Burning Problem: Toxic Flame Retardants in People and Wildlife

Editor’s Note: Whatcom Watch will publish most of the 64-page report “Pollution in People” released in May by the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition. The entire report is available as a pdf file at http://www.pollutioninpeople.org.

Part 3

Every day for the past 12 years, Dr. Patricia Dawson has risen at 5 a.m. to help women face breast cancer. Women from throughout the Northwest, hoping to purge their bodies of cancer and put their lives back together, come to Swedish Medical Center’s Comprehensive Breast Center, where Patricia is a surgeon. In Patricia’s line of work there is no denying disease, and she grapples every day with questions about the blame that can be placed on toxic chemicals and other environmental causes of cancer.

By submitting her hair, urine and blood for chemical testing, Patricia sought to learn more about how our daily decisions and our government’s policies on toxic chemicals directly affect our lives. She was surprised by what her test results revealed: she is ingesting pesticides along with the nutrients from her otherwise healthful diet. Her body carries DDT and PCBs decades after these chemicals were banned. But perhaps most disturbing was the fact that somehow, her body has absorbed enough of the toxic flame retardants known as PBDEs to make her levels three times the national average.

Each of the 10 Pollution in People participants tested positive for PBDEs, with levels ranging from 29 to 147 ppb (as measured compared to total fat in blood samples). With 147 ppb PBDEs in her blood, Patricia had the highest level in the group. The CDC has not included PBDEs in its ongoing program to test U.S. residents for toxic chemicals, but Tom McDonald, at the time a California EPA scientist, recently compiled six studies (with a total of 191 tested individuals) and found a median level of 47.9 ppb in tested women nationally (McDonald 2005), a level comparable to the median in our study, 47.5 ppb.

McDonald also back-calculated from the measured levels to estimate daily exposures for these women and compare them to exposure levels that caused harm in laboratory animals. His findings indicate that current levels in U.S. women are at or approaching those that could harm a developing fetus. Levels of PBDEs that caused behavioral problems in mice were just four to 11 times those of the most exposed U.S. women (those in the top 5 percent of tested women, with levels of 302 ppb and above). Rats suffer fertility problems — reduced sperm counts and changes to ovary cells — at levels at or lower than those of the most exposed women. Patricia’s level, at 147 ppb, is uncomfortably close to the approximately 230 ppb in affected rats. Generally, agencies seek to ensure a safety margin of at least 100, a margin that is much greater than that which exists today for many women.

The graph on the facing page shows the PBDE levels in Pollution in People participants as compared to the national median.

Although PBDEs are used around the world, the largest volumes are used in the Americas: an estimated 33,100 metric tons in 2001 alone (WDOE 2005). The flame retardants, developed 30 years ago, have been used heavily in the production of furniture, textiles and electronics. Two of the commercial formulations of PBDEs, known as penta and octa, were once widely used in foam and plastic products from upholstered furniture to kitchen appliances. But in 2004, industry voluntarily ended production in the United States in response to new information on high levels in breast milk. EPA subsequently issued a rule requiring companies to notify the agency before beginning any significant new uses of penta or octa.

Still in production, however, is the deca formulation of PBDEs, long the most widely used, with 50 million pounds going into products each year. Deca is employed primarily in plastics for electronics, such as television and computer housings, as well as in textiles. Its use may increase with the introduction of new, more rigorous standards for fire resistance for upholstered furniture.

The first hint that the chemicals were building up in the environment came in 1981, when PBDEs were found in Sweden’s River Viskan (Sjödin 2003). Subsequent studies found that environmental levels were rising at an alarming rate across the globe. Between 1981 and 2000, levels in Arctic seals increased tenfold (Ikonomou 2000). From 1988 to 1999, levels in Beluga whales in the St. Lawrence Estuary increased exponentially, doubling every three years or less (Lebeuf 2004). And during roughly the same period (1989 to 1998), levels in San Francisco Bay harbor seals doubled every 1.8 years (She 2002).

Puget Sound appears to have an especially dire PBDE problem. Recent measurements have found that harbor seals, particularly those that live near Seattle, have elevated levels of PBDEs (Ross 2006). They also found that Puget Sound’s chinook salmon — the key food source for endangered orca whales — have the highest levels among tested fish, which included herring, sole, rockfish and lingcod (O’Neill 2006).

Because of their presence in such a wide variety of consumer products, each of us encounters PBDEs daily. Many products made with PBDEs, such as furniture, are used for many years and shed the chemicals over the course of their lifetimes. A number of studies have found PBDEs in house dust as well as indoor air, which is considerably more contaminated with these chemicals than outdoor air (Stapleton 2005, Sjödin 2004, Butt 2004). We’re also likely consuming the flame retardants with every meal: studies in the U.S., Europe and Asia have found PBDEs in fish, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables and infant formula (Schecter 2004, Bocio 2003).

PBDEs made the headlines in 2003, when an Environmental Working Group study found previously unheard of levels in U.S. women’s breast milk. Recent studies have estimated that the largest percentage of PBDE exposures in children, particularly infants and toddlers who are not breast-fed, comes from house dust (Jones-Otazo 2005). Breast-fed infants, however, have the highest exposure of any age group (Health Canada 2004). Scientists have even found PBDEs in umbilical cord blood, revealing that today’s newborns are exposed even before they are born (Health Canada 2004, Mazdai 2003).

That PBDEs were in breast milk was news to Schrier, who had never even heard of the chemicals when she was pregnant with and nursing her two sons. But when her son Aidan was diagnosed as having learning disabilities, she began a quest for environmental chemicals that could interfere with brain development. Allyson was outraged to learn years later that breast milk was contaminated with toxic flame retardants linked to learning and memory problems. In 2006, she brought her son and three other children to meet with her legislators and ask for a ban on PBDEs. Now, laboratory results have confirmed what she suspected: PBDEs are in her body, at a level of 48.3 ppb.

Our daily dose of PBDEs may be enough to keep our children from learning at their potential. Studies in laboratory animals have found that PBDEs profoundly and permanently affect the developing brain at levels frighteningly close to those in today’s most exposed women. In a series of studies on rodents, rats and mice exposed to a single dose of PBDEs 10 days after birth had difficulty adjusting to new environments and negotiating mazes, indicating effects on learning, behavior and memory (Ericksson 2001). A 2003 study found similar effects in mice exposed to deca (Viberg 2003).

While long-term studies on PBDEs’ effects in humans have not been conducted, animal studies suggest their effects are eerily similar to those of PCBs, their close chemical cousins. Long-term studies of children exposed to PCBs show that early exposure leads to deficits in learning (Schantz 2003).

PBDE exposure may also affect thyroid hormone, which is essential for proper brain development in the fetus. In animal studies, both penta and octa have been shown to reduce levels of thyroid hormone (Zhou 2002, Zhou 2001) and liver toxicity (Darnerud 2001). They’ve also been shown to cause bone malformations and reduced weight gain as a result of prenatal exposure (Darnerud 2003).

Scientists are beginning to study the effects of PBDEs on wildlife. Recent research by the National Marine Fisheries Service has found that PBDEs alter fish thyroid hormone levels, delay hatching and retard growth (Lema 2006). Scientists have expressed concern that PBDEs may threaten the health of orca whales, particularly when combined with effects from PCBs (Ross 2006).

Many of these toxicity studies have been conducted on the phased-out PBDE formulations. But researchers have produced considerable evidence that, once in the environment, the still widely used deca formulation gets broken down into chemicals that, like those in penta and octa, accumulate in human and animal tissue. Four studies, examining the breakdown of deca by sunlight and by living organisms, found that deca degrades into some of the PBDEs found in the penta and octa formulations (Söderstrom 2004, Bezares-Cruz 2004). A study of the degradation of deca in house dust found rapid breakdown and concluded that 83 percent of the deca converted to other PBDEs, some of which are more persistent and toxic than deca itself (Stapleton 2005). Use of deca continues at very high levels, and recent testing has typically detected more deca than the other formulations in the indoor and outdoor environment (Sharp 2004, Song 2004).

Electronics, furniture and other companies have proven that these products can be made fire-safe without PBDEs. Furniture-maker IKEA has found ways to design its furniture so that flame retardants are not needed. Major U.S. electronics companies, such as HP and Dell, have turned away from PBDEs and use alternate flame retardants or non-flammable materials.

Eight U.S. states have passed legislation to ban penta and octa PBDEs, and several states have passed laws to study deca. In 2003, the European Union issued a directive to phase out PBDEs by July 2006; however, deca is currently exempted from the phaseout until 2010, although the European Union may rescind the exemption at any time.

Washington state agencies, at the direction of an executive order signed in 2004, have undertaken a major effort to study PBDEs and develop a phaseout plan. The Washington State Departments of Health and Ecology published a final plan in 2005 that recommended phasing out all forms of PBDEs, including deca, as long as safer alternatives are available. The plan identified several alternatives that, unlike PBDEs, do not persist in the environment or build up in people and wildlife.

In Washington, the Departments of Ecology and Health have called for a phaseout of all forms of PBDEs. The agencies, together with members of the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition, supported legislation in 2006 that would have ended the manufacture and sale of all products containing penta and octa after 2007; computers and televisions made with deca after 2010; and residential furniture made with deca after 2012. The legislation would also have required state agencies to purchase PBDE-free products and allow for the Department of Ecology to study actions needed to address existing PBDE contamination. Bills with these provisions passed the Senate and House Rules Committees, but legislative leaders did not bring them to a vote.

Along with the legislation, the Toxic-Free Legacy Coalition is calling for an end to the use of PBDEs in all consumer products and for manufacturers to disclose the use of any chemical flame retardants. Legislation is planned for 2007 to phase out PBDEs. §

Next Month — Heavy Metals: A Centuries-Old Story