Introduction
Human beings have invented and released tens of thousands of new chemicals into the environment since the Second World War – the great majority of them not being tested for their effects on the environment before being used. The publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962 was the moment that the world became aware of the dangers of man-made chemicals and her book is regarded as the birth of the environmental movement. It addressed the problem for wildlife and humans caused by DDT, a pesticide, which then became banned from use by farmers in the United States. Not long after this, a family of chemicals called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were banned once it was discovered that they could upset the endocrine system and cause neurological birth defects along with cancer. Perhaps as a result of the scare over DDT poisoning, the ban came swiftly, in 1977.
One might think that society had learned its lesson from these two experiences but it has not. Today, the world faces a fresh moment of awakening about biologically disruptive chemicals. The chemicals concerned are used as flame retardants – to aid in fire safety standards—and they are now showing up all over the world, both in the environment and in the fat cells of many different species, in the eggs of birds and in the fatty tissues and maternal milk of humans and other mammals. Their name is PBDEs – Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers – and we have cause for alarm. They display many similarities to PCBs in their effects on animals and humans. They are capable, it seems, of dumbing down the world.
What are PBDEs?
PBDEs are synthetic compounds that use the atomic element bromine. After PCBs were banned in 1977, PBDEs became the chemical of choice for creating fire-resistant plastics and upholstery materials of many kinds. There are three main types of PBDE in use : the penta, octa and deca-PBD, corresponding to the number of bromines used in the compound. From the early 80’s on, the production of these chemicals has risen sharply and in 2004 some 239,000 metric tons of PBDE were manufactured worldwide. They work to slow down—to ‘retard’—a fire burning, through the chemical properties of the bromine atoms that combine with oxygen in the air, depriving the fire of oxygen. Without oxygen in the vicinity of an object laced with PBDE, the object cannot burn or burns much more slowly than it otherwise would. In a world that aspires to reduce the fatalities, injuries and property damage from fire, PBDEs are now present in a huge quantity of products and building materials. Our homes and offices are filled with these objects and materials and we live in intimate contact with PBDEs.
What products contain PBDEs?
One look at the huge quantity of products using PBDEs and the scale of the problem we face is clear. In the United States they are used in the following items:
Furniture frames made from plastic
Mattresses
Bedding
Drapes
Flooring that uses plastic
Backing for many carpets
Ceiling moldings
Seats in cars, airplanes, buses
Plastic forms in cars, buses and airplanes
Computer housing
Computer Monitor housing
Electronic circuits of computers
Television set housing
DVD and Video machine housing
Fax and Printer housing
Photocopier housing
Camera bodies
Tool boxes
Kitchen appliances
Hair dryers
Baby teethers
Plastic toys
Baby bath books
Camping equipment
Insulation covering for electrical wires
PBDEs escape into the environment
If the PBDE were chemically attached to the rest of the plastic or foam in which it is placed, the environmental hazard from these fire retardants would be much less. But these molecules are not chemically bound. They remain separate entities. They are simply mixed in as an additive at the time of manufacture, and the amount ranges between 5% and 30% of the total volume for any particular object. Being essentially free to break off the object as it goes through its lifetime, the PBDEs slowly escape through natural forces of wear and tear, aging and decay. They escape into our homes and offices and factories and settle as dust on the floor, windows and walls. Research has been done in people’s homes and offices (xxxx) showing that these flame retardants are present in dust. Our breathing of the PBDE-contaminated dust is thought by scientists to be one of the main ways that the chemicals enter our bodies. Toddlers who spend a lot of time on the floor in proximity to dust are especially at risk. Our homes are not the sanctuaries we think they are.
At the end of their lifetime, the PBDE-filled objects reach our waste dumps, and here the process of dissemination speeds up. Exposed to sunlight that hardens and cracks the plastics or foams, the molecules blow into the air with the wind and they travel the globe, landing on soils and in rivers, lakes and oceans where the tiny algae, which form the base of all food chains, are helpless to prevent them entering their cells.
The PBDEs then proceed to return to us. This time around they are not welcome additions to our safety. From being fire retardants they have become hazards, potential agents of neurological damage of our own children. PBDEs are now being found in our fat cells, in the umbilical cord blood supplying everything the new baby needs to grow, and in breast milk. The same thing is true for other mammals which feed their young with milk such as cows and sheep, and whales, bears and seals. PBDE has been found in foods being sold in supermarkets in Texas (both meat and fish), and they are found in a great many species of fish, whether farmed or wild. Farmed salmon has been found to be particularly contaminated with these chemicals due to their consumption of foods formed from sardines and anchovies that are themselves PBDE-contaminated. These fish in turn ate other organisms which had absorbed the chemicals. The process at work is called bioaccumulation.
From the tiny algae through to the great whales of our oceans, from the grass browsed by our farm animals to the dust in our houses, it is now clear from scientific investigations of many different environments that we may be facing a serious challenge to the health and wellbeing of the entire biosphere. Flame retardants designed to save human life and property seem now to present a much greater threat to human health than the one for which they were designed. When the annual statistics of death and injury by fire are looked at in the context of a pervasively contaminated global environment, (some 4000 deaths, 47,000 injuries in the U.S.) the conclusion would seem to be that we are busy putting out one small camp fire while around us a gigantic firestorm is bearing down on us from all directions. There is something to address in our industrial production standards and the social process by which the public receives protection from dangerous chemicals. At present in the United States, so far as PBDEs are concerned, the public are receiving scant protection.
Research on PBDE and Health Impacts
It has to be said that there are no studies which have yet drawn a direct link between PBDEs and particular symptoms displayed by humans. The situation is less clear than that. But there have been studies made of women’s breast milk in several parts of the world, and of blood inside umbilical cords and placentas, all of which have shown the presence of these fire retardants as well as other chemicals. Samples of hair, urine, blood and fat cells from humans have also shown their presence. In wildlife, the chemicals have been found in seals, whales, dolphins and many fish species, both marine and freshwater. They have been found in various birds and in reindeer. They have also been found in sewage sludge which may be affecting crops and meat production and at least one study made has found fire retardants in food on sale in supermarkets.
The overall picture from the sampling of humans, wildlife and the environment (sediments in lakes and estuaries, soils and air samples) is that the quantity of PBDEs is rising very fast. Commensurate with the rising curve of production has gone a rising curve of widespread contamination. It seems to double every five years. No one can disagree, therefore, that there is a problem with the escape of PBDEs into the environment, but how these flame retardants are affecting humans is another matter.
The source of concern for human health derives from two main sources at present. One is laboratory testing that has been done with PBDEs and rodents. The other is the rising number of American children displaying behavioral, learning and IQ problems. The first evidence is detailed and easily replicated. The second is nebulous and extremely hard to make firm associations which everyone can agree on.
Laboratory research has found that even small amounts of PBDE ingested while a mouse or rat is pregnant lead to disruption of the endocrine system and brain development problems of the fetuses. The disruption continued while the babies were feeding on milk from the mother and the effects have been found to be lifelong. This is the hard evidence which gives rise for alarm so far as humans are concerned. The baby rodents survive but they display multiple abnormalities in their functioning. They display hyperactivity; inability to remember and learn; slow responses to stimuli and lack of fear in situations which normally would induce fear. They contracted cancer of the liver and lived shorter lives than control groups. As with PCB effects, which have a very similar structure to PBDEs, it was the thyroid gland in particular that was affected by the doses. In utero this gland is important for supporting normal brain development. Once born, it is vital for management of all cellular metabolic activity.
In September 2004, a study was made of umbilical cord blood to determine if human fetuses were receiving toxins from their mothers. Called Body Burden: The Pollution in Newborns, it was the first study done of this kind. Organized by the Environmental Working Group in collaboration with a group called Commonweal based in Bolinas, Marin County, California, umbilical cord blood was collected from ten mothers and babies. Researchers at two major laboratories found a total of 287 chemicals in the group as a whole, including PBDEs. Of the 287 chemicals, 180 are known to cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animals.
The great significance of this study, apart from their specific findings, is that it proves that the placenta cannot protect the fetus from contaminants in the mother’s body—something which previously was thought to be the case. Instead, it appears that blood traveling between the baby and the mother via the placenta, is actually ‘downloading’ the mother’s ‘body burden’ of toxins – up to 25% of them. This ‘downloading’ then continues while the infant is breast-feeding, as multiple studies of breast milk have shown. At a time when critical brain development is taking place—in utero and infancy—the child is being contaminated. There is bound to be an effect when immune systems are still being built and defenses are lower than in adulthood. The question is – what effect?
Trends in Human Mental and Behavioral Functioning
The question amongst public health professionals and scientists involved in toxicology research is whether there is a direct linkage between levels of toxins in our bodies and the rise in numbers of children displaying behavioral and IQ deficiencies and abnormalities. It is a very tough question to deal with scientifically, because of the difficulty of isolating the impact of toxins on mental health from other variables affecting children’s development, be they genetic or environmental. But the thought is abroad: at least some of the 12 million children said by the US Center for Disease Control to have one or more learning, behavioral and developmental disability, may have been adversely affected in the womb and in infancy by toxins, amongst which PBDEs are now an ubiquitous component. Rates of ADHD (hyperactivity disorder) and Autism have been on the increase, while IQ levels are said to be declining overall.
The concerns have spurred a new long-range study to be done over the next 20 years, involving 100,000 participants called The National Children’s Study, specifically directed towards exploring the relationship between environment and health. But should we wait another 20 years to find out if PBDEs are contributing to dysfunction amongst humans ? There are a growing number of people who would say that safe alternatives need to be found and introduced immediately. Interestingly, one of these is Great Lakes Chemicals – one of the two companies in the United States that has been producing PBDEs over the decades—who ceased manufacture of the penta-PBD type of flame retardants at the end of 2004 and have come forward with a new chemical that they claim is going to be much better than the polybrominates. This move is to be welcomed but the deca-PBD type remains in production and researchers now believe that this ten-bromine type degrades, once loose in the environment, to become the penta kind which has been shown to most easily enter biological systems.
Implications and Discussion Points about PBDEs
I would like to commence this section with some personal comments. In common with most other people, I was completely unaware of the toxicity involved in so many household and everyday products. As someone from England, I knew that legislation had come into force which made mattresses and furniture that had been produced before a certain date virtually unsaleable on the second-hand market in the UK, and that this was something to do with fire regulations, but I did not have any inkling that this new standard of fire safety could mean that creatures living thousands of miles away from my home were becoming contaminated with flame retardants. It took hearing a lecture by one of the leading researchers in this field, Dr Kim Hooper, of UC Berkeley, to alert me to the bad news. It was the shock of hearing about the ubiquity of these chemicals in so many places and organisms where they should not be found that prompted me to do this report.
Since commencing the research, the shock has become deeper and more disturbing. There is a sense of revulsion that innocent wild creatures and humans across the globe are now carrying chemicals that a handful of PhD-educated chemists have devised, without, it seems, a thought or care in the world about whether they will escape into the environment. To sell a chemical that is inherently able to leach into the environment without first investigating its performance in living creatures, seems irrational. It defies common sense and even non-chemists can grasp the logic behind the ease with which these fire retardants have become the pest that they now appear to be. It makes one feel very angry with the chemists who devised the compounds and with the people who sold the product to lots of businesses and local authorities who, like me, would not know the risks they were incurring in buying the chemicals. Were they deliberately misled? Or did everyone just work on a wish and a hope that nothing would go wrong?
It seems incredible that after the lessons of DDT and PCBs, another chemical with virtually identical structure as the PCBs, capable of disrupting the thyroid glands of all creatures that possess such an organ, has been allowed into the marketplace and sold to innocent consumers and policy-makers as a form of progress and benefit. It raises the question of accountability. It raises the question of the glaring absence of strict protocols surrounding man-made chemicals, which by now surely should be in place. It raises the question of too much influence by corporations on the politicians who are charged with ultimate responsibility for what happens in society. It raises the question of inadequate laws and a jurisprudence that does not serve the human being adequately, let alone the wild creatures, which also have a right to live in health and longevity on this planet.
If it were possible for the whales of the world to bring a class action against the company which created this bioaccumulative chemistry, then some preconceptions that are governing our self-image as human beings and our industrial production processes might splinter apart, shattering under the sound of the mighty voice of a whale mother whose baby has drunk her contaminated milk and cannot keep up with her. With the whales and the dolphins, the peregrine falcon and the reindeer supporting our efforts (to name but a few animals that are experiencing chemical intrusion) we might begin to see rationality enter our industrial production system. It is conceivable that our jurisprudence be adapted to be able to represent other species in partnership with humans…
It is indeed ironic that a chemistry designed to preserve life and limb has turned out to be a global menace. Whether it is a manageable menace remains to be seen. The full picture is certainly not yet drawn. Much more study is needed. But that so little was done prior to the introduction of this chemistry on a massive scale, and that there is as yet no bio-monitoring of industrial chemicals taking place as an integral and normal part of our industrial system, is symptomatic of some core problems in human development. The patchwork story of PBDEs, in large-scale production now for over twenty years, is a case study of the extreme ad hoc nature of ‘progress’.
There are a many complex issues involved in the story of brominated fire retardants and it is beyond the scope of this paper to address them in depth. The issues cover the gamut of political, economic, technological, legal, social policy and educational fields of action. In brief, we can identify some questions:
1. Political – Should government at federal and state levels institute and finance the establishment of biomonitoring systems to make detailed observations of chemical pollution and especially bioaccumulation? Should politicians assume ultimate responsibility for the practices of corporations?
2. Legal—Should the existing legislation be reformed? Should an expanded jurisprudence be instituted, which takes an integrated view on chemical innovation, in which the health of organisms other than humans is seen as directly relevant to the health of humans? (i.e., which enables feedback from the environment to become a valid element in judicial deliberation)
3. Economic—Should public money be used to help finance the development of ‘green chemistry’ in all industrial products?
4. Ethical—Should manufacturers be made accountable for creating pollution?
5. Educational –Should labeling of products be mandatory?
6. Social Policy - Should breast milk monitoring programs be set up in every state?
The problems are interconnected and circular. Our political philosophy is part of our economic philosophy, which affects the question of where responsibility and accountability for pollution should lie, and how actions to prevent further harm should proceed. At present, there is a tangled relationship between chemical invention, manufacturing and public health rules. There are contradictions in play. In the United States the situation appears to be largely uncontrolled and chaotic. On the one hand corporations are being told they cannot do business unless they produce products with fire retardants in them and on the other hand they stand accused of causing grievous harm to life through their use of these additives. Meanwhile, government is reluctant to make impositions on the corporations, choosing the line that control of pollutants should be ‘voluntary’.
Some manufacturers such as IKEA, Apple Computers, Hewlett Packard and various other computer product manufacturers have shown themselves willing to adapt the materials they use in response to public concern. Others have yet to catch up with the growing concern about neurotoxicants. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been doing studies in association with corporations that both manufacture and use PBDEs but determined action to remove the chemicals from the production line has yet to be taken, although one major company that produced PBDEs has opted to cease production (Great Lakes Chemicals) and is now offering an alternative flame retardant to product manufacturers. The overall situation of inaction drifts on, however, while the quantity of these toxins in people’s blood and fat cells and breast-milk rise year after year, doubling every five years according to the studies that have been done.
We seem to be between two competing ideas about health and safety, with the one that values control of fires in a far superior position to the one that values the integrity of the human body and brain, along with the integrity of the natural world on which we depend for our existence. When we consider the number of people who actually die in fires every year, compared with the numbers of people and animals that are now at risk of producing neurologically damaged infants, the comparison seems absurd. It belies deep problems of political and economic management and philosophy. Although regulatory action is being taken by some states in the U.S. (CA is one of these) and the EPA is working with chemical companies to address the situation, the fact remains that despite prior experience with PCBs and DDT, so far as PBDEs are concerned there is no equivalent urgency being shown about the scale of contamination now being found—at least not in the United States which shows higher levels of contamination of environment, animals and people than anywhere else in the world.
In contemplating this situation with flame retardants—which is one part of a much wider field of chemical intrusion on our bodies and our environment—it would seem that there is a great drama unfolding in this period of industrial production and capitalist economy. The drama has a core theme, which emerged with DDT and continues today. It will replay until humanity grasps the lesson. It is the theme of human discovery of our real place within nature and the challenge before us of making the adaptations that will ensure our own longevity as a species. PBDEs, with their disruption of the endocrine/neurological systems and their potential to create people with learning, behavioral, IQ and cancer problems could not be more poignant as the classroom in which we must learn what to do, how to proceed. As we probe contamination levels in species after species, and find these ubiquitous chemicals in every environment, the findings are pointing us to take a new perspective and to overcome a terrible gap that has emerged in the course of our history.
The gap is between our own existence and health, and the existence and health of all other species. We are living as though in a bubble, apart from everything else. We have not yet gained the literacy we need in the ABC of Earth’s chemistry. The chemistry of the Earth is a single unbroken whole, functioning under the influence of our orbit around the Sun and the spin of our planet around its axis. These things drive the winds and currents of our air and waters, and the varying temperatures of different planetary zones, with their seasonal variations. Life and non-life are seamlessly interconnected—chemically and physically. This unity is what makes all decisions about all chemicals produced by human beings an unavoidable responsibility to fully embrace. The reality is that humans inhabit a common system binding all beings, all environments and all chemistry into a single ‘web’. But in our haste to develop living standards, we have presumed a position of invincibility, a position that vainly grasps for immunity from the natural realities within which we draw our lives. Due to the 19th century industrial philosophy still operating today, long after its retirement date, we have constructed a ‘bubble’ for our civilization that is now showing its weakness. So long as the idea of what constitutes a good economy is at variance with what constitutes a healthy environment, the drama will continue.
Whereas there are many who would make ‘healthy profits’ a higher priority than a healthy environment, and casually dismiss the concerns of public health professionals, teachers, parents and environmentalists, the reality is that if actions to prevent harm are not taken, the long-term viability of all business activities is in question. There is a quality of self-defeating short-term thinking and sheer denial of reality that appears very clearly if anyone spends a little time reading about what is being found by scientific investigation. If human reproduction is at risk – if our genetic blueprint is being altered in the womb and in infancy – then overall we are looking at becoming less than human and in that case we shall not be able to run any business effectively at all. We shall be walking along the path towards extinction. We have already taken the first steps and we face a fork in the road. Now is the time to act.
Proposals for Action
1. Reform of legislation on chemicals in the environment
The first proposal for action is that the time for experimenting with alien chemicals that bioaccumulate should be drawn rapidly to an end. To achieve this will require firm political action to make existing legislation much stronger. The Toxic Substances Control Act (1976) seems to have too little power, in practice. Voluntary self-regulation by corporations is laudable but not realistic because it has not cured the problem. Political backbone is now needed in order to draw the line with corporations and set a general standard with respect to all chemicals that bioaccumulate. Bioaccumulation is not a price we should countenance paying for fire protection measures. The legislation and powers of government on this question need to become unequivocal.
2. Institute Bio-Monitoring Programs
The second proposal for action is that every state should conduct regular bio-monitoring investigations. Gaining information about what is happening with soils, air, water and living beings should be a norm of industrial society and a routine part of taxation expenditures. Foods on sale should be analyzed in every state. Sewage sludge that is spread on fields and released into waterways or the oceans should be analyzed as well. PBDEs have been found in this sludge and it would seem are contributing to the presence of these chemicals in meat, fish and dairy products. A toxic-free world requires vigilance and dedication. Bio-monitoring, happening now on an ad hoc basis, needs to transform into a completely standard practice of federal and state authorities.
3. Institute Breast Milk Monitoring Programs
The third proposal for action is that Breast Milk Monitoring Programs be instituted across the United States. Professionals involved in PBDE and other toxic chemicals research have been calling for this to happen. Where such programs have been done elsewhere—notably in Sweden and Germany—the information gained about contamination levels has made a huge difference to the political will to act. Americans deserve similar service from their government – federal and state.
4. Create Tax Incentives to Corporations to Clean Up their Chemistry
The fourth proposal for action is fiscal. Tax advantages could be granted to corporations for research and development of non-polluting chemicals. A partnership of corporate profits and public tax money could be created to pay for independent, peer-reviewed studies of risk prior to the introduction of new chemicals. The current position of discovering the harm after the horse has bolted the stable is untenable and inexcusable any longer. Finance must be found to do completely reliable investigations of new and existing chemicals and to pay for the hard work and ingenuity required to discover biologically safe chemistry for the things we use.
As ecological philosopher Thomas Berry has often said: ‘You can’t have well people on a sick planet’. In conclusion, I would simply leave us with the question: When are we going to create wellbeing and comfort for the human without harming either ourselves or any other species?
©Caroline Webb 2005. All rights reserved. No use of any kind without permission. Contact me
Internet References
Healthy Milk, Healthy Baby- Chemical Pollution and Mother's Milk
http://www.nrdc.org/breastmilk/chem10.asp
Healthy Milk, Healthy Baby - PBDEs
http://www.nrdc.org/breastmilk/pbde.asp
The PBDEs: An Emerging Environmental Challenge and Another Reason for Breast-Milk Monitoring Programs. Scientific article by Kim Hooper and Thomas A. McDonald
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2000/108p387-392hooper/hooper-full.html
New Toxic Chemicals Found in Breast Milk
http://www.mercola.com/2001/dec/12/breast_milk.htm
Body Burden – the Pollution in Newborns – study
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/execsumm.php
Emerging science on the impacts of endocrine disruptors on intelligence and behavior
http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/behavior/behav.htm
(Our Stolen Future is a large website about toxic chemicals and a book of the same name by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers. Many pages to explore here)
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs)
http://www.svtc.org/hu_health/edcs/edc_index.html
As Flame Retardant Builds Up in Humans, a Ban is Debated
Wall Street Journal article Oct 8, 2003
http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Flame/Flame-Retardant-Ban8oct03.htm
Halogen Free Computer Equipment
http://www.svtc.org/cleancc/greendesign/halofree.htm
Grocery store foods found to contain toxic flame retardant chemicals; PBDE contamination found in meat and dairy products
http://www.newstarget.com/002917.html
Farmed Fish vs Wild Fish – and Flame Retardants
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=george&dbid=96
Farmed Salmon – Healthy or….?
http://whyfiles.org/shorties/159salmon/
Study Finds Dusty House may Breed Dangerous Chemicals
http://www.newstarget.com/003288.html
Flame Retardant Exposure Linked to House Dust
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050106110114.htm
A list of US Environmental Laws
http://www.nrdc.org/reference/laws.asp
PBDE Regulation – (Round up of regulatory action in CA and other States)
http://www.ewg.org/reports/inthedust/part5.php
News about 2005 EPA action on PBDEs
http://www.epa.gov/oppt/pbde/
Extension Toxicology Network – Defining Bioaccumulation
http://extoxnet.orst.edu/tibs/bioaccum.htm
USGS - Bioaccumulation
http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/bioaccumulation.html
PBDEs in Bay Area Fish and People
http://www.ewg.org/reports/taintedcatch/part2.php
PCBs All Over Again
http://www.prospect.org/webfeatures/2002/05/hunter-na-05-22.html
Taking It All In - Documenting Chemical Pollution in Californians Through Biomonitoring
http://commonweal.org/programs/brc/Taking_It_All_In.html
