article: The Body Burden

August 23, 2005

THE BODY BURDEN

by Fischer

In a pioneering study, we tested a Bay Area family for a suite of chemical

pollutants. The results stunned even scientists.

A casual observer of Rowan Hammond Holland sees a little towhead, devilishly

cute, who grins impishly while tossing food at the family dog. A pediatrician

sees a kid who's a bit small for his age: 30-odd inches tall, 22 pounds, about

10th percentile for 20-month-old boys.

But not even his mother could guess what's in his blood: flame retardants, at

concentrations higher than measured almost anywhere in the world for someone not

handling the stuff for a living. He's a typical kid from a typical family,

picked for an Oakland Tribune investigation of chemical pollutants in our

bodies.

The surprising result, scientists say, suggests infants and toddlers have vastly

higher levels of some chemical pollutants than health officials suspect - or

even consider safe. But no one can say. Rowan is the only toddler, at least in

the United States, who's been tested for such things, despite evidence these

compounds taint our blood, our food, our house dust, our

kids.

This is our " body burden " our chemical legacy, picked up from our possessions,

passed to our children and sown across the environment. It's the result,

scientists say, of 50 years of increasing reliance on synthetic chemicals for

every facet of our daily lives.

Only recently have regulators grasped its scope. Health officials have yet to

fully comprehend its consequence.

We are all, in a sense, subjects of an experiment, with no way to buy your way

out, eat your way out or exercise your way out. We are guinea pigs when it comes

to the unknown long-term threat these chemicals pose in our bodies and, in

particular, our children.

In the first study of its kind, Rowan and his family had their blood, hair and

urine tested for a suite of chemical pollutants thought to be ubiquitous in our

environment.

The tests showed PCBs, plasticizers, mercury, lead and cadmium in each family

member. Chemicals used to make Teflon and GoreTex contaminated their

blood. Mikaela, Rowan's 5-year-old sister, had more dibutyl phthalate - a

plasticizer found in nail polish and cosmetics - in her urine than 90 percent of

the 328 kids age 6-11 tested so far in the United States.

The shock was the family's level of a class of flame retardants - polybrominated

diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs - used in everything from TV casings to rugs to foam

cushions. In the United States, where levels are 10 to 100 times higher than the

rest of the world, the average adult is thought to have 36 parts per billion in

their blood.

A cocktail mixed at that concentration would have 36 drops of gin in a rail tank

car of tonic. Rowan's mom, Michele Hammond, had 138 ppb. His dad,

Holland, 102. His sister, 490. And Rowan: 838 ppb. Scientists start to see

behavioral changes in lab rats at 300 ppb.

" This is a very serious warning of very small children being heavily exposed, "

said Aake Bergman, professor of environmental chemistry at Stockholm

University in Sweden and one of the world's foremost experts on human exposure

to fire retardants. " We may have many more people being exposed at similar

levels. " Proportions will vary, and indeed, a follow-up test of the Hammond

Hollands found lower - but still alarming - PBDE levels in the children. A

similar chemical stew can be found in every adult and child in the country,

scientists say. The exposure comes courtesy of our lifestyle, in which synthetic

chemistry imbues the modern world with convenience beyond that of any generation

in history.

We make perfume from petroleum and preserve food in plastic. Our chances of

dying in a building fire are almost nil. We clean bathrooms without scrubbing,

spill coffee without worry of a stain.

Yet these modern wonders come with a price. As synthetic chemicals have

saturated our lives, so too have they permeated our bodies.

We don't know the effect it has on our health. But scientists do have

suspicions.

Autism, once an affliction of 1 in 10,000 children, today is the scourge of 1 in

166.

Childhood asthma rates have similarly exploded. And one in 12 couples of

reproductive age in the United States is infertile.

One may not cause the other; to draw such links remains, for now, beyond the

grasp of science. Industry and other scientists say exposure remains well below

levels considered harmful - the Hammond Holland's numbers notwithstanding. Our

ability to detect these compounds, invisible even five years ago, has

outstripped our ability to interpret the results.

Publishing body burden data, in other words, does little but make people worry.

But if it was your 2-year-old, would you want to know?

MONDAY NIGHT at the Hammond Holland's Berkeley home, and life is quiet.

, 35, a high school photography teacher and coach of the school's

mountain biking team, is away leading a team cycling class at the Berkeley YMCA.

Mikaela started kindergarten last fall and has mastered the alphabet, which she

proudly shows off: big A's and little c's, small d's and capital Z's,

painstakenly written by small fingers with remnants of red polish on the nails.

The alphabet is in random order but amazingly complete.

Rowan is finishing dinner - corn, carrots, pasta with tomato sauce, hard-boiled

egg yolk and cheese. He has dispensed with bib and utensils in favor of a more

direct hand-to-mouth approach, announcing he's done by shoveling a big handful

of spaghetti off his high-chair tray onto the floor.

Michele, watching, doesn't mind. The dog will get it. And at least Rowan is

eating.

In February 2004, Rowan fell off the growth charts, registering

below the zero percentile for kids his age. He's since held steady at the 10th

percentile, but Michele, 36, says it's never been easy to get him to eat - or

sleep.

His location at the lower end of normal and the upper end of active could be a

simple result of genetics. Or it could be his thyroid.

The danger of PBDEs, says Dr. Mark , director of the Pediatric

Environmental Health Specialty Unit at the University of California, San

Francisco, is that they act as developmental neurotoxins and disrupt thyroid

activity in rats and other lab animals. And they do so at levels one-third of

Rowan's, say scientists at the state Environmental Protection Agency.

Michele, who figures her son is just a small, active kid, tries not to dwell on

that thought.

Doctors such as who specialize in environmental contaminants see no

reason the family should have such high exposures. Researchers at Albemarle, a

Louisiana-based manufacturer of brominated flame

retardants, are equally

mystified.

" It's hard to interpret the results, yet so important, " said Dr. ,

associate director of 's UCSF clinic and a senior scientist at the Natural

Resources Defense Council. " The fact that (the family's) levels are on the high

side is symptomatic of what's going on out there. "

Swedish scientists such as Bergman first alerted ®MDNM¯the world to growing

levels of PBDEs in our bodies. Researchers monitoring Swedish breast milk

samples for a slew of contaminants found PBDE concentrations doubling every five

years over the 1980s and 1990s.

The United States recently launched a similar program but it tracks only a dozen

of chemical families and won't release PBDE data until 2007. Efforts to create a

similar program in California for a suite of environmental contaminants,

including PBDEs, were shot down last year after the state Chamber of Commerce

labeled it a job killer.

But tipped off by the Swedes, researchers here found

concentrations in wildlife, human blood and breast milk doubling even faster -

every 18 months.

That's just fire retardants. And one type, at that.

There are organochlorine pesticides such as DDT, the pesticide that launched the

modern environmental movement. Banned in the 1970s, they can be found today in

our house dust, food and bodies.

PCBs, banned in 1979, similarly plague us. Decades worth of evidence shows these

chemicals -predecessors of and close chemical cousins to PBDEs - don't belong in

the body. Numbers have declined over the years, but they're there in Rowan and

Mikaela and all of us - a lifetime's supply, courtesy of Monsanto Chemical Co,

once the only domestic manufacturer.

Also everywhere, but with little known of the health consequences, are

phthalates - plasticizers that make lotions absorbable, nail polish pliable,

cologne scented and plastic soft. Our kidneys filter them quickly from our body,

but a daily replenishing shower from our

material world keeps our bodies' phthalate levels steady.

Then there's Teflon, GoreTex, Scotchgard and other non-stick and stain-repellent

wonders. In 2000, 3M, the sole U.S. manufacturer of the two crucial ingredients

necessary to make such products, announced it had found traces of one -

perfluorooctane sulfanate - in virtually every human blood sample it had tested

in the United States and Europe.

Sure enough, the two compounds turned up in the Hammond Hollands, too.

MICHELE IS ANGRY , but not worried. Not yet. " If in the next year something goes

wrong with Rowan, then I'm all of a sudden going to freak out about these

numbers, " she said.

Michele is a classic naturalist, most at home in the field, where she identifies

birds from their songs and can name the grasses underfoot. At the University of

California, Berkeley, she researches grassland ecology.

She finds most frustrating her inability to protect her kids from the

pollutants. If she

wanted to curb Rowan's and Mikaela's exposures, Michele wouldn't know where to

start.

Sources are everywhere, yet impossible to track.

PBDEs show up in foam cushions and plastic casings. But which ones? One

manufacturer might use a brominated flame retardant, another might use

phosphorous. There's aluminum trihydrates and magnesium hydrates. The label

never says.

" You can't make a universal judgment that just because it's a plastic, it has

flame retardant, " said Ranken, senior research and development adviser for

Albemarle, one of three domestic manufacturers of decaBDE, a brominated flame

retardant.

" Your house may be different from my house. Your carpeting might be different.

You might have a little bit of polypropylene . I might have nylon. " Phthalates

(THAAL-ates) are similar. We need them to make plastics soft and flexible.

Without them fragrances could not be dissolved into lotions and colognes. Ink

would flake off bread bags. Your vinyl shower

curtain would crack as you pulled it open.

But like PBDEs, some products have them. Some don't. Good luck trying to tell

the difference.

" The fact of life is that phthalates are a remarkably useful product that .

allow people without a lot of money to have a first-world lifestyle, " said

n Stanley, manager of the Phthalate Esters Panel for the American Chemistry

Council. " The risk is a theoretical risk. If you had the smallest baby with the

most exposure for the longest time, you theoretically have a risk. Practically,

do you have a risk? Nobody's seen it yet. "

But is anybody looking?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is conducting the only widespread

biomonitoring program in the United States, looking at national exposure to

pesticides, PCBs, dioxins and phthalates, among others. Its next report,

cataloging some 148 compounds, is due later this spring. But there are gaps.

Its last report, released in 2003, summarized the results

of 2,541 people tested for dibutyl phthatalate, an additive found in nail

polish, cosmetics, pill coatings, printing inks and, oddly, insecticides.

Of those, 328 were children under the age of 11. None were younger than 6. Yet

exposure increases as the age group gets younger, with kids between 6 and 11 on

average having twice the level as adults over 20.

That's true with the Hammond Hollands. Mikaela's levels are three times her

mom's and almost nine times her dad's.

" There's not enough (information) to allow for big generalizations, " said

, the UCSF physician, who with met with the family and helped

interpret their results. " What it does do is show the huge need for this

information, both to allow us to put these results in context and also give us

information on what's going on out there over time and over age groups.

" We're blind to what's going on out there. "

FORTY-SEVEN minutes in and 's heart is churning at

close to 180 beats per minute. His legs blur against his stationary cycle,

thighs and calves straining, as he leads his high school bike team through a

Monday night " spin " class.

A furious beat thumps from the room's loudspeakers. Sweat pours off 's

nose. Flywheels spin, pedals whirl. Then the pitch jumps a notch as

goads the teens and the pace, incredibly, picks up.

Two years ago weighed 237 pounds. Today he's 180. He went from a size

40 waistband to a size 34, which he last wore in high school.

His wedding suit is too big for him.

He shed those pounds on the bike trails, trying to keep up with his students. He

gave up alcohol and started eating better.

PCBs, dioxins, DDT, PBDEs, phthalates all love fat. Which is one reason many

stick around so long, sequestered in our waistlines.

So as 's fat burned off, so, too, did some of his body burden, doctors

surmise. It could explain why his exposures, in many

instances, are lower than his children's.

He also - unwittingly - played a dangerous game, and said. As the

fat broke apart, contaminants were freed. Some got trapped by the bile and were

eliminated. Some landed in other fat cells. And some likely migrated to nerve

cells or the brain.

Michele, meanwhile, shed her body burden as only a woman can.

Breast milk is 4 percent fat. As Michele nursed Mikaela and then Rowan, she

drained a life's accumulation of pollutants into her children.

Her PCB results show that most dramatically: Mikaela has 207 ppb - slightly more

than her dad.

Rowan has 355. But Michele has 69.

That's no reason to stop breast-feeding, cautioned Kim Hooper, the state PBDE

expert with Cal EPA who has done extensive work with breast milk. Quite the

opposite. Because in addition to fat, breast milk contains essential vitamins,

minerals, growth hormones, enzymes, proteins and antibodies.

Plenty of evidence

also suggests Rowan and other children get a far bigger dose from their

environment. Several studies have found dust studded with these contaminants in

the part-per-million range - 100 to 1,000 times what's found in humans. We all

ingest a little dust daily, with children eating far more than adults due to

higher hand-to-mouth contact.

The other big route to our bodies is food.

THREE YEARS AGO, Arnold Schecter, a professor at the University of Texas School

of Public Health, set out to show how much our diets contribute to our body

burden.

He pulled 30 everyday items off the shelves of three Dallas supermarkets. They

got sliced, diced and mashed to a pulp, washed in hexane, vaporized and shot

into a high-resolution gas chromatograph. He found PBDEs in eggs, milk, steak

and fish. He also found them in soy infant formula, albeit at a minuscule 16

parts-per-trillion <cm-cq> concentration.

In Emeryville, Wenning is doing the same thing

with chickens, finding no difference in PBDE levels between free-range organic

hens and factory-farmed roasters.

The compounds are spread far and wide, in air and dust. They're taken up by

plants, eaten by animals. We eat the animals and spread our sewage sludge back

on the fields.

In this respect, organically grown food is no different from conventional, said

Wenning, a principle at Environ International Corp., an environmental consulting

firm advising industry and regulators. " It's all recycled . Until we can

actually break the molecules apart, they're going to come around again. "

As Michele and look around their house and wonder, industry - and to a

certain extent regulators - see red herrings.

It would make little sense to toss the family's hand-me-down polystyrene carpet

or their recently purchased foam-and-coil mattress and replace them with

all-natural products, even if they could afford it. Nobody understands how PBDEs

migrate from your

living room couch. Or if they even do.

Come summer, mother and daughter will still polish their toenails together, as

they always have. With phthalates everywhere, would doing otherwise make any

difference?

;

Not if the Tribune's lab results are any indication. Michele uses no cosmetics

beyond nail polish, yet her level of mono-butyl phthalate - the body's byproduct

of a compound common in beauty products _ sits above average for American women,

based on CDC data.

The CDC cannot say whether that's good or bad for her health.

That, industry says, is the problem with trace analysis. We can see in the

parts-per-trillion range, but we have little idea what it means. While consumers

may be alarmed, industry looks at the numbers and sees the need for further

study.

" The science doesn't say (exposure) is going to grow to any level where we see

concern anytime soon, " said Ron Zumstein, vice president for health, safety and

environment at Albemarle, the

decaBDE manufacturer.

" That's kind of how we look at it. You've got a huge margin of safety. "

Others note we didn't see epidemics 30 years ago, when DDT and PCB use were at

their height. Teflon has been applied to pots since 1962, with no apparent

problems from the compound or its precursors.

Zumstein and a crew of Albemarle scientists analyzed the Hammond Holland's PBDE

results at the Tribune's request. They were skeptical.

The samples could have been contaminated, they said. There's no easy explanation

for why the children would be so much higher than their parents, and the results

don't seem to match what little we know about PBDEs.

The EPA is assessing exposure risks and is expected to announce soon what it

sees as the gaps in the research. Zumstein and his team say they're waiting for

that before taking the next step.

" The (family's) results are outside the range of what we've seen, " Zumstein

said. " We don't want to jump to conclusions

if the science has not been scrutinized yet. "

That's exactly what industry has been saying for years, contend critics seeking

to reform U.S. chemical oversight.

We don't know what these chemicals do in our body. The science is still being

scrutinized. Yet we still put these compounds in our products, expose them to

our children, eat them daily for dinner.

IN A COUNTRY OF 300 MILLIION, we know the levels of fire retardant in fewer than

200 individuals. Meanwhile annual worldwide demand for PBDEs, according to

industry groups, was almost 150 million pounds in 1999, up 67 percent from 1990.

Half of that ends up in the U.S. market.

We have a legacy of reacting after the fact - lead, asbestos, mercury, ozone

depletion.

Studies, notoriously difficult to construct, remain scarce. The federal

government hasn't made funding such science a priority, declining, for example,

to underwrite any studies of toxins in breast milk, Schecter

said.

Would we curb our appetite - take more of a precautionary approach - if we all

knew, like the Hammond Hollands, what lurks in our bodies?

" I'm not happy with a few data points. We cannot draw final conclusions from a

family of four, " said Bergman, the Swedish PBDE researcher. But " this is an

indication of a very serious problem that society has to address. "

************************

SOMETIME IN LATE 1997, 3M Corp. medical director Dr. Larry Zobel learned of a

troubling stain on his company's signature product:

Everyone's blood in the United States apparently was contaminated with a tiny

amount of a chemical used to make Scotchgard, his company's famously successful

stain-resistant spray.

Zobel discovered this as his lab was checking workers' blood for perfluorooctane

sulfonate, or PFOS - a key chemical used to manufacture the product.

That the compound contaminated workers' blood came as no surprise. But the

chemical was showing up in the supposedly clean blood samples used to verify the

results.

So 3M contacted two biological supply companies, bought pooled samples

representing some 760 random United States blood donors and ran the same test.

It found PFOS in every sample.

Zobel then went to the Red Cross and asked for samples from 600 different

donors. Same result. He turned to Europe, pooling

samples from blood banks in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

Same result.

Chemical reform hampered by opposition

Zobel's lab would go on to test the blood from 238 elderly people around

Seattle, 645 more Red Cross donors and 598 U.S. children.

It would find the compound in every sample but two, with some children scoring

at or above the level 3M found in its workers.

Alarmed, 3M in 1998 notified the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of its

findings. Two years later, in May 2000, 3M announced it would cease production

of PFOS and a related chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA.

Together, the two are critical for many consumer and industrial products - from

GoreTex and Teflon to firefighting foam, power plant pipe linings and jet engine

gaskets.

After 50 years of providing the world with the chemical, 3M was out of the

business.

University researchers the world over, suddenly alerted to the problem,

started finding both PFOS and PFOA everywhere they looked - polar bears in the

Canadian Arctic, cormorants in the Sea of Japan, the blood of Inuits in Alaska.

Four qualities set off a toxicologist's alarm bell when investigating a

pollutant: Does the compound accumulate as it works up the food chain, does it

stick around for a long time in our bodies, is it widespread and does it cause

cancer?

PFOA and PFOS persist. This year the EPA declared PFOA a potential carcinogen.

There's no question they're everywhere.

" I would've never predicted it, " Zobel said in an interview. " I am amazed. "

ADVANCES in synthetic chemistry have made our lives more comfortable and secure

than possible even a generation ago. GoreTex, nylon and polystyrene are the

fabric of our lives. Perfumes come from petroleum, vinyl siding protects our

homes. You can shop all day and touch nothing but plastic.

In short, synthetic chemicals are the material foundation of our society.

The downside of that transition is increasingly apparent: In the course of a

generation, we have contaminated virtually all of Earth's biological systems.

Every day we expose millions of people to chemicals and chemical mixtures for

which the toxicity is unknown, said , a research scientist with

the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the University of

California, Berkeley.

" A disturbing pattern of human health damage has emerged that appears to be

linked to . synthetic chemical substances. " Regulators did not realize how

widespread PFOA and PFOS exposure

were until 3M alerted them. They had no way to test for the compounds until 3M

provided the method. They had no idea how long they stayed in our bodies until

3M scientists offered an estimate - four years for PFOA and eight for PFOS until

the body rids itself of just half the load.

Regulators have no data, however, on what they do in humans, though scientists

say PFOS alters thyroid metabolism in monkeys and acts as a developmental toxin

in mice. 3M says years of medical surveillance find no problems attributable to

the chemicals among its workers.

Society's blindness to PFOA and PFOS is far from unique.

The EPA receives 108 applications on average per month from companies seeking to

introduce new chemicals on the market - 32,559 since 1979. With the application

comes " all available data " on production volume, use and environmental release

but not a word on toxicity unless the manufacturer happens to have some data.

Other information the EPA might want -

be it the chemical's effects, physical properties, health impact - comes from

agency files or public databases. And the burden rests with the EPA to prove a

problematic chemical should be restricted.

So perhaps it comes as no surprise that, since 1979, the agency has forced

restrictions on just nine applications.

3M AND ON OF ITS largest customers, DuPont, had every reason to suspect

fluorinated compounds like PFOA and PFOS would show up far, far away from the

garments and carpets their products protected.

As early as the 1970s, company documents obtained by the Environmental Working

Group show industry researchers knew the compounds were virtually

indestructible.

When scientists want an idea how fast bacteria can break down an industrial

molecule, they turn to activated sewage sludge. Undisturbed in soil, PCBs have a

half-life - the time it takes half the molecules to decompose - of 25 years. In

sewage sludge, the half-life is 28 days. DDT in such sludge has a half-life of

seven hours. PFOA and PFOS show no change, according to 3M data given to the

EPA.

Their resiliency is one of their greatest selling points.

" They're just essential, " said C. Buck, a chief scientist for DuPont's

surface protection solutions division. " They're very, very stable

at very high temperatures. . They're not cheap and they're not easy to

fabricate. We're still selling these materials, even though they're expensive,

because they're extraordinarily useful. "

PFOA serves only one purpose: to mix oil and water. Technically a " processing

aid, " not an ingredient, PFOA acts much the way a few drops of soap do when

added to a jar of water and cooking oil.

" It helps bring things together that normally wouldn't get together, " Buck said.

Without it, we would have no Teflon, no Stainmaster, no GoreTex. Car engines

would be larger and less efficient without PFOA-made polymers to withstand

higher oil and engine temperatures. Silicon Valley would be hard-pressed to make

such miniature chips without that high performance plastic pipe liners to keep

impurities from leaching into etching solutions.

Power companies depend on fluoro-products to keep pollutants from the

environment. Firefighters spread fluorotelomer-based foam over fuel

spills to smother flames. When a jet crashes on a tarmac, nothing extinguishes a

fire faster.

The stability also explains why they show up in the blood of virtually everyone

tested. Half the people in the United States, based on 3M's and other

scientists' estimates, have 30 or more parts-per-billion PFOS in their system.

For PFOA, the median exposure is 5 ppb.

Mashed potatoes seasoned at that concentration would have five grains of salt

among 110 pounds of spuds.

The question now is straightforward: Does exposure pose a problem for our

health? Because we can't go back.

" We don't understand how much a rat, let alone a human, can withstand before

long-term effects begin to catch up, " said , an associate

professor with the University of Alberta, who is studying fluorinated compounds.

" We're going to be exposed to them presumably long-term, and we don't know what

the long-term consequences are. "

DuPont disagrees. In a study released

earlier this year of 1,024 PFOA workers, the company reported no ill health

effects beyond a 10-point rise in cholesteral levels among the most-exposed.

Either way, industry has no replacement for PFOA.

" We have to have it, " said Boothe, strategic planning manager for DuPont's

fluoroproducts division. " We've looked for 30 to 40 years and not found an

acceptable substitute. "

So when 3M announced it was out of the PFOA business, industry sat up. Someone

needed to make it.

TODAY AT DuPONT'S sprawling Fayetteville Works production facility in North

Carolina, a modest plant produces the United States' only domestic supply of

PFOA.

DuPont started building the plant in 2000, after 3M's announcement. It has 99

percent less PFOA emissions than 3M's old plant.

DuPont maintains the chemical is largely obliterated during the manufacture of

consumer goods. Trace amounts might exist in some products, but nothing

approaching levels found in humans, the company says.

So how does it get everywhere around the globe? Scientists have lots of theories

but are largely certain of one thing: Somehow this compound is, contrary to

industry's claim, ending up in everyday consumer items - our pots, coats,

carpets and clothing.

" If you're thinking global spread, it's the products, " said Kurunthachalam

Kannan, an associate professor at the State University of New York, Albany,

School of Public Health.

But that's where the knowledge

largely ends.

IN THE WAY, PFOA is part-way down a well-trod path blazed first by PCBs, DDT,

hexane and asbestos. All went on the market with, at best, an incomplete

understanding of their health effects. All were largely unstudied until problems

began showing up. All have been banned or sharply limited.

But chemical policy is driven by our demand for products. The benefit of the

doubt goes to the chemical. Regulators and activists must prove harm before

restrictions kick in.

PFOA is just one of 81,600 chemicals produced or imported today in the United

States, and critics note 3M's after-the-fact discoveries about PFOS and PFOA

could be said for any number of those others.

Federal law, in place since 1979, directs regulators to assess the hazards of

chemicals in commerce and control those of the greatest concern. But in the past

20 years, four agencies - the National Academy of Sciences, the General

Accounting Office, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment

and the U.S. EPA - have said little progress has been made on either front. The

Toxic Substances Control Act, they all conclude, has fallen short of its

objective.

" Do we know there's a hazard? " asked , the UC Berkeley researcher. " We

don't even have the data to begin thinking about it. "

notes that industry can produce safer chemicals if they chose - and fails

to do so at its peril.

Take lead solder.

In the early 1990s, the American electronics companies fought regulations

driving lead - a neurotoxin - from solder. European and Japanese manufacturers

moved to lead-free technology, said, and today the domestic electronics

industry lags its overseas competitors.

But don't blame industry alone. Our appetite for these chemicals drives the

market - and to some extent, regulators.

In the last 25 years, the country's consumption of synthetic chemicals increased

8,200 percent, said. Looking just at the 100 highest-volume

compounds, the United States put 975 billion pounds into our products and

environment in 2002, 16 percent more than in 1992.

The law does not require routine testing of chemicals, and critics contend

required tests provide only limited information about new chemicals. The EPA has

no power to order more testing or in many cases to make their information

public, because the law protects data businesses claim as confidential.

To approve a new chemical for commerce, EPA chemists compare its structure to a

list of similar compounds. If no red flags pop up, off to the market it goes.

The EPA has 90 days to review a chemical, though approval typically comes

earlier because the agency has accumulated enough chemistry data to fast-track

large categories of compounds.

Ken Moss, policy analyst for the EPA's Office of Pollution Prevention and

Toxics, says new chemicals get a " very robust and active " review. The agency may

not have the power to require more tests from

manufacturers, but it can and often does coerce more data from industry, he

said.

" We do have the power of the office and the power of the pocketbook, " he said.

" It's not perfect, but it does make the point (to industry) that we need to see

further testing. "

But there are gaps.

When the law went into effect in 1979, PFOA, PFOS and 58,000 other chemicals

already in use got grandfathered in, no questions asked. Of the 32,550

applications for new chemicals received since, 1,662 were withdrawn after the

EPA suggested changes or restrictions, 300-plus underwent more testing and a

handful were flat-out rejected.

Thousands of chemicals are found in everyday consumer products. The EPA has full

toxicity data for about 25 percent.

THERE ARE alternatives.

Europe in 2006 is set to switch to a chemical policy that requires chemicals be

evaluated for safety before going on the market. Called REACH - Registration,

Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals - the policy promises to revolutionize

the way European regulators look at chemicals.

" They're basically saying no data, no market, " said Dr. Ted Schettler, science

director for the Science and Environmental Health Network. " That, of course, is

calling in the cards, and the industry is just up in arms about it. "

What's needed, Schettler and other critics of current policy say, are rules that

place precaution first.

Europe's move has other governments taking a look. The California Legislature,

for instance, has asked the University of California to assess the state's

chemical policy. That report is due to the Legislature later this spring.

Two years ago, the state became the first to enact a ban of two classes of a

common flame retardant, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. California's

law, effective 2008, is modeled after a European Union ban on those compounds.

Hawaii, Maine and Michigan since have followed.

The Bush administration, however, is moving the opposite direction. The Commerce

and State departments, in concert with industry, are attempting to water down

REACH, according to a report produced for the House Committee on Government

Reform. One example: A 2002 e-mail from the U.S. Trade Representative's office

to industry groups urges industry to " get to the Swedes and Finns " - who lead

the world in environmental pollutant research - " and neutralize their

environmental arguments. "

This comes as surveys of breast milk and blood show Americans have the highest

levels of PBDEs in the world - 10 to 100 times the concentration the Swedish

researchers have found in their population.

Levels have shot up so high, so fast that 5 percent of the population - 15

million

Americans - are thought to have PBDE levels near those that cause thyroid

problems in laboratory rats, said Tom Mc, a toxicologist with the

California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

An Oakland Tribune investigation of a Berkeley family, picked in part because

they lead a largely chemical-free life, found that. Laboratory analysis of their

blood found surprisingly high levels of PBDEs, particularly in the children.

Researchers, industry scientists and doctors working with the family on the

Tribune's behalf see no reason for such high exposures.

There's also the question of risk. Industry officials repeatedly note that a few

parts-per-billion of a contaminant in one's blood represents an unknown threat.

" It gets to be a little exasperating, " said O'Toole, U.S. program director

for the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, which represents the world's

bromine manufacturers. " Why don't we talk about the levels of risk when

you take a fire retardant out of a product? "

" The fire safety risk is ignored and tends to be ignored at people's peril. .

You're replacing a real precaution with a theoretical one. "

And that perhaps is the point. The information to make a decision isn't there.

Which makes it awfully tough to make a case for banning a compound as important

- or as invisible - as PFOA or PBDE.

If the EPA said industry couldn't make any more PFOA, for instance, would our

health be any better?

" We don't know, " said , the University of Alberta researcher. " Until

that's straightened out, it's difficult to take any action. It's not fair to the

manufacturer and it may not do anything. "

BACK AT DuPONTt, Rickard, the company's chief toxicologist, has spent a

lot of time thinking about that very issue.

He looks at PFOA's persistence and global reach and, without downplaying them,

pulls out another set of statistics.

The chemical has been in commerce for the better part of 50 years. Products made

from it permeate every facet of our lives. Tests on archived blood samples show

exposures are increasing almost imperceptibly: about 1 ppb a decade.

So in a society where tobacco use kills 440,000 every year and obesity is an

epidemic, how important is it to get worked up over PFOA, a contaminant that may

be present in microscopic amounts in a fast-food hamburger's wrapper or your

Stainmaster-treated carpet?

" It is appropriate, when we identify a biopersistent material found in the

entire population, that we understand that chemical, " Rickard said.

" But let's not overreact because that chemical is there. "

****************

No one can prove the link. But it's there.

It's there for Liroff, diagnosed with breast cancer, who spent the 1950s

on Long Island - where DDT saw liberal application - and the 1970s as a

veterinary technician in California, bathing pets in malathion and other

since-banned pesticides.

It was there for Rose Mendez, who staked a claim as one of Los Angeles'

promising young architects and won a 1997 contest to redesign San Francisco's

Union Square. Non-Hodgkins lymphoma snuffed that promise in 2002, killing her at

age 32.

It's there for any parent watching their 3-year-old succumb to the early signs

of autism.

Something in our environment is killing us.

For 50 years, society has pumped the global environment full of synthetic

chemicals, reaping benefits never before imagined. And over those 50 years our

bodies, almost without exception worldwide, have become repositories for those

industrial and consumer chemicals.

What price for safety, convenience?

This is our chemical " body burden. " A few years ago scientists could not even

see it. Now researchers are finding some of these compounds impair our health.

Scientists can draw precious few lines connecting toxic load to specific

ailment. Simply because we detect a pollutant in our blood does not mean it

causes harm, many toxicologists say.

More profoundly, the ability to link body burden to harm remains just beyond the

limits of science, for now. Exposures are fuzzy. We move from place to place.

There are far too many variables. Epidemiology - the study of the incidence and

prevalence of disease - has considerable limits.

But these chemicals do take a toll, researchers suspect. They're in our

environment, in our kids. They will not kill us today or tomorrow or perhaps

ever, but they threaten us with insidious,

almost impossible-to-detect debilities and frustrations - a child robbed of a

few IQ points, a couple struggling to conceive.

Infants begin life with detectable levels of PCBs and DDT in their veins. Fire

retardants lace mothers' breast milk. A chemical once used to make Scotchgard

taints everybody's blood.

As with the blood of polar bears in the Arctic and cormorants in Japan.

As exposures have risen, so, too, have a string of ailments:

Breast cancer incidence rates have climbed 90 percent since 1950. Non-Hodgkins

lymphoma, a cancer tied to a weakened immune system, has seen a 250 percent jump

in incidence rates.

Sperm counts appear down - by some indications a man born in the 1970s has

three-quarters the sperm as a man born in the 1950s. Eight percent of all

couples of reproductive age in the U.S. are infertile, according to the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services.

And fertility problems seem to be increasing.

Between 1982

and 1995, the number of women in their prime childbearing years to report some

difficulty conceiving increased 42 percent, according to one study.

During those 13 years, Swedish researchers tracking fire retardants in breast

milk saw a sevenfold leap - from .5 parts-per-billion to 3.5 parts-per-billion.

One does not cause the other. But the parallel trends sound a klaxon for our

health.

" We're all confident environmental exposures of some sort do cause cancer, " said

Dr. Sheila Zahm, deputy director of the National Cancer Institute's division of

cancer epidemiology and genetics. " But it's very difficult at these very low

levels to know what is going on.

" We don't have good answers. "

To be sure, diet, exercise and other lifestyle choices remain by far the biggest

culprit for most afflictions. In the United States, three-quarters of all new

cancers can be traced to smoking, diet and obesity alone.

For instance, during the same 50-year period

that saw breast cancer rates rise 90 percent, lung cancer in women jumped 685

percent - largely because women started smoking in large numbers in the '60s and

'70s.

Also worth noting: Our environment by most markers remains considerably cleaner

than 30 years ago. We're living longer. PCBs, DDT and other dangerously

bioaccumulative, persistent pollutants have been banned since the '70s.

Suspected carcinogens are tightly regulated. Big killers - tuberculosis,

pneumonia, childhood mortality - are, with few exceptions, problems for Third

World economies.

But some of those with cancer - 2 percent, 5 percent, no one truly knows - had

their ailment foisted upon them, triggered, according to the National Cancer

Institute, by the soup of environmental toxins in which we live.

Only in the past 10 years, in fact, have scientists come to understand how

exquisitely small amounts of some pollutants mimic our body's hormones, setting

off cascades of largely unknown, and likely

unwanted, downstream effects.

" Even things like a reduction in one's ability to process information or

reductions in intelligence - these are subtle changes, " said Tom Mc, staff

toxicologist at California's Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.

" We're not talking about retardation. We're talking about someone getting (an IQ

score of) 160 instead of 170. "

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention set out in the late 1990s to

catalog the nation's environmental chemical burden. The first report, in 2001,

surveyed thousands of Americans for 27 different compounds. The second, released

in 2003, upped the catalog to 116. The third, to be released this spring, will

track 148.

But the CDC will never know for sure. Some 82,000 chemicals are in commerce

today, with nearly 1,000 new ones added annually. Not all make it to our bodies.

But some will. Not all prove poisonous. But some do.

We have metals, nicotine and benzene in our blood.

Phthalates, used to make our plastics soft and dissolve fragrances in our

shampoos and lotions, filter through our kidneys. Polychlorinated biphenyls, or

PCBs, settle in our fat. Pesticides, both organophosphate and organochlorine,

cling to house dust, even though the latter was banned in the United States in

the 1970s. Fire retardants and pest repellents and plastic all can be found in

blood, urine and breast milk.

Toxicologists insist the dose makes the poison. And for the average American,

these exist in minute amounts, a few dozen parts per billion or less - a

chocolate bar split among the 750,000 residents of San Francisco.

But that does not mean they do no harm.

" As studies have gotten better, we're finding effects at lower and lower

levels, " said Don Wigle, a semi-retired epidemiologist with Health Canada and

author of the textbook " Child Health and the Environment. "

" It's not going away. "

And not all of us are average.

For reasons

unexplained, studies consistently show about 5 percent of all subjects have

extremely high blood concentrations of environmental toxins - in some cases,

particularly for PBDEs, near concentrations known to cause defects in laboratory

animals.

Which means 15 million Americans live near a threshold that gives scientists

pause, Mc said. " The comparison is very close. . It doesn't mean we're

finding effects in people, but it is a cause for concern. " A Berkeley family

tested by the Oakland Tribune supports this point.

The family was picked because they lived as chemically clean a life as possible,

yet lab tests found PCBs, phthalates, mercury, lead and cadmium in each member.

The surprise was the family's level for a class of fire retardants common in

plastic appliances, foam cushions and carpet backing.

The parents were well above what scientists consider " normal " for the United

States. But their kids, for reasons no one fully understands, had levels as high

or higher than found in workers handling the stuff for a living.

Thirty five years ago, Wigle emerged with his Ph.D. and set to work in a world

where lead exposure was simply an assumed price to pay for civilized society.

Doctors find signs of acute brain damage at a blood lead level of 80 ppb. But at

the time in the United States, 60 ppb marked the CDC's health threshold.

Physicians, Wigle said, would basically shrug at a child with 40 ppb in their

body.

The nation's average, after all, was 14 ppb for children under 5, and lab

researchers considered 10 ppb the minimum exposure.

Today 10 ppb is the government's threshold. Scientists suspect no safe level of

exposure exists, particularly for children.

In the hunt to define our body burdens' toll, scientists often fail to see the

damage until once a compound is removed. Lead is such an example.

In 1975 the California Air Resources Board ordered lead out of gasoline - not

amid concern of lead

exposure, but because catalytic converters necessary to curb smog in Los Angeles

wouldn't work with the octane booster.

By 1980 the CDC could start drawing links. From 1976 to 1980, lead levels

dropped 40 percent in gasoline, 40 percent in air and 40 percent in the blood of

every population cross-section the agency could track.

The information single-handedly spiked a 1981 proposal by the U.S. EPA to

increase the amount of lead allowed in leaded gasoline. " It's hard to put a

price on how valuable those data are, " Wigle said.

Since then, researchers tracking cognitive ability, memory, sensory function and

motor skills in children have found dysfunction at progressively lower lead

levels. They've found a link between lead and preterm delivery, low birth weight

and fetal growth retardation.

But the main effect is on the brain, with exposure tied to impaired development

and to aggressive, destructive and delinquent behavior.

Today the average U.S.

level is 2 ppb.

But the damage from high lead levels haunts us still. Many scientists suspect

the exposure fried four to five points off the IQ scores of every kid growing up

across the nation at that time.

" You're shifting the whole curve to the left, " Wigle said. " You're drastically

reducing the proportion of very bright kids and drastically increasing the

proportion of kids with learning disabilities. "

For lead, the evidence is clear. For newer compounds, the data remain far too

sketchy to prove - or disprove - similar conclusions. " There's not a lot of

studies done, " Wigle added. " We don't have 40 to 50 years of experiments

observing what happens to humans. "

Rick Becker hears this all the time. He doesn't believe it.

Our body burden, he - and many others - say, hovers below the level where those

chemicals do harm.

Becker holds a Ph.D. in toxicology and pharmacology. He spent the 1990s

assessing the exposure risk of pesticides, hazardous

waste and other chemicals for the California Environmental Protection Agency.

Today he's a senior toxicologist with the American Chemistry Council,

representing every major chemical manufacturer in the country.

The central tenet of modern toxicology holds that the dose makes the poison. The

amount ingested, in other words, has great say in whether a substance is a

killer.

Ethanol is one example, Becker notes. Toxic at high levels, we all consume tiny

amounts every day in fruits, vegetables and grains with no effect.

Aspirin is another. Swallow a full bottle, and someone will be calling 911 on

your behalf.

But break a pill in half, then in half again and again and again, and Becker

will be able to detect aspirin in your blood. But the dose has no effect.

" You have a similar principle with reproductive toxicity, " Becker said. " The

idea that ultra-low doses cause harm is a hypothesis. But that hypothesis

generally has been shown not to hold

up. "

Take perfluorinated compounds - the stuff behind GoreTex, Scotchgard and Teflon.

They're uncomfortably long-lasting, with a half-life - the time needed for the

body to purge half its total exposure - of between four and eight years in

humans. At high levels, they cause liver damage. The U.S. EPA sees potential for

carcinogenity in the chemistry but hasn't made a definitive decision yet.

Studies suggest we all have trace amounts in our bodies, with an average of 30

ppb for PFOS, one such compound.

If that posed a problem, toxicologists reason, we'd surely see it in chemical

workers at 3M's plants - where blood levels average 2,000 ppb. But years of

tracking data find their health no different than ours, said the company's chief

medical officer.

" The low levels in the general population really do not represent a health

issue, " Dr. Larry Zobel, 3M's medical director said. " Those levels are not

associated with health effects. "

That's the danger,

say Zobel, Becker and other epidemiologists and toxicologists studying

environmental toxins. We can detect these compounds in microscopic amounts. But

we don't yet know what it means.

" If you can't measure it, it's a non-detect and you're not worried, " said

Savitz, a professor at the University of North Carolina and president of the

Society for Pediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology.

" There's a little bit of danger, if you will, of the information itself. You

could argue that by being aware of it, what could it do, other than help people

to worry? "

Or would you make a different choice?

In a modest office off the University of California, Berkeley campus, Professor

Nazaroff pulls a piece of paper with a simple graph from among a sheaf

of papers.

The graph shows what happens when you mix a few capfuls of Pine-Sol with water

and start cleaning.

In a ventilated chamber - akin to a room with an open window - Nazaroff mixed a

bit of

vaporized cleaner with a modest bit of ozone - what blows through a typical

urban house on a summer day.

The result, due to a bit of reactive chemistry, was particles. An invisible

cloud of hundreds upon thousands of microscopic particles still being generated

four hours after the release.

That in itself is alarming. Tiny particles lodge in the lungs and are considered

a key contributor to asthma. But these weren't just any particles.

They were carcinogens.

Nazaroff is one of a relatively few scientists studying the chemistry and

physics of indoor air.

He looks at the ways such everyday items as carpets and air fresheners and

cleaners like Pine-Sol interact, producing problematic compounds nobody

expected. Given that Americans spend 90 percent of their time indoors on

average, his findings are eye-popping.

Take Pine-Sol. The original formula _ not, for whatever reason, the

lemon-scented version _ consists of 15 percent to 20 percent terpene.

A relatively harmless hydrocarbon, terpenes are everywhere, from hand lotion to

dry cleaners to air fresheners, even plants. That pine-fresh scent from

Pine-Sol? The whiff of citrus from Formula 409? What you smell are terpenes.

But mix those benign cleaners with highly reactive ozone - from car pollution,

from an ozone-generating air cleaner, from just living in a city - and that

pine-fresh scent becomes far more malevolent: formaldehyde, carbonyls and other

reactive and unstable compounds.

" You don't have to be in Livermore on a Spare the Air Day, " he said. " You're

going to get ozone combining with these terpenes, and you're going to get all

these secondary compounds. "

Oakland-based Clorox, maker of Pine-Sol and Formula 409, notes that plant-based

cleaners such as Pine-Sol have been around for 150 years or more. They've played

a key role improving hygiene and human health.

So if you splash some in a bucket of water, mop your floor, then open the

windows

to let it dry, does the potential for chemical reaction outweigh the benefits of

a clean floor?

" Pine-Sol has never been shown to be an irritant, " said spokeswoman

O'Connell. " We're not disputing there's potential for reaction, but what it

means is really unclear. "

The problem doesn't sit on Clorox's doorstep alone, Nazaroff added. It's the

whole industry.

What amazes him is not the dearth of hard facts about how these chemicals

interact. It's that so many believe they can improve their environment by adding

an odor, or lighting a candle or - even worse, he says - using an air cleaner

that deliberately introduces ozone.

" You start with a biologically innocent compound, and you expose it to ozone,

and you get a carcinogen, " he said. " There's a lot of downside risk from

reactive chemistry, as our investigations have begun to explore. "

In some ways, Nazaroff's puzzlement gets to the center of the issue. We live in

a rich culture, with pans that

don't stick, jackets that shed water, sprays that disinfect toilets, traps that

kill ants.

We have lotions to moisturize chapped skin and colognes to make us smell good.

Our grandparents would never recognize today's tiny, fuel-efficient car engines.

We enjoy first-rate medical care.

But we also carry a legacy - a tiny bit of the chemicals that make it all

possible. It's in our parents, us and our children. And no one yet knows what it

means.

" We should not be arrogant or ignorant, " said Wigle, the Health Canada

epidemiologist. " Arrogant in the sense that we think we know a lot about the

significance of these contaminants, or ignorant in not admitting what we don't

know.

" And there's a lot we don't know. "

***************

What can I do? That's been the most common response to this newspaper's

investigation into the chemicals we are carrying around in our bodies. There

are no easy answers. Here's what we know:

Phthalates, PBDEs, particulates and perfluorinated compounds contaminate our

environment and our bodies almost without exception.

In high doses, these chemicals seem to be harmful to animals.

Although our exposure to these chemicals is apparently increasing, there's no

solid evidence that they're doing anything TO us.

So the phthalates in your perfume may contribute to the possibility that your

children will have reproductive difficulties. Or they may have no effect on you

or your family. Nobody knows. But that's not a very satisfying answer.

However, there are steps you can take to reduce the chemical load your body

bears.

Eat low on the food chain

The principle is simple: We know that many chemicals - PCBs and PBDEs in

particular - are stored in fat. So when a rainbow trout eats PBDE-laced feed,

the chemical settles into its fat. When we eat the fish, we ingest its chemical

load. Such are the hazards of being at the top of the food chain.

Although PBDEs enter the environment as fire-retardants in the foam in

upholstered furniture, in hard plastics such as the backs of computer monitors

and heat-resistant plastics such as coffeemakers, many scientists theorize that

our food is the biggest source of PBDEs in our bodies.

To reduce your risk, try

to limit your intakes of animal fats. One of the most foolproof ways would be to

become a vegan - eschewing all meat, cheese, eggs and fish - but not many people

are willing to do that.

Here are three things you can do:

Avoid farm-raised salmon and rainbow trout - which generally have the highest

concentrations of PBDEs.

Limit consumption of animal fats, since PBDEs are present in virtually all

samples of them, especially dairy products, fish and beef.

Choose skim versions of dairy products and low-fat meat such as chicken breasts.

Or replace some of your meat and dairy foods with grains, vegetables and fruits.

Consider cosmetics

First the good news: The watchdog Environmental Working Group says that you

shouldn't necessarily stop using your favorite makeup, hair gel or lotion.

After testing chemical levels in beauty products, they concluded that consumers

should be " concerned, not alarmed. "

The group did find that both men's and women's beauty products contain

phthalates, chemicals used to soften nail polish and help dissolve fragrance in

cosmetics. They can be found in nail polish, lip balms, hair sprays, shampoos,

perfumes and deodorants.

That's starting to change, though.

European Union legislation has banned two widely used kinds of phthalates

suspected of contributing to birth defects. As a result, a number of companies,

including Revlon and L'Oreal, have developed phthalate-free products. Other

brands - such as Aveda and most products from the Body Shop and Urban Decay -

have always been phthalate-free.

In 2003, a coalition of

environmental groups tested 72 cosmetics and beauty products for the presence of

phthalates, and the results were, at best, random.

All the perfumes tested contained phthalates, but there wasn't much consistency

in the rest. Aussie Megahold Mousse contained phthalates, but Aussie Mega

Styling Spray did not. Maybelline Ultimate Wear Nail Enamel contained them;

Maybelline Shades of You Nail Color did not. (To see the complete list of

cosmetics tested, visit http://www.nottoopretty.org.)

Industry groups stress that the levels found in products are extremely small -

that you'd have to essentially shower in nail polish, for example, to approach a

phthalate exposure associated with negative health effects in lab animals.

The Environmental Working Group recommends making small changes to reduce your

chemical load. Use one less hair styling product, for example. Choose a blush

with

fewer chemicals rather than one with more.

As part of their " Skin Deep " report, the group rated thousands of products and

recommended products to try and products to avoid. Visit

www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep for full results.

Major manufacturers of phthalates point out that the European Union ban was

enacted without specific proof of phthalates' harm. They also say that

phthalates help make nail polish flexible, give vinyl its bendability and make

things smell nice. For industry's take, visit www.phthalates.org.

Sleeping on PBDEs

Mattresses are frequently cited as a source of the flame retardants called PBDEs

- chemical cousins of carcinogenic PCBs - and themselves suspected of ill

effects on human health.

Like with phthalates, the long-term news is optimistic. In 2003, the California

Legislature banned two forms of PBDEs;

they'll be phased out entirely by 2008.

In the meantime, they're probably present in the foam in your couch, chairs, car

seats and dashboard. (Unless, of course you have a Volvo. The Swedish company

makes PBDE-free cars.)

Mainstream mattress companies say that they're aware and concerned about the

PBDE problem. The Web site for the Sleep Products Safety Council, an industry

group, says PBDE-laden mattresses are being phased out and replaced by a new

fire-resistant technology.

Will that technology spare us future problems? We can't tell. The next

generation of flame retardants - a product called Firemaster 550 - lists two

ingredients on its Material Safety Data Sheet: Ingredient A, Ingredient B.

That's right. We have no idea. It's a trade secret.

Industry also notes that the Environmental Protection Agency has found no proven

risk to human health associated with PBDEs. But the EPA has no data whatsoever

on whether effects seen in PBDE-exposed lab animals

can occur in humans.

Getting a mattress without PBDEs, meanwhile, can be tricky - primarily because

most people have no idea what PBDEs are.

A call to a major mattress retailer in the Bay Area asking about the possibility

of a PBDE-free mattress was telling.

" All our mattresses have flame-retardants, " the salesman said. When asked

specifically about PBDEs, he said he had no idea.

Some companies don't use PBDEs at all, though. IKEA finished phasing out all

PBDEs in its products in 2002 - and haven't used PBDEs in their children's

mattresses for at least 15 years. Other companies that make PBDE-free mattresses

include European Sleep Works in Berkeley, McRoskey of San Francisco and Lifekind

mattresses. You can get a completely chemical-free wool, natural latex or

cotton-wool mattress from the Natural Bedroom in Santa . Or you can get a

chemical-free mattress and bedding from the Web site www.nontoxic.com, based in

Walnut Creek. But you may need a doctor's prescription to circumvent

California's flame-retardant laws. You also should remember that there's an

increased fire risk with these products.

IKEA has locations in Emeryville and East Palo Alto. Visit www.ikea-usa.com.

European Sleep Works, (510) 841-5340, www.sleepworks.com.

McRoskey Airflex Mattress Company, (415) 861-4532.

The Natural Bedroom, (707) 824-0914, www.naturalhomeproducts.com.

Lifekind mattresses, (800) 284-4983 or www.lifekind.com.

The Web site for the Sleep Products Safety Council is www.safesleep.org.

Microwaving plastic?

The most alarming health scares inevitably come through e-mail forwards. This

is true even though forwarded e-mail messages are, hands down, one of the worst

ways to acquire accurate information.

But what about the one that talks about microwaving plastic? The e-mail warns

that if you microwave using plastic wrap, molecules of dioxin can migrate from

the plastic to your food. Creepy. And sort of true. It's not true that

" dioxins " go from your plastic into your food.

There is some evidence, however, that some molecules - phthalates in some

flexible plastic, and another chemical plasticizer DEHA - can migrate into

high-fat foods such as meats or cheeses. And that's not just if you're

microwaving plastic. Many environmentally conscious Web sites, such as

www.greenguide.org, tell consumers to avoid wrapping high-fat foods in plastic

altogether for fear that

you'll end up eating minuscule plastic bits.

Cheese, for instance, is 40 percent fat. And fat is the perfect solution for

fat-soluble compounds like PBDEs, phthalates, other synthetic chemicals.

So when Don Wigle, a semi-retired epidemiologist who spent his career tracking

such chemicals for Health Canada, buys cheese, he shaves the outer layer off.

" I don't know if it's doing me any good, " he said. " On the other hand, I know

I'd rather not eat that stuff and find out later it's a problem. "

Of course, manufacturers of plastic wrap don't like all this worry.

A Consumer Reports test in 1998 found worrisome plasticizers in both Saran Wrap

and Reynolds Wrap, but none in Glad Crystal Clear Wrap.

Since then, S.C. has reformulated Saran Wrap, and makes it clear on its

Web site that their products are made of polyethylene and do not contain either

the plasticizers phthalates or DEHA. Reynolds Plastic Wrap is still made of

PVC, which

contains DEHA. Alcoa, the company that manufactures Reynolds Plastic Wrap, says

there are no health risks associated with its use. What plastic wrap is made of

is not required to be listed on product labels. Whatever conclusions you draw,

here are some guidelines you should follow:

Everyone from plastic manufacturers to the USDA says that if you are going to

microwave with plastic wrap it should be plastic wrap that explicitly says it's

microwave safe.

Never microwave in plastic containers that have not been specifically marked

microwave-safe, especially containers made to hold other foods. And it's prudent

to avoid microwaving in plastic take-out containers. Heat encourages leaching of

some plastic molecules from the container into the food.

When it's in the microwave, do not let the plastic wrap touch your food, because

it can melt into fats or sugar. Keep the plastic one inch from food.

More information is at www.plasticsinfo.org

Shower curtain alternatives

Vinyl shower curtains are almost all made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which

contains phthalates and other plasticizers. If you want an alternative, here are

few:

A hemp shower curtain ($79.99) from www.ecobathroom.com. It'll absorb water but

will keep your bathroom from getting wet.

A cotton canvas shower curtain ($36) from www.realgoods.com.

A hemp shower curtain with hand-carved Tatuga nut buttons from

www.natural-fibers.com ($89).

Clearing the air What does " clean " smell like to you? For many people, clean

air actually smells like fragrance - the fresh scent of Formula 409, the flowery

smell of air fresheners, the snap of Pine-Sol. But many of these fragrance

particles - relatively harmless on their own - react with ozone, a smog

ingredient and byproduct of traffic, to create carcinogenic particles.

Instead of spraying some air freshener, open a window and remove the source of

the odors.

Smoke out

To improve indoor air quality, the single most important thing you can do is not

smoke in your home and not allow others to smoke in your home. Beyond the smell,

smoking releases tiny particles that attach to curtains, upholstery, carpets and

walls. These particles are eventually inhaled.

Empower yourself The sad fact is that all the green buying you can afford might

not change your body burden by a molecule. " The answer is not consumers making

choices in the

market, " said Holland, father of the Bay Area family this newspaper

tested for chemicals. " The answer is changing chemical policies. "

Holland should know - the family lives as chemical-free a life as they can, yet

his 20-month-old son has extraordinarily high PBDE levels.

That underscores the need for reform. " If it goes in anybody's carpet, it goes

in everybody's environment, " said Gopal Dayaneni of Silicon Valley Toxics

Coalition.

But when it comes to individual impact, nothing rivals a letter to your elected

representative, said PSR's Marmagas. " The more these issues are kitchen

table issues that people talk about, the more members of Congress are going to

feel the heat and feel responsible and feel the need to do something about it. "

FIVE WAYS TO REDUCE YOUR BODY BURDEN

Here are five quick ways to reduce your exposure to various environmental

contaminants, from Dr. , an associate director at the University of

California, San Francisco, Pediatric Environmental Health Speciality Unit and

the co-author of " Generations at Risk: Reproductive Health and the Environment. "

Avoid cigarette smoke. " That is just a walking smokestack right there, " she

said.

Avoid fish high in mercury and PCBs, such as swordfish, shark, tuna steaks and

farm-raised salmon.

Eat a low-fat diet. Pollutants like brominated flame retardants concentrate as

they work up the food chain. So avoid the burgers and binges on ice cream and

rich cheeses. " I don't mean never eat them, but just keep them down. "

Watch what you apply to your skin. If possible, pick natural or unscented

cosmetics - ones without a lot of chemicals. " That might mean avoiding nail

polish, but it's one of the major sources of phthalates. "

If you're buying a computer or TV, make sure it's free of polybrominated

diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. Most major manufacturers have phased them out, but

not all.

August 24, 2005

Greetings,

Thank You all for all the great information.

Elvira

[] article: The Body Burden

THE BODY BURDEN

by Fischer

In a pioneering study, we tested a Bay Area family for a suite of chemical

pollutants. The results stunned even scientists.

A casual observer of Rowan Hammond Holland sees a little towhead, devilishly

cute, who grins impishly while tossing food at the family dog. A pediatrician

sees a kid who's a bit small for his age: 30-odd inches tall, 22 pounds, about

10th percentile for 20-month-old boys.

But not even his mother could guess what's in his blood: flame retardants, at

concentrations higher than measured almost anywhere in the world for someone not

handling the stuff for a living. He's a typical kid from a typical family,

picked for an Oakland Tribune investigation of chemical pollutants in our

bodies.

The surprising result, scientists say, suggests infants and toddlers have

vastly higher levels of some chemical pollutants than health officials suspect -

or even consider safe. But no one can say. Rowan is the only toddler, at least

in the United States, who's been tested for such things, despite evidence these

compounds taint our blood, our food, our house dust, our

kids.

This is our " body burden " our chemical legacy, picked up from our possessions,

passed to our children and sown across the environment. It's the result,

scientists say, of 50 years of increasing reliance on synthetic chemicals for

every facet of our daily lives.

Only recently have regulators grasped its scope. Health officials have yet to

fully comprehend its consequence.

We are all, in a sense, subjects of an experiment, with no way to buy your way

out, eat your way out or exercise your way out. We are guinea pigs when it comes

to the unknown long-term threat these chemicals pose in our bodies and, in

particular, our children.

In the first study of its kind, Rowan and his family had their blood, hair and

urine tested for a suite of chemical pollutants thought to be ubiquitous in our

environment.

The tests showed PCBs, plasticizers, mercury, lead and cadmium in each family

member. Chemicals used to make Teflon and GoreTex contaminated their

blood. Mikaela, Rowan's 5-year-old sister, had more dibutyl phthalate - a

plasticizer found in nail polish and cosmetics - in her urine than 90 percent of

the 328 kids age 6-11 tested so far in the United States.

The shock was the family's level of a class of flame retardants -

polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs - used in everything from TV casings to

rugs to foam cushions. In the United States, where levels are 10 to 100 times

higher than the rest of the world, the average adult is thought to have 36 parts

per billion in their blood.

A cocktail mixed at that concentration would have 36 drops of gin in a rail

tank car of tonic. Rowan's mom, Michele Hammond, had 138 ppb. His dad,