You have flame retardant chemicals in your body. Scientists are finding these chemicals, called PBDEs, in newborn babies, and the breast milk those babies drink. We Americans have the highest levels of anyone in the world. We’re exposed to these chemicals every day. They’re in our couches, our TVs, our cars, our office chairs, the padding beneath our carpets, and the dust in our homes. They’re building up in pets, wild animals and fish. They’re even in some of the foods we eat. Doctors and public health experts are worried because hundreds of peer-reviewed studies are suggesting links to neurological and developmental defects, and fertility and reproductive problems.

The Environment Report’s Rebecca Williams examines our exposure to these chemicals and what it might mean for our health, the politics and policy behind our use of these chemicals, and the alternatives.

Women exposed to high levels of flame retardants take substantially longer to get pregnant, indicating for the first time that the widespread chemicals may affect human fertility, according to a study published Tuesday.

Furniture cushions, carpet padding and other household items contain hormone-disrupting flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. Two of the most widely used compounds have been banned in the United States since 2004, but they remain ubiquitous in the environment, inside homes and in the food supply.

Epidemiologists from the University of California at Berkeley studied 223 pregnant women in California’s Salinas Valley, an agricultural community with predominantly low-income, Mexican immigrants. More than 97 percent of the women had PBDEs in their blood, and those with high levels were half as likely to conceive in any given month as the women with low levels.

Household dust is an important source of exposure to a lesser known – but ubiquitous and potentially toxic – flame retardant, reports a study from Belgium. Exposure to dust contaminated with hexabromocyclododecanes (HBCDs), a flame retardant used to prevent polystyrene insulation and textiles from catching on fire, was strongly correlated with blood concentrations in people. This study is the first to examine the relationship between dust, diet and serum concentrations of HBCDs. Results are consistent with studies of other better known flame retardants, such as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and suggest that indoor sources may contribute most to exposure to these chemicals.

An Assessment of Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs) in Sediments and Bivalves of the U.S. Coastal Zone
Source: Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment (NOAA)
From press release:

NOAA scientists, in a first-of-its-kind report issued today, state that Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs), chemicals commonly used in commercial goods as flame retardants since the 1970s, are found in all United States coastal waters and the Great Lakes, with elevated levels near urban and industrial centers.

The new findings are in contrast to analysis of samples as far back as 1996 that identified PBDEs in only a limited number of sites around the nation.

Based on data from NOAA’s Mussel Watch Program, which has been monitoring coastal water contaminants for 24 years, the nationwide survey found that New York’s Hudson Raritan Estuary had the highest overall concentrations of PBDEs, both in sediments and shellfish. Individual sites with the highest PBDE measurements were found in shellfish taken from Anaheim Bay, Calif., and four sites in the Hudson Raritan Estuary.

Watersheds that include the Southern California Bight, Puget Sound, the central and eastern Gulf of Mexico off the Tampa-St. Petersburg, Fla. coast, and Lake Michigan waters near Chicago and Gary, Ind. also were found to have high PBDE concentrations.

Efforts to make furniture less flammable have given residents of California higher blood levels of potentially toxic flame retardants called PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) – nearly twice the national average, scientists from Massachusetts and California are reporting. Their study, the first to examine regional variations in PBDE levels in household dust and blood within the U.S., is published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Over the past few years, the issue of whether Deca BDE, the only PBDE flame retardant currently used in North America, breaks down in the environment has become a key issue to scientists researching the controversial compound. Klaus Rothenbacher, a toxicologist with the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, an industry group, reignited the debate at the Fifth International Workshop on Brominated Flame Retardants (BFR 2008) held June 3−4 in Victoria, British Columbia (Canada). In his conference presentation, Rothenbacher contended that although scientists can “force” Deca BDE to debrominate in the laboratory, it is unlikely to happen in the environment.

The conclusions of a risk assessment of brominated flame retardant tetrabromobisphenol-A (TBBPA) are to be published in the European Union (EU) Official Journal, which should enable a smooth transition of the material through the REACH registration procedure. The Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) legislation entered into force in the EU on June 1, 2007.

Deborah Rice, an award-winning toxicologist, was removed from a group of experts researching a widely-used flame retardant after industry lobbyists complained that she was biased.

New research published in ES&T (DOI: 10.1021/es702272s) identifies for the first time a flame retardant known as HCDBCO (hexachlorocyclopentadienyldibromocyclooctane) in the environment and shows that it can be found at high levels in Canadian homes. A second paper published in ES&T (DOI: 10.1021/es702378t) reports that a U.K. home contains the highest concentrations ever documented in residential dust of another more well-known flame retardant, HBCD (hexabromocyclododecane). Together, the papers suggest that people in the developed world may be exposed to significant concentrations of flame retardants beyond PBDEs in their homes.

A study by Indiana University researchers found the chlorinated flame retardant Dechlorane Plus in the bark of trees across the northeastern United States, with by far the highest concentrations measured near the Niagara Falls, N.Y., factory where this chemical is produced.