Testing shows pollutants build up in body

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Testing shows pollutants build up in body

 

By Paul Elias, Associated Press, 12/26/2003

 

SAN FRANCISCO -- Davis Baltz shops for organic food and otherwise tries to live

in as healthy a

way as he can.

So he was shocked to learn that the pollutants collecting inside his body

sounded much like a

Superfund cleanup site: pesticides, flame retardants, and other nasty, manmade

chemicals that

turned up in a recent test.

 

''What that told me is that no matter what I tried to do, the plumes of

chemicals that we are

passing in and out of every day give us exposure,'' said Baltz, who works for

Commonweal, an

environmental group in Bolinas, Calif.

 

For decades, researchers have sampled the air, land, and sea to measure

pollution from power

plants, factories, and automobiles.

 

Now, in a process called biomonitoring, scientists are sampling urine, blood,

and mother's milk to

catalog pollutants accumulating in humans. They call the results ''body

burden.'' Commonweal and

the Washington-based Environmental Working Group funded tests for Baltz and

eight others at $5,000

apiece.

Though the tests are yielding scary lists of contaminants, their links to

disease are less clear.

Nonetheless, proponents say such testing will help researchers learn what role

the environment

plays in causing disease.

Many banned chemicals such as PCB and DDT remain in the environment for years

and build up in the

body over a lifetime.

 

Few of the estimated 75,000 chemicals found in the United States have been

tested for their health

effects, Baltz and other biomonitoring proponents say. But several studies have

been completed.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year released test

data from 2,500

volunteers showing such chemicals as mercury, uranium, and cotinine, a chemical

broken down from

nicotine.

 

Studies done in Indiana and California also found significantly higher levels of

chemicals used as

flame retardants in the bodies of women there than in foreign women.

 

 

 

 

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