Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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 These chemicals included pesticides, phthalates, dioxins, flame retardants, and breakdown chemicals of Teflon, among other chemicals known to damage the immune system. Shortly after, investigators in the Netherlands turned up similar findings: they discovered an array of chemicals commonly found in household cleaners, cosmetics, and furniture in the cord blood of thirty newborns.
OUR AUTOGEN-FILLED WORLD: HOW DID WE BECOME SO CONTAMINATED?
How do these chemicals creep into our bodies? |
Stacy Malkan
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 The results were similar to previous studies: each person's body was contaminated with hundreds of industrial chemical compounds, including pesticides, stain repellents, flame retardants, plasticizers, even PCBs that were banned in the 1970s. But the subjects of this study were unlike any of the others. These were newborn babies, fresh from the womb. |
Mark Sircus
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 DDT and lindane), 45 PCB congeners and 21 polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) flame retardants, including those found in the commercially traded penta-, octa- and deca-BDEs.
Their FINDINGS:
?Every person tested is contaminated by a cocktail of known highly toxic chemicals which were banned from use in the UK during the 1970s and which continue to pose unknown health risks.
?We found 70 (90 per cent) of the 78 chemicals we looked for in the survey. The highest number of chemicals found in any one person was 49, nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of the chemicals looked for.
? |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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 Regulatory battles are ongoing or looming on the horizon over issues that range from limiting pesticide residues to controlling greenhouse air pollution emissions to reining in diesel truck exhaust (in regard to which the European Union is even more reluctant to take action than the United States is) to banning persistent chemicals such as bromine-containing flame retardants.18 Detailing each and every one of these examples is not necessary. The general principles that have been elucidated in this book are also applicable to these issues. |
Mark Schapiro
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 Donkers told me that this list is about fifteen hundred substances long, including those nonstick chemicals and flame retardants that were found in the blood of Eleonora Bruno and her bio-monitored counterparts in America.
Malcolm Woolf, whom I spoke with when he was chief legislative counsel to the then-Democratic minority on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (and is now a policy adviser on natural resources to the National Governors Association), told me that the European's push toward tighter safety regulations signals the end of TSCA. |
| Babies were sleeping in pajamas treated with poly-brominated flame retardants; they were sucking on bottles laced with phthalate-containing polyvinyl chloride; their diapers were glued together with tributyltin, a neurotoxin normally used to line the bottom of ships to kill algae. The same chemical, it would later be revealed in German newspapers, was used in the jerseys of Germany's national soccer team.
The stories spread across Europe as reporters picked up the local angle. |
Stacy Malkan
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| Her husband, Jeremiah Holland, suspects that the high levels of flame retardants found in his son aren't unusual. "What I believe is when you test more kids who are consistendy putting their hands in their mouths ... you'll find that Rowan isn't abnormally high, but just one of all children being exposed to environmental pollutants at unprecedented levels."
Our Chemical Legacy
Most of the synthetic chemicals found in the children didn't exist in the environment, never mind people's bodies, when my own grandmother Millie Pike Duggan was born in 1921. |
Mark Schapiro
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| Among them were the perfluorinated substances used in nonstick cookware and plastic packaging, and those PBDE flame retardants that Europe had proposed banning at the POPS conference. One could easily imagine that in nineteen years those infants would have a similar toxic load to that of Eleonora Bruno today. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 Many clothing products are also sprayed with flame retardants, as are some carpeting products. In the push to make everything fireproof, state regulators (who have mandated the flame retardant chemicals in states like California) have created a toxic environment for everyone. I suppose if you're a politician, it's always better for a million people to die of a mysterious disease that can't be linked to you than to have one baby burning up on the evening news with fingers of blame pointed directly at you.
15. |
Donna Jackson Nakazawa
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| You can green your home as best you can, eat organic, avoid dry cleaning the clothes, throw out the solvents, and buy bedding sans flame retardants, but can you find that hallowed ground far from the chemical-driven American industrial machine? It is difficult to locate that halcyon land where toxic waste sites, nasty landfills, dry-cleaner TCE spills, and PCB-laced soil don't linger nearby—which is part of the reason why it is so hard to prove cause and effect between toxic waste and any disease cluster. |
| These air particles almost certainly carried not only forest debris but the chemical burn-off from possessions packed inside these homes—everything from flame retardants in the burning clothing, mattresses, and furniture to hundreds of additional toxins with which our household goods are laced during the manufacturing process. It certainly contained dioxin—since burning trash and trees are the largest source of dioxin in our atmosphere—as well as other known endocrine-mimicking chemicals. |
| Thirty years ago, Swedish researchers decided to start testing nursing women to find out whether these ubiquitous chemicals could be found in women's breast milk, and, if so, whether levels of flame retardants in breast milk were rising. They discovered, to their alarm, that levels of PBDEs in nursing moms have doubled every five years. In 2003, a study of twenty first-time American mothers found that PBDE levels in U.S. women are much higher than those found in Swedish women, indicating that Americans' exposures to PBDEs may be particularly worrisome. |
| Airline seats and airplane plastic and fabric interiors are drenched in flame retardants to meet safety standards. Add to these exposures the ones from your footwear, the insulation in your walls, and the plastic in your computer, video monitor, BlackBerry, and TV. All these have been made with plastics or furniture parts soaked in and manufactured with PBDEs.
In the 1950s, during the heyday of the American industrial revolution, a singular new invention, polyurethane, began beefing up manufacturing profit margins as it scaled up the comfort level of the American home. |
| Starting in the 1970s, consumer protection laws were put in place to treat all polymer products with flame retardants. PBDEs began to be used liberally in manufactured goods as the chemical industry's insurance policy that your furniture, bedding, pajamas, and carpet—all of which are highly flammable—would not go up in a burst of flame if there happened to be an electrical short while you slept or if you should mistakenly knock over a candle while doing your crossword puzzle in bed. But PBDEs had their own downside. |
Mark Schapiro
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| These brominated flame retardants they found in my blood, they are sneaky," she wrote. "They have been created to protect us from accidental blazes of domestic appliances and furniture. Actually, they are bio-accumulative, and they can provoke behavioral changes, they are endocrine disrupters. A high percentage of nonstick perfluorinated chemicals were also found in my and my mother's blood. Where can you find them? In the notorious Teflon pans. You cook peacefully, but actually you are getting a stab in the back! |
| The former had more brominated flame retardants (PBDEs), the potential neurotoxin used to coat many electronic and other devices that the POPS signatories are trying to ban from the world, and more of the plastic additive bisphenol A, suspected of mimicking estrogen and being carcinogenic. Wagner said the abundance of those substances was clearly a symptom of the modern proliferation of plastic. |
David Steinman
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 Think of the high levels of flame retardants researchers are finding in polar bears as markers for increasing global temperatures. Polar bears are having difficulty reproducing, and these same chemicals are certainly being considered as a cause of or contributor to their reproductive woes. Now, "flame retar-dants originating largely in the United States are building up in their bodies, according to an international team of wildlife scientists," reported Maria Cone in a January 9, 2006, report in the Los Angeles Times (she is also the author of Silent Snow from Grove Press). |
Brenda Watson and Leonard Smith
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 A Room with a Fume
Carpets, fabrics, and upholstery are prime spots for toxins, due to the flame retardants and solvents. Make it a goal to think about replacing these over time with products that are not made with chemicals. I recommend starting with flooring because carpeting in particular is a magnet for dust and toxic chemicals roaming elsewhere in the household and that land on the floor eventually. This includes household pesticide residues and cleaning agents—even if they were not originally applied to the carpet. |
Mark Schapiro
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| Those nonstick substances, for example, have added new levels of convenience, and those polybromi-nated flame retardants have certainly reduced the chance of fire. But like the luster of technology that was slowly fading inside those four walls of the Atomium, what was being found in our circulatory systems also offered a glimpse into the legacy left behind by the inventiveness of the chemical age. The chemical imprints in our blood have prompted a reassessment, in Europe, of chemistry's magic. |
Dr. Paula Baillie-Hamilton
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 Flame retardants in many fabrics and upholstery.
> Solvents in carpets, fiberboard, chipboard, paints, air fresheners, finishes, cleaning solutions, office corrective fluids, cosmetics, polluted air, and glues.
>• Lead and dust from peeling and chipped paint, and water stored in or flowing through lead pipes.
Pest-Control Products
Virtually every kitchen has a "killing corner," a cupboard or shelf that is filled to the brim with all kinds of fly and roach sprays, insect repellents, flea powders and shampoos, and a battery of other deadly synthetic chemicals. |
| Because of current fire regulations, most mattresses are now covered with flame retardants, which can constantly emit health-damaging formaldehyde gas and may contain brominated substances (see next paragraph). Today's modern beds are constructed from a wide range of petrochemical products such as vinyl and polyurethane foam. The latest research shows the petroleum chemicals used to make these materials are being emitted into your breathing zone while you sleep. The flexible polyurethane foam used in upholstered furniture, for example, can be up to 30 percent flame-retardant by weight. |
| We now know that brominated flame retardants escape from these products into our homes and the environment—and that they're building up at alarming rates in our bodies. New studies are showing serious health effects ranging from interference with prenatal brain development to disruption of hormone function and cancer. Since the chemicals found are known carcinogens and respiratory irritants, parents of children with cancer or asthma should be particularly concerned.
The closet or wardrobe tends to be the other major source of chemicals in the bedroom. |
| Do not buy clothes with flame retardants in them foryour-self or your family, except for infants and small children.
þ Steer clear of purchasing products with chemical finishes, such as permanent press, wrinkle resistant, antistatic, and water or stain repellent.
> Avoid fabrics that have been treated with formaldehyde-based resins that can cause allergic skin reactions.
>• Wash and dry all new clothing and bedding three times prior to using for the first time. hyde resins can also cause similar symptoms. |
Alex Steffen
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 NEC's 2002 PowerMate eco was the first computer to have a fully recyclable plastic case, monitors without harmful gases, and no toxic flame retardants. The jury is still out on whether old electronics cases that companies purport to be biodegradable will actually become the compost pile the companies claim they will, but NEC has recently created a mobile phone with a compostable case, made from a plastic derived from corn and natural fibers, and HP has prototyped a printer with a corn-based plastic case. |
The Life Extension Editorial Staff
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 PCBs are chemical compounds used in plastics, insulation, and flame retardants, with potential to cause cancer and liver damage.) Other research indicates that chlorella is useful in detoxification of high levels of mercury in the body caused by removal of mercury amalgam. Some dentists recommend chlorella to patients who are having mercury amalgams replaced (as well as to themselves and staff who can incut accidental exposure from day-to-day exposure to amalgam filling ptocedures) (O'Brien 2001). |
Committee on Diet, Nutrition, and Cancer, Assembly of Life Sciences National Research Council
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 Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBB's)
Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB's), which are chemically related to the PCB's, have been used as flame retardants in industrial processes. Like PCB's, PBB's persist in the environment and can accumulate in body fat.
Epidemiological Evidence. |
Samuel S. Epstein, M.D.
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 Consumer options are similarly limited for a wide array of chemicals, including: flame retardants in fabrics and textiles; chemical additives to cattle or poultry feed, residues of which are found in meat products; pesticide residues in food; and residues of chemicals that migrate from plastic food packaging. Drug taking, especially prescription drugs, is essentially involuntary and often without informed consent of the consumer-patient. The pharmaceutical industry and prescribing physicians usually do not make available to the patient full information on risks. |
D. Lindsey Berkson
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 Bpa is commonly used in the lacquer that coats metal products—in the lining of food cans (the plastic lining is colorless and can't be seen), bottle tops, and water supply pipes; in flame retardants; and in polycarbonate plastics that are used in many food and drink packaging applications.
Polymers of bisphenol A are used in some dental treatments as sealants for our children's teeth and in dental composites (the alternative to the mercury in amalgam fillings). |
| We haven't looked at many other potential endocrine disruptors, like flame retardants, plastics, and other pesticides. Widely used pesticides (such as atrazine on corn) consistently have been shown to cause mammary cancer in animals.
• Combinations of chemicals haven't been tested yet.
• The metabolism of estrogenic substances has to be taken into account. Chemicals can be metabolized from less to more active estrogens. |
Linda Mason Hunter
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 Richardson, TX 75080 Organic cotton products; no pesticides, herbicides, defoliants, or flame retardants.
FULL-SPECTRUM LIGHTS
Duro-Test
2321 Kennedy Blvd.
North Bergen, NJ 07047
Maker of Vita-Lite.
Environmental Systems 204 Pitney Rd. Lancaster, PA 17601 Maker of Ott-Lites.
GTE Products Corp. Sylvania Lighting Center 100 Endicott St. Dan vers, MA 01923
North American Philips Lighting
Corp. P.O. Box 6800 Somerset, NJ 08875
FURNITURE AND FURNISHINGS
Masters Corp.
P.O. Box 514
New Canaan, CT 06840
Offers natural upholstery fabrics.
283
Rabbit Systems 100 Wilshire Blvd. |
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