National Geographic Magazine

[Guest guest]

The October 06 issue has an article entitled Pollution WIthin.

Modern chemistry keeps insects from ravaging crops, lifts stains from

carpets, and saves lives. But the ubiquity of chemicals is taking a toll.

Many of the compounds absorbed by the body stay there for yearsand fears

about their health effects are growing.

My journalist-as-guinea-pig experiment is taking a disturbing turn. A

Swedish chemist is on the phone, talking about flame retardants, chemicals

added for safety to just about any product that can burn. Found in

mattresses, carpets, the plastic casing of televisions, electronic circuit

boards, and automobiles, flame retardants save hundreds of lives a year in

the United States alone. These, however, are where they should not be:

inside my body.

ke Bergman of Stockholm University tells me he has received the results of

a chemical analysis of my blood, which measured levels of flame-retarding

compounds called polybrominated diphenyl ethers. In mice and rats, high

doses of PBDEs interfere with thyroid function, cause reproductive and

neurological probems, and hamper neurological development. Little is known

about their impact on human health.

" I hope you are not nervous, but this concentration is very high, " Bergman

says with a light Swedish accent. My blood level of one particularly toxic

PBDE, found primarily in U.S.-made products, is 10 times the average found

in a small study of U.S. residents and more than 200 times the average in

Sweden. The news about another PBDE variantalso toxic to animalsis nearly

as bad. My levels would be high even if I were a worker in a factory

making the stuff, Bergman says.

In fact I'm a writer engaged in a journey of chemical self-discovery. Last

fall I had myself tested for 320 chemicals I might have picked up from

food, drink, the air I breathe, and the products that touch my skinmy own

secret stash of compounds acquired by merely living. It includes older

chemicals that I might have been exposed to decades ago, such as DDT and

PCBs; pollutants like lead, mercury, and dioxins; newer pesticides and

plastic ingredients; and the near-miraculous compounds that lurk just

beneath the surface of modern life, making shampoos fragrant, pans

nonstick, and fabrics water-resistant and fire-safe.

The tests are too expensive for most individualsNational Geographic paid

for mine, which would normally cost around $15,000and only a few labs have

the tecnical expertise to detect the trace amounts involved. I ran the

tests to learn what substances build up in a typical American over a

lifetime, and where they might come from. I was also searching for a way

to think about risks, benefits, and uncertaintythe complex trade-offs

embodied in the chemical " body burden " that swirls around inside all of

us.

Now I'm learning more than I really want to know.

Bergman wants to get to the bottom of my flame-retardant mystery. Have I

recently bought new furniture or rugs? No. Do I spend a lot of time around

computer monitors? No, I use a titanium laptop. Do I live near a factory

making flame retardants? Nope, the closest one is over a thousand miles

(1,600 kilometers) away. Then I come up with an idea.

" What about airplanes? " I ask.

" Yah, " he says, " do you fly a lot? "

" I flew almost 200,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) last year, " I say. In

fact, as I spoke to Bergman, I was sitting in an airport waiting for a

flight from my hometown of San Francisco to London.

" Interesting, " Bergman says, telling me that he has long been curious

about PBDE exposure inside airplanes, whose plastic and fabric interiors

are drenched in flame retardants to meet safety standards set by the

Federal Aviation Administration and its counterparts overseas. " I have

been wanting to apply for a grant to test pilots andflight attendants for

PBDEs, " Bergman says as I hear my flight announced overhead. But for now

the airplane connection is only a hypothesis. Where I picked up this

chemical that I had not even heard of until a few weeks ago remains a

mystery. And there's the bigger question: How worried should I be?

The same can be asked of other chemicals I've absorbed from air, water,

the nonstick pan I used to scramble my eggs this morning, my faintly

scented shampoo, the sleek curve of my cell phone. I'm healthy, and as far

as I know have no symptoms associated with chemical exposure. In large

doses, some of these substances, from mercury to PCBs and dioxins, the

notorious contaminants in Agent Orange, have horrific effects. But many

toxicologistsand not just those who have ties to the chemical

industryinsist that the minuscule smidgens of chemicals inside us are

mostly nothing to worry about.

" In toxicology, dose is everything, " says Karl Rozman, a toxicologist at

the University of Kansas Medical Center, " and these doses are too low to

be dangerous. " One part per billion (ppb), a standard unit for measuring

most chemicals inside us, is like putting half a teaspoon (two

milliliters) of red dye into an Olympic-size swimming pool. What's more,

some of the most feared substances, such as mercury, dissipate within days

or weeksor would if we werent constantly re-exposed.

Yet even though many health statistics have been improving over the past

few decades, a few illnesses are rising mysteriously. From the early 1980s

through the late 1990s, autism increased tenfold; from the early 1970s

through the mid-1990s, one type of leukemia was up 62 percent, male birth

defects doubled, and childhood brain cancer was up 40 percent. Some

experts suspect a link to the man-made chemicals that pervade our food,

water, and air. There's little firm evidence. But over the years, one

chemical after another that was thought to be harmless turned out

otherwise once the facts were in.

The classic example is lead. In 1971 the U.S. Surgeon General declared

that lead levels of 40 micrograms per deciliter of blood were safe. It's

now known that any detectable lead can cause neurological damage in

children, shaving off IQ points. From DDT to PCBs, the chemical industry

has released compounds first and discovered damaging health effects later.

Regulators have often allowed a standard of innocent until proven guilty

in what Leo Trasande, a pediatrician and environmental health specialist

at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, calls " an uncontrolled

experiment on America's children. "

Each year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviews an

average of 1,700 new compounds that industry is seeing to introduce. Yet

the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act requires that they be tested for any

ill effects before approval only if evidence of potential harm existswhich

is seldom the case for new chemicals. The agency approves about 90 percent

of the new compounds without restrictions. Only a quarter of the 82,000

chemicals in use in the U.S. have ever been tested for toxicity.

Studies by the Environmental Working Group, an environmental advocacy

organization that helped pioneer the concept of a " body burden " of toxic

chemicals, had found hundreds of chemical traces in the bodies of

volunteers. But until recently, no one had even measured average levels of

exposure among large numbers of Americans. No regulations required it, the

tests are expensive, and technology sensitive enough to measure the

tiniest levels didn't exist.

Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took a step

toward closing that gap when it released data on 148 substances, from DDT

and other pesticides to metals, PCBs, and plastic ingredients, measured in

the blood and urine of several thousand people. The study said little

about health impacts on the people tested or how they might have

encountered the chemicals. " The good news is that we are getting real data

about exposure levels, " says Pirkle, the study's lead author. " This

gives ds like me.

Now capped, sealed, and closely monitored, the dump, called the

Doepke-Holliday Site, also happens to be half a mile upriver from a county

water intake that supplied drinking water for my family and 45,000 other

households. " From what we can gather, there were contaminants going into

the river, " says Brodie, the EPA Remedial Project Manager for

Doepke. In the 1960s, the county treated water drawn from the river, but

not for all contaminants. Drinking water also came from 21 wells that

tapped the aquifer near Doepke.

When I was a boy, my corner of Kansas was filthy, and the dump wasn't the

only source of toxins. Industry lined the river a few miles awayfactories

making cars, soap, and fertilizers and other agricultural chemicalsand a

power plant belched fumes. When we drove past the plants toward downtown

Kansas City, we plunged into a noxious cloud that engulfed the car with

smoke and an awful chemical stench. Flames rose from fertilizer plant

stacks, burning off mustard-yellow plumals also includes perfluorinated

acids (PFAs)tough, chemically resistant compounds that go into making

nonstick and stain-resistant coatings. 3M also used them in its Scotchgard

protector products until it found that the specific PFA compounds in

Scotchgard were escaping into the environment and phased them out. In

animals these chemicals damage the liver, affect thyroid hormones, and

cause birth defects and perhaps cancer, but not much is known about their

toxicity in humans.

Long-range pollution left its mark on my results as well: My blood

contained low, probably harmless, levels of dioxins, which escape from

paper mills, certain chemical plants, and incinerators. In the

environment, dioxins settle on soil and in the water, then pass into the

food chain. They build up in animal fat, and most people pick them up from

meat and dairy products.

And then there is mercury, a neurotoxin that can permanently impair

memory, learning centers, and behavior. Coal-burning power plants are a

major source of mercur falls in rain, and eventually washes into lakes,

streams, or oceans. There bacteria transform it into a compound called

methylmercury, which moves up the food chain after plankton absorb it from

the water and are eaten by small fish. Large predatory fish at the top of

the marine food chain, like tuna and swordfish, accumulate the highest

concentrations of methylmercuryand pass it on to seafood lovers.

For people in northern California, mercury exposure is also a legacy of

the gold rush 150 years ago, when miners used quicksilver, or liquid

mercury, to separate the gold from other ores in the hodgepodge of mines

in the Sierra Nevada. Over the decades, streams and groundwater washed

mercury-laden sediment out of the old mine tailings and swept it into San

Francisco Bay.

I don't eat much fish, and the levels of mercury in my blood were modest.

But I wondered what would happen if I gorged on large fish for a meal or

two. So one afternoon I bought some halibut and swordfish at a fish market

in the old FerryBuilding on San Francisco Bay. Both were caught in the

ocean just outside the Golden Gate, where they might have picked up

mercury from the old mines. That night I ate the halibut with basil and a

dash of soy sauce; I downed the swordfish for breakfast with eggs (cooked

in my nonstick pan).

Twenty-four hours later I had my blood drawn and retested. My level of

mercury had more than doubled, from 5 micrograms per liter to a

higher-than-recommended 12. Mercury at 70 or 80 micrograms per liter is

dangerous for adults, says Leo Trasande, and much lower levels can affect

children. " Children have suffered losses in IQ at 5.8 micrograms. " He

advises me to avoid repeating the gorge experiment.

It's a lot harder to dodge the PBDE flame retardants responsible for the

most worrisome of my test results. My worldand yourshas become saturated

with them since they were introduced about 30 years ago.

Scientists have found the compounds planetwide, in polar bears in the

Arctic, cormorants in England, and killer whalee and his colleagues summed

up the test results for six different PBDEs, they found total levels of

390 ppb in the five-year-old girl and 650 ppbtwice my totalin the

18-month-old boy.

In 2001, researchers in Sweden fed young mice a PBDE mixture similar to

one used in furniture and found that they did poorly on tests of learning,

memory, and behavior. Last year, scientists at Berlin's Charit University

Medical School reported that pregnant female rats with PBDE levels no

higher than mine gave birth to male pups with impaired reproductive

health.

Birnbaum, an EPA expert on these flame retardants, says that

researchers will have to identify many more people with high PBDE

exposures, like the Oakland family and me, before they will be able to

detect any human effects. Bergman says that in a pregnant woman my levels

would be of concern. " Any level above a hundred parts per billion is a

risk to newborns, " he guesses. No one knows for sure.

Any margin of safety may be narrowing. In a review of severa studies,

Hites of Indiana University found an exponential rise in people and

animals, with the levels doubling every three to five years. Now the CDC

is putting a comprehensive study of PBDE levels in the U.S. on a fast

track, with results due out late this year. Pirkle, who is running the

study, says my seemingly extreme levels may no longer be out of the

ordinary. " We'll let you know, " he says.

Given the stakes, why take a chance on these chemicals? Why not

immediately ban them? In 2004, Europe did just that for the penta- and

octa-BDEs, which animal tests suggest are the most toxic of the compounds.

California will also ban these forms by 2008, and in 2004 Chemtura, an

Indiana company that is the only U.S. maker of pentas and octas, agreed to

phase them out. Currently, there are no plans to ban the much more

prevalent deca-BDEs. They reportedly break down more quickly in the

environment and in people, although their breakdown products may include

the same old pentas and octas.

Nor is it clear .

As unsettling as my journey down chemical lane was, it left out thousands

of compounds, among them pesticides, plastics, solvents, and a rocket-fuel

ingredient called perchlorate that is polluting groundwater in many

regions of the country. Nor was I tested for chemical cocktailsmixtures of

chemicals that may do little harm on their own but act together to damage

human cells. Mixed together, pesticides, PCBs, phthalates, and others

" might have additive effects, or they might be antagonistic, " says

Pirkle of the CDC, " or they may do nothing. We don't know. "

Soon after I receive my results, I show them to my internist, who admits

that he too knows little about these chemicals, other than lead and

mercury. But he confirms that I am healthy, as far as he can tell. He

tells me not to worry. So I'll keep flying, and scrambling my eggs on

Teflon, and using that scented shampoo. But I'll never feel quite the same

about the chemicals that make life better in so many ways.

" Disease is the retribution of outraged nature. "

Hosea Ballou

" Some remedies are worse than the disease. "

Pubilius Syrus

" Toliet water was MEANT to be FLUSHED, not WORN! "

Angel

" If having endured much, we at last asserted our 'right to know' and if,

knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take senseless and

frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of those

who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals, we

should look around and see what other course is open to us. "

Carson

" My toxicasa (world) is your toxicasa (world). "

Judith Goode

[Guest guest]

Absolutely Shocking story!!!

I've known for some time that PBDE's have been inplicated in SIDS

deaths being an antimony substance used in flame retardants for crib

mattresses which readily give off a toxic gas that can cause sudden

death to babies when body temperature interacts with a damp mattress.

see: http://www.peopleforcleanbeds.org/Antimony-SIDS.htm

A simple google search on <SIDS PBDE> will provide the horrible

facts..

Bottom line---- BE CAREFUL with infants sleeping on crib matresses

that have been treated with PBDE's....

Gibala

================================

>

>

> The October 06 issue has an article entitled Pollution WIthin.

>

> Modern chemistry keeps insects from ravaging crops, lifts stains

from

> carpets, and saves lives. But the ubiquity of chemicals is taking

a toll.

> Many of the compounds absorbed by the body stay there for yearsand

fears

> about their health effects are growing.

>

>

> My journalist-as-guinea-pig experiment is taking a disturbing

turn. A

> Swedish chemist is on the phone, talking about flame retardants,

chemicals

> added for safety to just about any product that can burn. Found in

> mattresses, carpets, the plastic casing of televisions, electronic

circuit

> boards, and automobiles, flame retardants save hundreds of lives a

year in

> the United States alone. These, however, are where they should not

be:

> inside my body.

>

> ke Bergman of Stockholm University tells me he has received the

results of

> a chemical analysis of my blood, which measured levels of flame-

retarding

> compounds called polybrominated diphenyl ethers. In mice and rats,

high

> doses of PBDEs interfere with thyroid function, cause reproductive

and

> neurological probems, and hamper neurological development. Little

is known

> about their impact on human health.

>

> " I hope you are not nervous, but this concentration is very high, "

Bergman

> says with a light Swedish accent. My blood level of one

particularly toxic

> PBDE, found primarily in U.S.-made products, is 10 times the

average found

> in a small study of U.S. residents and more than 200 times the

average in

> Sweden. The news about another PBDE variantalso toxic to animalsis

nearly

> as bad. My levels would be high even if I were a worker in a

factory

> making the stuff, Bergman says.

>

> In fact I'm a writer engaged in a journey of chemical self-

discovery. Last

> fall I had myself tested for 320 chemicals I might have picked up

from

> food, drink, the air I breathe, and the products that touch my

skinmy own

> secret stash of compounds acquired by merely living. It includes

older

> chemicals that I might have been exposed to decades ago, such as

DDT and

> PCBs; pollutants like lead, mercury, and dioxins; newer pesticides

and

> plastic ingredients; and the near-miraculous compounds that lurk

just

> beneath the surface of modern life, making shampoos fragrant, pans

> nonstick, and fabrics water-resistant and fire-safe.

>

> The tests are too expensive for most individualsNational

Geographic paid

> for mine, which would normally cost around $15,000and only a few

labs have

> the tecnical expertise to detect the trace amounts involved. I ran

the

> tests to learn what substances build up in a typical American over

a

> lifetime, and where they might come from. I was also searching for

a way

> to think about risks, benefits, and uncertaintythe complex trade-

offs

> embodied in the chemical " body burden " that swirls around inside

all of

> us.

>

> Now I'm learning more than I really want to know.

>

> Bergman wants to get to the bottom of my flame-retardant mystery.

Have I

> recently bought new furniture or rugs? No. Do I spend a lot of

time around

> computer monitors? No, I use a titanium laptop. Do I live near a

factory

> making flame retardants? Nope, the closest one is over a thousand

miles

> (1,600 kilometers) away. Then I come up with an idea.

>

> " What about airplanes? " I ask.

>

> " Yah, " he says, " do you fly a lot? "

>

> " I flew almost 200,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) last year, " I

say. In

> fact, as I spoke to Bergman, I was sitting in an airport waiting

for a

> flight from my hometown of San Francisco to London.

>

> " Interesting, " Bergman says, telling me that he has long been

curious

> about PBDE exposure inside airplanes, whose plastic and fabric

interiors

> are drenched in flame retardants to meet safety standards set by

the

> Federal Aviation Administration and its counterparts overseas. " I

have

> been wanting to apply for a grant to test pilots andflight

attendants for

> PBDEs, " Bergman says as I hear my flight announced overhead. But

for now

> the airplane connection is only a hypothesis. Where I picked up

this

> chemical that I had not even heard of until a few weeks ago

remains a

> mystery. And there's the bigger question: How worried should I be?

>

> The same can be asked of other chemicals I've absorbed from air,

water,

> the nonstick pan I used to scramble my eggs this morning, my

faintly

> scented shampoo, the sleek curve of my cell phone. I'm healthy,

and as far

> as I know have no symptoms associated with chemical exposure. In

large

> doses, some of these substances, from mercury to PCBs and dioxins,

the

> notorious contaminants in Agent Orange, have horrific effects. But

many

> toxicologistsand not just those who have ties to the chemical

> industryinsist that the minuscule smidgens of chemicals inside us

are

> mostly nothing to worry about.

>

> " In toxicology, dose is everything, " says Karl Rozman, a

toxicologist at

> the University of Kansas Medical Center, " and these doses are too

low to

> be dangerous. " One part per billion (ppb), a standard unit for

measuring

> most chemicals inside us, is like putting half a teaspoon (two

> milliliters) of red dye into an Olympic-size swimming pool. What's

more,

> some of the most feared substances, such as mercury, dissipate

within days

> or weeksor would if we werent constantly re-exposed.

>

> Yet even though many health statistics have been improving over

the past

> few decades, a few illnesses are rising mysteriously. From the

early 1980s

> through the late 1990s, autism increased tenfold; from the early

1970s

> through the mid-1990s, one type of leukemia was up 62 percent,

male birth

> defects doubled, and childhood brain cancer was up 40 percent.

Some

> experts suspect a link to the man-made chemicals that pervade our

food,

> water, and air. There's little firm evidence. But over the years,

one

> chemical after another that was thought to be harmless turned out

> otherwise once the facts were in.

>

> The classic example is lead. In 1971 the U.S. Surgeon General

declared

> that lead levels of 40 micrograms per deciliter of blood were

safe. It's

> now known that any detectable lead can cause neurological damage

in

> children, shaving off IQ points. From DDT to PCBs, the chemical

industry

> has released compounds first and discovered damaging health

effects later.

> Regulators have often allowed a standard of innocent until proven

guilty

> in what Leo Trasande, a pediatrician and environmental health

specialist

> at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, calls " an uncontrolled

> experiment on America's children. "

>

> Each year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviews

an

> average of 1,700 new compounds that industry is seeing to

introduce. Yet

> the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act requires that they be tested

for any

> ill effects before approval only if evidence of potential harm

existswhich

> is seldom the case for new chemicals. The agency approves about 90

percent

> of the new compounds without restrictions. Only a quarter of the

82,000

> chemicals in use in the U.S. have ever been tested for toxicity.

>

> Studies by the Environmental Working Group, an environmental

advocacy

> organization that helped pioneer the concept of a " body burden " of

toxic

> chemicals, had found hundreds of chemical traces in the bodies of

> volunteers. But until recently, no one had even measured average

levels of

> exposure among large numbers of Americans. No regulations required

it, the

> tests are expensive, and technology sensitive enough to measure

the

> tiniest levels didn't exist.

>

> Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

took a step

> toward closing that gap when it released data on 148 substances,

from DDT

> and other pesticides to metals, PCBs, and plastic ingredients,

measured in

> the blood and urine of several thousand people. The study said

little

> about health impacts on the people tested or how they might have

> encountered the chemicals. " The good news is that we are getting

real data

> about exposure levels, " says Pirkle, the study's lead

author. " This

> gives ds like me.

>

> Now capped, sealed, and closely monitored, the dump, called the

> Doepke-Holliday Site, also happens to be half a mile upriver from

a county

> water intake that supplied drinking water for my family and 45,000

other

> households. " From what we can gather, there were contaminants

going into

> the river, " says Brodie, the EPA Remedial Project Manager

for

> Doepke. In the 1960s, the county treated water drawn from the

river, but

> not for all contaminants. Drinking water also came from 21 wells

that

> tapped the aquifer near Doepke.

>

> When I was a boy, my corner of Kansas was filthy, and the dump

wasn't the

> only source of toxins. Industry lined the river a few miles

awayfactories

> making cars, soap, and fertilizers and other agricultural

chemicalsand a

> power plant belched fumes. When we drove past the plants toward

downtown

> Kansas City, we plunged into a noxious cloud that engulfed the car

with

> smoke and an awful chemical stench. Flames rose from fertilizer

plant

> stacks, burning off mustard-yellow plumals also includes

perfluorinated

> acids (PFAs)tough, chemically resistant compounds that go into

making

> nonstick and stain-resistant coatings. 3M also used them in its

Scotchgard

> protector products until it found that the specific PFA compounds

in

> Scotchgard were escaping into the environment and phased them out.

In

> animals these chemicals damage the liver, affect thyroid hormones,

and

> cause birth defects and perhaps cancer, but not much is known

about their

> toxicity in humans.

>

> Long-range pollution left its mark on my results as well: My blood

> contained low, probably harmless, levels of dioxins, which escape

from

> paper mills, certain chemical plants, and incinerators. In the

> environment, dioxins settle on soil and in the water, then pass

into the

> food chain. They build up in animal fat, and most people pick them

up from

> meat and dairy products.

>

> And then there is mercury, a neurotoxin that can permanently

impair

> memory, learning centers, and behavior. Coal-burning power plants

are a

> major source of mercur falls in rain, and eventually washes into

lakes,

> streams, or oceans. There bacteria transform it into a compound

called

> methylmercury, which moves up the food chain after plankton absorb

it from

> the water and are eaten by small fish. Large predatory fish at the

top of

> the marine food chain, like tuna and swordfish, accumulate the

highest

> concentrations of methylmercuryand pass it on to seafood lovers.

>

> For people in northern California, mercury exposure is also a

legacy of

> the gold rush 150 years ago, when miners used quicksilver, or

liquid

> mercury, to separate the gold from other ores in the hodgepodge of

mines

> in the Sierra Nevada. Over the decades, streams and groundwater

washed

> mercury-laden sediment out of the old mine tailings and swept it

into San

> Francisco Bay.

>

> I don't eat much fish, and the levels of mercury in my blood were

modest.

> But I wondered what would happen if I gorged on large fish for a

meal or

> two. So one afternoon I bought some halibut and swordfish at a

fish market

> in the old FerryBuilding on San Francisco Bay. Both were caught in

the

> ocean just outside the Golden Gate, where they might have picked

up

> mercury from the old mines. That night I ate the halibut with

basil and a

> dash of soy sauce; I downed the swordfish for breakfast with eggs

(cooked

> in my nonstick pan).

>

> Twenty-four hours later I had my blood drawn and retested. My

level of

> mercury had more than doubled, from 5 micrograms per liter to a

> higher-than-recommended 12. Mercury at 70 or 80 micrograms per

liter is

> dangerous for adults, says Leo Trasande, and much lower levels can

affect

> children. " Children have suffered losses in IQ at 5.8 micrograms. "

He

> advises me to avoid repeating the gorge experiment.

>

> It's a lot harder to dodge the PBDE flame retardants responsible

for the

> most worrisome of my test results. My worldand yourshas become

saturated

> with them since they were introduced about 30 years ago.

>

> Scientists have found the compounds planetwide, in polar bears in

the

> Arctic, cormorants in England, and killer whalee and his

colleagues summed

> up the test results for six different PBDEs, they found total

levels of

> 390 ppb in the five-year-old girl and 650 ppbtwice my totalin the

> 18-month-old boy.

>

> In 2001, researchers in Sweden fed young mice a PBDE mixture

similar to

> one used in furniture and found that they did poorly on tests of

learning,

> memory, and behavior. Last year, scientists at Berlin's Charit

University

> Medical School reported that pregnant female rats with PBDE levels

no

> higher than mine gave birth to male pups with impaired

reproductive

> health.

>

> Birnbaum, an EPA expert on these flame retardants, says that

> researchers will have to identify many more people with high PBDE

> exposures, like the Oakland family and me, before they will be

able to

> detect any human effects. Bergman says that in a pregnant woman my

levels

> would be of concern. " Any level above a hundred parts per billion

is a

> risk to newborns, " he guesses. No one knows for sure.

>

> Any margin of safety may be narrowing. In a review of severa

studies,

> Hites of Indiana University found an exponential rise in

people and

> animals, with the levels doubling every three to five years. Now

the CDC

> is putting a comprehensive study of PBDE levels in the U.S. on a

fast

> track, with results due out late this year. Pirkle, who is running

the

> study, says my seemingly extreme levels may no longer be out of

the

> ordinary. " We'll let you know, " he says.

>

> Given the stakes, why take a chance on these chemicals? Why not

> immediately ban them? In 2004, Europe did just that for the penta-

and

> octa-BDEs, which animal tests suggest are the most toxic of the

compounds.

> California will also ban these forms by 2008, and in 2004

Chemtura, an

> Indiana company that is the only U.S. maker of pentas and octas,

agreed to

> phase them out. Currently, there are no plans to ban the much more

> prevalent deca-BDEs. They reportedly break down more quickly in

the

> environment and in people, although their breakdown products may

include

> the same old pentas and octas.

>

> Nor is it clear .

>

> As unsettling as my journey down chemical lane was, it left out

thousands

> of compounds, among them pesticides, plastics, solvents, and a

rocket-fuel

> ingredient called perchlorate that is polluting groundwater in

many

> regions of the country. Nor was I tested for chemical

cocktailsmixtures of

> chemicals that may do little harm on their own but act together to

damage

> human cells. Mixed together, pesticides, PCBs, phthalates, and

others

> " might have additive effects, or they might be antagonistic, " says

> Pirkle of the CDC, " or they may do nothing. We don't know. "

>

> Soon after I receive my results, I show them to my internist, who

admits

> that he too knows little about these chemicals, other than lead

and

> mercury. But he confirms that I am healthy, as far as he can tell.

He

> tells me not to worry. So I'll keep flying, and scrambling my eggs

on

> Teflon, and using that scented shampoo. But I'll never feel quite

the same

> about the chemicals that make life better in so many ways.

>

>

> " Disease is the retribution of outraged nature. "

> Hosea Ballou

>

> " Some remedies are worse than the disease. "

> Pubilius Syrus

>

> " Toliet water was MEANT to be FLUSHED, not WORN! "

> Angel

>

> " If having endured much, we at last asserted our 'right to know'

and if,

> knowing, we have concluded that we are being asked to take

senseless and

> frightening risks, then we should no longer accept the counsel of

those

> who tell us that we must fill our world with poisonous chemicals,

we

> should look around and see what other course is open to us. "

> Carson

>

> " My toxicasa (world) is your toxicasa (world). "

> Judith Goode

>