Report released on fire retardant in toddlers and mothers

Environmental Working Group today released a report on fire retardants in toddlers and their mothers.

[Excerpt]

Levels Three Times Higher in Toddlers Than Moms

In the first investigation of toxic fire retardants in parents and their children, Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that toddlers and preschoolers typically had 3 times as much of these hormone-disrupting chemicals in their blood as their mothers.

Laboratory tests - conducted for EWG by one of the world’s leading scientific authorities on fire retardants - found that in 19 of 20 U.S. families, concentrations of the chemicals known as PBDEs were significantly higher in 1.5- to 4-year-old children than their mothers. In total 11 different flame retardants were found in these children, and 86 percent of the time the chemicals were present at higher levels in the children than their mothers.

The tests also found a form of PBDEs known as Deca, a heavily used flame retardant that has largely escaped restrictions because few labs can reliably test for it. The tests showed Deca more often and in higher concentrations on average in children than their mothers. These high exposures early in life point to a previously undocumented, serious, and disproportionate risk to young children.

Eight of the 20 mothers we tested were also part of earlier EWG studies that found high levels of PBDEs in human breast milk and household dust. EWG tests of umbilical cord blood also found PBDEs in 10 of 10 newborns. The current study is the first to show that U.S. children have much higher levels of PBDEs in their blood than their parents and in fact bear some of the heaviest burdens of flame retardant pollution in the industrialized world.

PBDEs in everyday items like furniture, computers, televisions and other electronics migrate into the home environment and could expose children to concentrations exceeding the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recommended safe level. Children ingest more PBDEs than adults because they stick to kids’ hands, toys or other objects they put in their mouths.

Children’s developing brains and reproductive systems are extraordinarily vulnerable to toxic chemicals. In the case of PBDEs, laboratory tests in peer-reviewed studies have found that a dose administered to mice on a single day when the brain is growing rapidly can cause permanent changes to behavior, including hyperactivity. Children’s bodies may not metabolize and excrete toxic chemicals as readily as adults.

PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, are global pollutants that build up in the blood and tissues of people and other living things. Two forms of PBDEs known as Penta and Octa are no longer made in the U.S. because of health and safety concerns, but are still found in furniture and foam items made before the phase-out was complete. The largest volume of PBDEs are used in electronics in a form known as Deca. Deca is banned in European electronics and in some U.S. states.

The chemical industry is waging a high-stakes effort to keep Deca on the market, claiming it poses no health risk. But EWG’s tests show that Deca enters people’s bodies, and is polluting children’s blood at much higher levels than adults’. Deca was detected in 65 percent of children and 45 percent of adults.

Link to full report

Link to full report (printable version)

Novelist with MCS writes in “bubble”

Interesting post in La Bloga about author Mayra Lazara Dole, who has a serious case of Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and writes in a glassed-in room, communicating with her editor only through email.

From Mayra’s editor, Rosemary Brosnan, Executive Edior, Children’s Books/Harper Collins:

“I’m delighted to share with you Down to the Bone, a first novel by Mayra Lazara Dole, a Cuban-born author with a fresh new voice. When I first read this manuscript, I was struck by Mayra’s portrayal of a Cuban Miami that is rarely written about-a Miami that is so alive that it almost becomes a character in her book. Mayra exposes intolerance on many levels within her community-an act of bravery on her part. But most of all, she reveals how her protagonist, Laura, learns how the word family can be defined in many different ways.

“Working on this book was a meaningful experience to me in many ways. I am glad that Mayra wrote this important and vibrant novel, and I’m proud to be publishing it.

“Mayra suffers from M.C.S., or Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and must live in a ‘bubble’ in order to survive- a glassed-in room. A chemical injury from pesticides damaged her immune system. I have never spoken with her, as it is too exhausting for her to speak on the phone. When she feels well enough, we communicate by e-mail, and our work together was done on the computer, rather than with hard copy, as paper and ink contain chemicals. Unless she recovers, Mayra will not be able to hold her book in her hand when it is finished; however, her life-partner, Damarys, who helped us a great deal throughout the book production process, will hold the book up to the glass so Mayra can see it, and she will read it to her via speakerphone.”

Link to more about the novel at La Bloga.

Plastics chemicals are good for you!

Link for cartoon credit and more info on Bisphenol-A, a plastics chemical linked to neural defects.

Snitched from Nature Moms Blog.

RFK Jr on Obama’s energy plan

This is a post about policy; it’s dense reading, so stick with me because it’s important. Why is energy policy important to people with Multiple Chemical Sensitivity? Because we need fresh, clean air to live healthy and productive lives. In fact, clean air is everybody’s business, so listen up!

Chelsea Green blogs today about Robert F. Kennedy’s take on Barack Obama’s energy plan. Take note about the focus on truly clean and green energy: solar, wind and geothermal. Imagine a world where each home and business, from America to Africa, is its own power plant, self sufficient with solar panels or a wind mill. I’m not a big proponent of biomass energy, it’s still a dirty smokestack industry and questionable on the sustainability issue, but I fully support solar, wind and geothermal.

Give this a read and see what you think about Obama’s plan. Kennedy should know, he’s senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council and one of the country’s leading authorities on protecting the environment.

In this article from CNN.com, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hails Sen. Barack Obama’s energy plan as “sophisticated and well-crafted.”

Like many of us, he believes Obama could be a truly transformative leader, a president who would overhaul our energy policy by encouraging the U.S. to tap our abundant natural resources—solar, wind, and geothermal—and guide us into a new era of energy independence, while at the same time cutting carbon emissions and stimulating the economy.

From the article:

Barack Obama is a transformational figure in American history who’s been able to excite the same intensity of feeling among Americans as I saw during my father’s 1968 campaign and my uncle John F. Kennedy’s 1960 campaign.

[…]

Obama’s policy, which anticipates eliminating imports by 2012 or earlier, is feasible and desirable. Respected economists and energy industry entrepreneurs, high-level business representatives from Fortune 500 companies and large investors are already enlisting to invest in the infrastructure to facilitate the transition.

Every nation that has taken serious steps to de-carbonize its energy portfolio has reaped immediate economic growth. Sweden announced in 2006 the phase-out of all fossil fuels (and nuclear energy) by 2020. In 1991, the Swedes enacted a carbon tax — now up to $150 a ton — closed two nuclear reactors, and still dropped greenhouse emissions to 5 tons per person, compared with the U.S. per-capita rate of 20 tons.

Thousands of entrepreneurs rushed to develop new ways of generating energy from wind, the sun and the tides, and from wood chips, agricultural waste and garbage. Growth rates climbed and the heavily taxed Swedish economy is now the world’s eighth richest by gross domestic product.

Iceland was 80 percent dependent on imported coal and oil in the 1970s and was among the poorest economies in Europe. Today, Iceland is 100 percent energy independent, and according to the International Monetary Fund is now the fourth most affluent nation on Earth.

There are many other examples: Brazil’s efforts to de-carbonize its transportation system has resulted in the largest and most robust economic expansion in its history.

The United States has far greater domestic energy resources than Iceland or Sweden. We sit atop the second-largest geothermal resources in the world. The American Midwest is the Saudi Arabia of wind. Solar installations across just 19 percent of the most barren desert land in the Southwest could supply nearly all of our nation’s electricity needs even if every American owned an electric car.

Obama’s vision of de-carbonizing our economy begins with a market-based carbon cap-and-trade system designed to put downward pressure on carbon emissions. He will invest billions to revamp the nation’s antiquated high-voltage power transmission system and press for cost-saving building and appliance standards that would cut our energy demand by half.

For a tiny fraction of the projected cost of the Iraq war, we could completely wean the country from carbon. Homes and businesses will become power plants as people cash in by installing solar panels and wind turbines on their buildings, and selling the stored energy in their plug-in hybrids back to the grid at peak hours. By kicking its carbon addiction, America will increase its national wealth. Everyone will profit from the green gold rush.

Link

Link to CNN story.