about some sort of malaise brought about by post-industrial overconsumption. My concern is far more specific.
If you live in North America and have furniture that contains polyurethane foam, it's a pretty good bet that you've got chemical flame-retardants known as PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) in your home. And as scientists are now discovering, PBDEs are showing up in people's bodies at increasing levels and carry a range of potential health risks including deficits in childhood brain development and subtle hormonal imbalances.
For decades, PBDEs were added to furniture, industrial fabrics, and consumer plastics -- not only in North America, but throughout the industrialized world. These kinds of products undoubtedly needed some kind of flame suppressant. Plastics and foams are, after all, made from petroleum, and once ignited they can burn fiercely.
Safety paradox
But paradoxically, the same compounds that were intended to make our homes safer have actually imposed a new risk. In the late 1990s, scientists discovered that levels of PBDEs in people's bodies were skyrocketing, doubling every two to five years. Worse, testing on laboratory animals suggested that PBDEs can pose some of the same risks as their chemical cousins, the PCBs. As with PCBs, a single dose of PBDEs administered to a laboratory animal during a critical phase of early development can cause permanent aberrations in memory and behavior. "Background" levels of PCBs -- the levels to which someone could be exposed in a fairly ordinary diet in the 1970s and 1980s -- are known to impair the human immune system and reduce IQ, and some scientists worry that PBDEs may have some of the same effects.
By the time governments halted the use of PCBs in the last 1970s, it was too late: the toxic genie was already out of the bottle. PCBs proved very durable, breaking down very slowly in the environment. Today, nearly three decades after they were removed from commerce, virtually every person tested, anywhere on the planet, has traces of PCBs in their bodies.
The same is now true of PBDEs, at least in the industrialized world. Recent tests in Japan, Europe and North America have detected PBDEs in virtually everyone examined, as well as in fish, wildlife, foods and housedust. A February 2005 study, for example, found that Canadian foods were among the most contaminated in the world, with PBDE levels up to 1,000 times higher than those found in tests in European countries.
BC breast milk
The compound is now ubiquitous, particularly in North America, where the use of PBDEs in furniture foams has been most concentrated. PBDE levels in human breast milk, for example, are between 10 and 40 times higher in the US and Canada than in Northern Europe and Japan.
New evidence now suggests that the threats posed by PBDEs in North America may actually be eclipsing those of PCBs. Data from a study coordinated by the Seattle-based research center Northwest Environment Watch, and released last week by California EPA scientists at an international conference in Toronto, shows that 30 percent of new mothers from British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and Montana had more PBDEs in their bodies than PCBs. A similar study released earlier this year found that half of all subjects tested had more PBDEs than PCBs in their fatty tissues.
Some scientists, in fact, have dubbed PBDEs "the new PCBs": the new, ubiquitous, harmful, and durable contaminant that can threaten neonatal development.
Dangerous dust
An interesting -- and probably significant -- side note to the Northwest Environment Watch study was that there was no correlation between PBDE and PCB levels in people's bodies. A person with high levels of PBDEs could have low levels of PCBs, and vice versa. This suggests that the two chemicals may get into people's bodies through different pathways. The principal source of PCB contamination in people seems to be food, particularly fish. As for PBDEs, scientists are still uncertain, but a recent exposure modeling study by scientists from the University of Toronto suggests that ordinary house dust, containing minute quantities of PBDEs sloughed off from furniture and other household goods, may be the principal route of exposure in people.
The bottom line of the study of moms from British Columbia and the Northwest is that, even though PCB levels are still higher than PBDE levels, we may be fast approaching a point at which PBDEs are more of a concern than PCBs.
And from this, we can draw three lessons. First, we should be paying close attention to PBDE levels in the coming years, to see whether PBDE levels continue to rise in people. Fortunately, the most troublesome forms of PBDEs were removed from the North American marketplace last fall. But that doesn't mean that PBDE levels in people have halted their meteoric rise; crumbling foam furniture and other consumer products may continue to be a reservoir for contamination for decades.
'Genie back in the bottle'
Second, we should be looking at ways of removing the tons of PBDE-laden products that are still in people's homes. So far, most of the political attention paid to PBDEs has focused on removing them from commerce. This is all well and good, but it fails to address the literally billions of pounds of PBDEs already sequestered in homes and workplaces.
And third, we need to learn our lesson about the risks posed by untested chemicals. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that PBDEs posed some risk, as their chemical structure is very similar to that of PCBs, dioxin and DDT. So that alone should have triggered some elementary testing requirements before the compounds were used widely in commerce. But it didn't.
At some point, though, we've got to learn the lesson, and take steps to make sure this sort of chemical fiasco -- releasing potentially hazardous compounds without adequate testing -- doesn't keep happening again and again.
Unfortunately, there's no way to put the PBDE genie back in the bottle. But if we learn our lesson well, we can prevent ourselves from releasing any more -- so that scientists of the future won't be worrying about some new compound they've dubbed "the new PBDEs."
Clark Williams-Derry is the research director for Northwest Environment Watch, a Seattle-based research center that tracks key trends for the Pacific Northwest, including pollution. For more information on this study, see www.northwestwatch.org/toxics/toxics05.asp. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
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Fiat lux
6 years ago
Comments on "The 'New PCB'"
Back in 1951, when I first published my Efficiency Principle, a prominent Swedish doctor sent me a German study that listed 2 1/2 pages of "volatile compounds" contained in mothers' milk. I passed it on to some scientist friends, who weren't surprised at all. In other words, there's nothing new about this, except perhaps that the situation worsened since.
But then, as we can not cut costs, only transfer them and all energy inputs cause equal reactions, these are the transferred costs of our hi tech age.
The more hi tech we get, the more poisons in our lives. There are 200,000 chemicals in use today, of which about 5-6% have been thoroughly tested for health effects. "Too expensive to test them" and as they are under patent rights, nobody can question the makers. Then there's global warming etc. etc. that "doesn't exist", well at least not in the warped minds of the ideologically challenged. Ed Deak, Big Lake.
Bobb999
6 years ago
More and more studies point to choice of diet as an easy voluntary factor that can reduce dangers from toxins we can't completely avoid.
There's lots of research available with informed suggestions for recommended foods:
One example: http://www.askdrsears.com/html/4/T040300.asp
It's too bad current generations are the "guinea pigs" involuntarily testing thousands of new chemicals industry keeps pumping out. But diet is one way to better your own odds.
Politically, the NDP seems the most pro-active
in policies to limit toxic chemicals.
clubofrome
6 years ago
Hi Ed,
A new theory of economics, if you were to call it that...say transitional economics... en route to sustainability, would have to have as it's first law, "For every action/input in the new economy there is an opposite and equal reaction/output. If one was to come up with a formula that took into consideration the impact of 6 billion humans consuming at an average rate, take into consideration commodity reserves and the renewable resources if allowed time to renew. (fisheries is a good example) We might find that in order for us to survive as a species we all need to eat vegan for the next 20 generations as we cull the herd back to 2 billion or so. As I look around me I don't see much will to move in that direction, but I swear people are starting to listen. Perhaps because of the extreme events like 9/11, Iraq, Tsunami's and eroding of social structure, but people are still nodding more and more..... We are in a heap of trouble. Recognition or acceptance isn't that one of the early steps in the change formula?
Fiat lux
6 years ago
Hi clubo.. The main problem is that we don't know the real, ecological cost, of anything. We may complain about the price of gas at over $1.14 now, but the real cost could be $114/litre. We just have no idea. All costs start and end in eternity and there are no such things as "bottom lines" in economics, only sets of artificial figures taken out of endless columns.
I considered this, also the reactions to resource/energy inputs, when I was working on my Principle and with my science advisers we came to the conclusion that the only way we can achieve some degree of sustainability is by cutting back on energy/resource inputs as much as humanly possible. Now completely ignored by politicians on account of financial manipulations of the economy that gives certain sectors unlimited resource waste powers.
Yes, we could have good lives, albeit no waste, no fast foods and no Wal-Marts. Just look at the impractical designs of cars today, the space age headlights, costing large inputs to replace, no bumpers, every small scratch costing an arm and a leg to repair. These are new developments, completely without any rational benefits, only for fashion.
As far vegan diets are concerned, I draw the line. I love my grub. When WW2 ended I was 18, POW and weighed 47 kg. Haven't missed a meal since. We grow cattle on land and climate totally unsuited for any other agricultural production and our cattle improves the land with their hoofs, grazing and manure. Millions of acres in Canada are like this and can not be wasted. At the same time, neither should feedlots be permitted to feed corn and grain to cattle. Our animals newer see a single corn and are the healthies and most beautiful, best tasting meat. Food production should be based on local conditions used to the fullest without any, or only the smallest amounts of unavoidable chemicals etc.
I keep on repeating,"Human labour doesn't cost anything to an economy" therefore it should be used to the fullest. Economists and politicians boast that a farmer now feeds 100, or whatever people, because they're ignorant fools and are jamming people into office towers to make them "producers" .
How to wake up people, I don't know? The only thing we can do is keep on hammering and there have been countless cases in history when people suddenly woke up. But the problem with this is, how to stop them from submitting themselves to another crazy ideology, like our market economy now? Ed Deak, Big Lake.
clubofrome
6 years ago
Yes I agree on the diet. My mouth is watering for a strip off one of your cows right now!
What you are saying is we really don't know anything! I'm getting a vision of Alister Sim dancing and singing Christmas morning, laughing away... "I really don't know anything..." and he found out he was truly happy! We are a wonderful experiment of life, creative and destructive at the same time, but an experiment just the same. I will stick with my theory that we are defective, not all but most. We are not genetically predisposed for success in terms of longevity on this planet. Not like the big reptiles. We have removed ourselves from nature and that was the beginning of the end. We've created rules and systems that don't compute, like economics. In order to get along you have to get along.... The industrial revolution kicked the whole thing into overdrive and now we sit with 6 billion beaks looking skyward. What we need is more worms! I hope there can be a collective process going forward to allow humanity the opportunity to make a correction. I just can't see over the fence we've built anymore. Can you imagine the consumption effects of 10 billion +? Look at the rumors coming out of New Orleans, savage defence of home and property. This should be a wake up call to humanity, we need to reconsider our strategy here! What a great opportunity for GWB to pull the troops out of Iraq! Just say we need our people home to take care of our own, where they belong.
Mother nature rules all, only she will decide who competes and who is successful. We are just along for the ride. Might as well enjoy it, find someone to love and start doing what we were intended to do...buy a sailboat!!
gasworks
6 years ago
It might surprise you to learn that according to an Alberta energy review, as of the year 2000, Kline's Alberta government was producing enough natural gas to power 68.5 SE2's (5 trillion cubic feet) and was burning 23% or 17.3 SE2's of it within the province. (about 15.9 went to the production of bitumen)
Add another 24.2 million tonnes (6.7 SE2's) in coal production for electricity production and you have some stinky air.
No figures are available in regard to the Premier's Cows or his own methane production, but I assume it to be substantial.
Bobb999
6 years ago
On meat eating: I, like most people my age, grew up eating meat. Now I'm content to venture no farther than an occasional veggie dog or soy based imitation ground as my "meat" fix.
Common wisdom used to be that meat was a necessary part of a healthy diet, and that humans required lots of protein.
Study after study now is showing meat to be a less than ideal food from a health standpoint.
Regular red meat eaters now face higher rates of heart disease, cancer and other diseases.
And limiting, not maximizing, protein and caloric intake seems to be associated with longer life spans.
For myself, I can't help but now view meat as
a wild extravagance and indulgence!
I agree with Ed (in several of his posts)though that it's likely healthier and more ethical to raise cattle as grazers and without giving them hormones and dubious unnatural foods or foods humans can eat (corn vs. grass).
On Alberta: A major reason Klein is dead set against Kyoto is that Alta. uses so much dirty coal for power generation.He doesn't want limits set on coal burning.Too "inconvenient".
And also, once oil sands projects ramp up, Alta. will be creating a lot more greenhouse gases due to the large amounts of N. gas req'd to separate bitumen from sand.
Marysue
6 years ago
Gasworks, great line re Klein:)) Yeah, we're getting so many Alabertans here in BC--they're taking over the province! They've defecated their own province up to the max, so now they want to do the same for us here:(
Watch out, Ed, I may be invading your part of the country soon...on my way to an ethical dilemma job--another resource-abusing job--all to pay the ravenous wolf at my door. The door itself is full of rot and will cave in any minute now, and so are the back windows. The Pirates of Lapointe decimated our village here in Port Alice, and our damned MP Duncan wants to water down the Workers'First Bill--even after all we've been through with those bankruptcy-engineering buccaneers!
Avicenna
6 years ago
Wait until the eventual article catching up with the non-stick cookware dilemma - then dupont and teflon may eventually have to step up to the plate, so to speak. This is not exactly news - as a rule of thumb, most synthetic things made in a lab (including drugs not found in nature) has unknown risks associated with its longterm use - simply because it hasn't gone through the natural test of time and life evolved in the absence of its presence - so has no defences against its by-products. This includes virtually all plastics that release "xenoestrogens" when heated and are shown to cause to cause cancer in living things - and much of the stuff that we consume nowadays. But we won't admit it just yet because it will effect the wealth of our unhealthy nations.
clubofrome
6 years ago
That's quite the soup mix down in New Orleans.