Fwd: The Chemicals Within Us

[Guest guest]

http://www3nationalgeographiccom/ngm/0610/feature4/index.html Modern chemistry keeps insects from ravaging crops, lifts stains fromcarpets, and saves lives. But the ubiquity of chemicals is taking atoll. Many of the compounds absorbed by the body stay there foryears—and fears about their health effects are growing. My journalist-as- guinea-pig experiment is taking a disturbing turn. ASwedish chemist is on the phone, talking about flame retardants,chemicals added for safety to just about any product that can burn.Found in mattresses, carpets, the plastic casing of televisions,electronic circuit boards, and automobiles, flame retardants savehundreds of lives a year in the United States alone. These, however,are where they should not be: inside my

body. Åke Bergman of Stockholm University tells me he has received theresults of a chemical analysis of my blood, which measured levels offlame-retarding compounds called polybrominated diphenyl ethers. Inmice and rats, high doses of PBDEs interfere with thyroid function,cause reproductive and neurological problems, and hamper neurologicaldevelopment. Little is known about their impact on human health. "I hope you are not nervous, but this concentration is very high,"Bergman says with a light Swedish accent. My blood level of oneparticularly toxic PBDE, found primarily in U.S.-made products, is 10times the average found in a small study of U.S. residents and morethan 200 times the average in Sweden. The news about another PBDEvariant—also toxic to animals—is nearly as bad. My levels would behigh even if I were a worker in a factory making the stuff, Bergman says. In fact I'm a writer engaged in a journey

of chemical self-discovery.Last fall I had myself tested for 320 chemicals I might have picked upfrom food, drink, the air I breathe, and the products that touch myskin—my own secret stash of compounds acquired by merely living. Itincludes older chemicals that I might have been exposed to decadesago, such as DDT and PCBs; pollutants like lead, mercury, and dioxins;newer pesticides and plastic ingredients; and the near-miraculouscompounds that lurk just beneath the surface of modern life, makingshampoos fragrant, pans nonstick, and fabrics water-resistant andfire-safe. The tests are too expensive for most individuals—National Geographicpaid for mine, which would normally cost around $15,000—and only a fewlabs have the technical expertise to detect the trace amountsinvolved. I ran the tests to learn what substances build up in atypical American over a lifetime, and where they might come from. Iwas also searching

for a way to think about risks, benefits, anduncertainty—the complex trade-offs embodied in the chemical "bodyburden" that swirls around inside all of us. Now I'm learning more than I really want to know. Bergman wants to get to the bottom of my flame-retardant mystery. HaveI recently bought new furniture or rugs? No. Do I spend a lot of timearound computer monitors? No, I use a titanium laptop. Do I live neara factory making flame retardants? Nope, the closest one is over athousand miles (1,600 kilometers) away. Then I come up with an idea. "What about airplanes?" I ask. "Yah," he says, "do you fly a lot?I flew almost 200,000 miles (300,000 kilometers) last year," I say.In fact, as I spoke to Bergman, I was sitting in an airport waitingfor a flight from my hometown of San Francisco to London. "Interesting, " Bergman says, telling me that he has long been curiousabout PBDE exposure

inside airplanes, whose plastic and fabricinteriors are drenched in flame retardants to meet safety standardsset by the Federal Aviation Administration and its counterpartsoverseas. "I have been wanting to apply for a grant to test pilots andflight attendants for PBDEs," Bergman says as I hear my flightannounced overhead. But for now the airplane connection is only ahypothesis. Where I picked up this chemical that I had not even heardof until a few weeks ago remains a mystery. And there's the biggerquestion: How worried should I be? The same can be asked of other chemicals I've absorbed from air,water, the nonstick pan I used to scramble my eggs this morning, myfaintly scented shampoo, the sleek curve of my cell phone. I'mhealthy, and as far as I know have no symptoms associated withchemical exposure. In large doses, some of these substances, frommercury to PCBs and dioxins, the notorious contaminants in

AgentOrange, have horrific effects. But many toxicologists— and not justthose who have ties to the chemical industry—insist that the minusculesmidgens of chemicals inside us are mostly nothing to worry about. "In toxicology, dose is everything," says Karl Rozman, a toxicologistat the University of Kansas Medical Center, "and these doses are toolow to be dangerous." One part per billion (ppb), a standard unit formeasuring most chemicals inside us, is like putting half a teaspoon(two milliliters) of red dye into an Olympic-size swimming pool.What's more, some of the most feared substances, such as mercury,dissipate within days or weeks—or would if we weren't constantlyre-exposed. Yet even though many health statistics have been improving over thepast few decades, a few illnesses are rising mysteriously. From theearly 1980s through the late 1990s, autism increased tenfold; from theearly 1970s through the

mid-1990s, one type of leukemia was up 62percent, male birth defects doubled, and childhood brain cancer was up40 percent. Some experts suspect a link to the man-made chemicals thatpervade our food, water, and air. There's little firm evidence. Butover the years, one chemical after another that was thought to beharmless turned out otherwise once the facts were in. The classic example is lead. In 1971 the U.S. Surgeon General declaredthat lead levels of 40 micrograms per deciliter of blood were safe.It's now known that any detectable lead can cause neurological damagein children, shaving off IQ points. From DDT to PCBs, the chemicalindustry has released compounds first and discovered damaging healtheffects later. Regulators have often allowed a standard of innocentuntil proven guilty in what Leo Trasande, a pediatrician andenvironmental health specialist at Mount Sinai Hospital in New YorkCity, calls "an

uncontrolled experiment on America's children." Each year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reviews anaverage of 1,700 new compounds that industry is seeking to introduce.Yet the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act requires that they be testedfor any ill effects before approval only if evidence of potential harmexists—which is seldom the case for new chemicals. The agency approvesabout 90 percent of the new compounds without restrictions. Only aquarter of the 82,000 chemicals in use in the U.S. have ever beentested for toxicity. Until recently, no one had even measured average levels of exposureamong large numbers of Americans. No regulations required it, thetests are expensive, and technology sensitive enough to measure thetiniest levels didn't exist. Last year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) took astep toward closing that gap when it released data on 148

substances,from DDT and other pesticides to metals, PCBs, and plasticingredients, measured in the blood and urine of several thousandpeople. The study said little about health impacts on the peopletested or how they might have encountered the chemicals. "The goodnews is that we are getting real data about exposure levels," saysJames Pirkle, the study's lead author. "This gives us a place to start." I began my own chemical journey on an October morning at the MountSinai Hospital in New York City, where I gave urine and had blooddrawn under the supervision of Leo Trasande. Trasande specializes inchildhood exposures to mercury and other brain toxins. He had agreedto be one of several expert advisers on this project, which began as aSinai phlebotomist extracted 14 vials of blood—so much that at vial 12I felt woozy and went into a cold sweat. At vial 13 Trasande grabbedsmelling salts, which hit my nostrils like a whiff

of fire and allowedme to finish. From New York my samples were shipped to Axys Analytical Services onVancouver Island in Canada, one of a handful of state-of-the- art labsspecializing in subtle chemical detection, analyzing everything fromeagle eggs to human tissue for researchers and government agencies. Afew weeks later, I followed my samples to Canada to see how Axysteased out the tiny loads of compounds inside me. I watched the specimens go through multiple stages of processing,which slowly separated sets of target chemicals from the thousands ofother compounds, natural and unnatural, in my blood and urine. Theextracts then went into a high-tech clean room containing massspectrometers, sleek, freezer-size devices that work by flinging thecomponents of a sample through a vacuum, down a long tube. Along theway, a magnetic field deflects the molecules, with lighter moleculesswerving the most. The exact

amount of deflection indicates eachmolecule's size and identity. A few weeks later, Axys sent me my results—a grid of numbers in partsper billion or trillion—and I set out to learn, as best I could, wherethose toxic traces came from. Some of them date back to my time in the womb, when my motherdownloaded part of her own chemical burden through the placenta andthe umbilical cord. More came after I was born, in her breast milk. Once weaned, I began collecting my own chemicals as I grew up innortheastern Kansas, a few miles outside Kansas City. There I spentcountless hot, muggy summer days playing in a dump near the KansasRiver. Situated on a high limestone bluff above the fast brown waterlined by cottonwoods and railroad tracks, the dump was a mother lodeof old bottles, broken machines, steering wheels, and other items onlyboys can fully appreciate. This was the late 1960s, and my friends and I had

no way of knowingthat this dump would later be declared an EPA superfund site, on theNational Priority List for hazardous places. It turned out that foryears, companies and individuals in this corner of Johnson County haddumped thousands of pounds of material contaminated with toxicchemicals here. "It was started as a landfill before there were anyrules and regulations on how landfills were done," says DeniseJordan-Izaguirre, the regional representative for the federal Agencyfor Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. "There were metal tailingsand heavy metals dumped in there. It was unfenced, unrestricted, sokids had access to it." Kids like me. Now capped, sealed, and closely monitored, the dump, called theDoepke-Holliday Site, also happens to be half a mile upriver from acounty water intake that supplied drinking water for my family and45,000 other households. "From what we can gather, there

werecontaminants going into the river," says Shelley Brodie, the EPARemedial Project Manager for Doepke. In the 1960s, the county treatedwater drawn from the river, but not for all contaminants. Drinkingwater also came from 21 wells that tapped the aquifer near Doepke. When I was a boy, my corner of Kansas was filthy, and the dump wasn'tthe only source of toxins. Industry lined the river a few milesaway—factories making cars, soap, and fertilizers and otheragricultural chemicals—and a power plant belched fumes. When we drovepast the plants toward downtown Kansas City, we plunged into a noxiouscloud that engulfed the car with smoke and an awful chemical stench.Flames rose from fertilizer plant stacks, burning off mustard-yellowplumes of sodium, and animal waste poured into the river. In thenearby farmland, trucks and crop dusters sprayed DDT and otherpesticides in great, puffy clouds that we kids sometimes rode

ourbikes through, holding our breath and feeling very brave. Today the air is clear, and the river free of effluents—a visibletestament to the success of the U.S. environmental cleanup, spurred bythe Clean Air and Clean Water Acts of the 1970s. But my Axys testresults read like a chemical diary from 40 years ago. My bloodcontains traces of several chemicals now banned or restricted,including DDT (in the form of DDE, one of its breakdown products) andother pesticides such as the termite-killers chlordane and heptachlor.The levels are about what you would expect decades after exposure,says Rozman, the toxicologist at the University of Kansas MedicalCenter. My childhood playing in the dump, drinking the water, andbreathing the polluted air could also explain some of the lead anddioxins in my blood, he says. I went to college at a place and time that put me at the height ofexposure for another set of

substances found inside me—PCBs, once usedas electrical insulators and heat-exchange fluids in transformers andother products. PCBs can lurk in the soil anywhere there's a dump oran old factory. But some of the largest releases took place along NewYork's Hudson River from the 1940s to the 1970s, when General Electricused PCBs at factories in the towns of Hudson Falls and Fort Edward.About 140 miles (225 kilometers) downstream is the city ofPoughkeepsie, where I attended Vassar College in the late 1970s. PCBs, oily liquids or solids, can persist in the environment fordecades. In animals, they impair liver function, raise blood lipids,and cause cancers. Some of the 209 different PCBs chemically resembledioxins and cause other mischief in lab animals: reproductive andnervous system damage, as well as developmental problems. By 1976, thetoxicity of PCBs was unmistakable; the United States banned them, andGE stopped

using them. But until then, GE legally dumped excess PCBsinto the Hudson, which swept them all the way downriver toPoughkeepsie, one of eight cities that draw their drinking water fromthe Hudson. In 1984, a 200-mile (300 kilometers) stretch of the Hudson, fromHudson Falls to New York City, was declared a superfund site, andplans to rid the river of PCBs were set in motion. GE has spent 300million dollars on the cleanup so far, dredging up and disposing ofPCBs in the river sediment under the supervision of the EPA. It isalso working to stop the seepage of PCBs into the river from thefactories. Birds and other wildlife along the Hudson are thought to have sufferedfrom the pollution, but its impact on humans is less definitive. Onestudy in Hudson River communities found a 20 percent increase in therate of hospitalization for respiratory diseases, while another, morereassuringly, found no increase in cancer

deaths in the contaminatedregion. But among many of the locals, the fear is palpable. "I grew up a block from the Fort Edward plant," says Dennis Prevost, aretired Army officer and public health advocate, who blames PCBs forthe brain cancers that killed his brother at age 46 and a neighbor inher 20s. "The PCBs have migrated under the parking lot and into thecommunity aquifer," which Prevost says was the source of Fort Edward'sdrinking water until municipal water replaced wells in 1984. Ed Fitzgerald of the State University of New York at Albany, a formerstaff scientist at the state department of health, is conducting themost thorough study yet of the health effects of PCBs in the area. Hesays he has explained to Prevost and other residents that the riskfrom the wells was probably small because PCBs tend to settle to thebottom of an aquifer. Eating contaminated fish caught in the Hudson isa more likely exposure

route, he says. I didn't eat much Hudson River fish during my college days in the1970s, but the drinking water in my dorm could have contained tracesof the PCBs pouring into the river far upstream. That may be how Ipicked up my PCB body burden, which was about average for an American.Or maybe not. "PCBs are everywhere," says Leo Rosales, a local EPAofficial, "so who knows where you got it." Back home in San Francisco, I encounter a newer generation ofindustrial chemicals—compounds that are not banned, and, like flameretardants, are increasing year by year in the environment and in mybody. Sipping water after a workout, I could be exposing myself tobisphenol A, an ingredient in rigid plastics from water bottles tosafety goggles. Bisphenol A causes reproductive system abnormalitiesin animals. My levels were so low they were undetectable— a raremoment of relief in my toxic odyssey. And that faint lavender

scent as I shampoo my hair? Credit it tophthalates, molecules that dissolve fragrances, thicken lotions, andadd flexibility to PVC, vinyl, and some intravenous tubes inhospitals. The dashboards of most cars are loaded with phthalates, andso is some plastic food wrap. Heat and wear can release phthalatemolecules, and humans swallow them or absorb them through the skin.Because they dissipate after a few minutes to a few hours in the body,most people's levels fluctuate during the day. Like bisphenol A, phthalates disrupt reproductive development in mice.An expert panel convened by the National Toxicology Program recentlyconcluded that although the evidence so far doesn't prove thatphthalates pose any risk to people, it does raise "concern,"especially about potential effects on infants. "We don't have the datain humans to know if the current levels are safe," says AntoniaCalafat, a CDC phthalates expert. I scored

higher than the mean infive out of seven phthalates tested. One of them, monomethylphthalate, came in at 34.8 ppb, in the top 5 percent for Americans.Leo Trasande speculates that some of my phthalate levels were highbecause I gave my urine sample in the morning, just after I hadshowered and washed my hair. My inventory of household chemicals also includes perfluorinated acids(PFAs)—tough, chemically resistant compounds that go into makingnonstick and stain-resistant coatings. 3M also used them in itsScotchgard protector products until it found that the specific PFAcompounds in Scotchgard were escaping into the environment and phasedthem out. In animals these chemicals damage the liver, affect thyroidhormones, and cause birth defects and perhaps cancer, but not much isknown about their toxicity in humans. Long-range pollution left its mark on my results as well: My bloodcontained low, probably harmless,

levels of dioxins, which escape frompaper mills, certain chemical plants, and incinerators. In theenvironment, dioxins settle on soil and in the water, then pass intothe food chain. They build up in animal fat, and most people pick themup from meat and dairy products. And then there is mercury, a neurotoxin that can permanently impairmemory, learning centers, and behavior. Coal-burning power plants area major source of mercury, sending it out their stacks into theatmosphere, where it disperses in the wind, falls in rain, andeventually washes into lakes, streams, or oceans. There bacteriatransform it into a compound called methylmercury, which moves up thefood chain after plankton absorb it from the water and are eaten bysmall fish. Large predatory fish at the top of the marine food chain,like tuna and swordfish, accumulate the highest concentrations ofmethylmercury— and pass it on to seafood lovers. For

people in northern California, mercury exposure is also a legacyof the gold rush 150 years ago, when miners used quicksilver, orliquid mercury, to separate the gold from other ores in the hodgepodgeof mines in the Sierra Nevada. Over the decades, streams andgroundwater washed mercury-laden sediment out of the old mine tailingsand swept it into San Francisco Bay. I don't eat much fish, and the levels of mercury in my blood weremodest. But I wondered what would happen if I gorged on large fish fora meal or two. So one afternoon I bought some halibut and swordfish ata fish market in the old Ferry Building on San Francisco Bay. Bothwere caught in the ocean just outside the Golden Gate, where theymight have picked up mercury from the old mines. That night I ate thehalibut with basil and a dash of soy sauce; I downed the swordfish forbreakfast with eggs (cooked in my nonstick pan). Twenty-four hours later I had my

blood drawn and retested. My level ofmercury had more than doubled, from 5 micrograms per liter to ahigher-than- recommended 12. Mercury at 70 or 80 micrograms per literis dangerous for adults, says Leo Trasande, and much lower levels canaffect children. "Children have suffered losses in IQ at 5.8micrograms." He advises me to avoid repeating the gorge experiment. It's a lot harder to dodge the PBDE flame retardants responsible forthe most worrisome of my test results. My world—and yours—has becomesaturated with them since they were introduced about 30 years ago. Scientists have found the compounds planetwide, in polar bears in theArctic, cormorants in England, and killer whales in the Pacific.Bergman, the Swedish chemist, and his colleagues first calledattention to potential health risks in 1998 when they reported analarming increase in PBDEs in human breast milk, from none in milkpreserved in 1972 to an

average of four ppb in 1997. The compounds escape from treated plastic and fabrics in dustparticles or as gases that cling to dust. People inhale the dust;infants crawling on the floor get an especially high dose. Bergmandescribes a family, tested in Oakland, California, by the OaklandTribune, whose two small children had blood levels even higher thanmine. When he and his colleagues summed up the test results for sixdifferent PBDEs, they found total levels of 390 ppb in thefive-year-old girl and 650 ppb—twice my total—in the 18-month-old boy. In 2001, researchers in Sweden fed young mice a PBDE mixture similarto one used in furniture and found that they did poorly on tests oflearning, memory, and behavior. Last year, scientists at Berlin'sCharité University Medical School reported that pregnant female ratswith PBDE levels no higher than mine gave birth to male pups withimpaired reproductive health.

Linda Birnbaum, an EPA expert on these flame retardants, says thatresearchers will have to identify many more people with high PBDEexposures, like the Oakland family and me, before they will be able todetect any human effects. Bergman says that in a pregnant woman mylevels would be of concern. "Any level above a hundred parts perbillion is a risk to newborns," he guesses. No one knows for sure. Any margin of safety may be narrowing. In a review of several studies,Ronald Hites of Indiana University found an exponential rise in peopleand animals, with the levels doubling every three to five years. Nowthe CDC is putting a comprehensive study of PBDE levels in the U.S. ona fast track, with results due out late this year. Pirkle, who isrunning the study, says my seemingly extreme levels may no longer beout of the ordinary. "We'll let you know," he says. Given the stakes, why take a chance on these chemicals?

Why notimmediately ban them? In 2004, Europe did just that for the penta- andocta-BDEs, which animal tests suggest are the most toxic of thecompounds. California will also ban these forms by 2008, and in 2004Chemtura, an Indiana company that is the only U.S. maker of pentas andoctas, agreed to phase them out. Currently, there are no plans to banthe much more prevalent deca-BDEs. They reportedly break down morequickly in the environment and in people, although their breakdownproducts may include the same old pentas and octas. Nor is it clear that banning a suspect chemical is always the bestoption. Flaming beds and airplane seats are not an inviting prospecteither. The University of Surrey in England recently assessed therisks and benefits of flame retardants in consumer products. Thereport concluded: "The benefits of many flame retardants in reducingthe risk from fire outweigh the risks to human health."

Except for some pollutants, after all, every industrial chemical wascreated for a purpose. Even DDT, the archvillain of Rachel Carson's1962 classic book Silent Spring, which launched the modernenvironmental movement, was once hailed as a miracle substance becauseit killed the mosquitoes that carry malaria, yellow fever, and otherscourges. It saved countless lives before it was banned in much of theworld because of its toxicity to wildlife. "Chemicals are not allbad," says Scott Phillips, a medical toxicologist in Denver. "While wehave seen some cancer rates rise," he says, "we also have seen adoubling of the human life span in the past century." The key is knowing more about these substances, so we are notblindsided by unexpected hazards, says California State SenatorDeborah Ortiz, chair of the Senate Health Committee and the author ofa bill to monitor chemical exposure. "We benefit from these

chemicals,but there are consequences, and we need to understand theseconsequences much better than we do now." Sarah Brozena of theindustry-supported American Chemistry Council thinks safeguards areadequate now, but she concedes: "That's not to say this process wasdone right in the past." The European Union last year gave initial approval to a measure calledREACH—Registration, Evaluation, and Authorization of Chemicals—whichwould require companies to prove the substances they market or use aresafe, or that the benefits outweigh any risks. The bill, which thechemical industry and the U.S. government oppose, would also encouragecompanies to find safer alternatives to suspect flame retardants,pesticides, solvents, and other chemicals. That would give a boost tothe so-called green chemistry movement, a search for alternatives thatis already under way in laboratories on both sides of the Atlantic. As unsettling

as my journey down chemical lane was, it left outthousands of compounds, among them pesticides, plastics, solvents, anda rocket-fuel ingredient called perchlorate that is pollutinggroundwater in many regions of the country. Nor was I tested forchemical cocktails—mixtures of chemicals that may do little harm ontheir own but act together to damage human cells. Mixed together,pesticides, PCBs, phthalates, and others "might have additive effects,or they might be antagonistic, " says James Pirkle of the CDC, "orthey may do nothing. We don't know." Soon after I receive my results, I show them to my internist, whoadmits that he too knows little about these chemicals, other than leadand mercury. But he confirms that I am healthy, as far as he can tell.He tells me not to worry. So I'll keep flying, and scrambling my eggson Teflon, and using that scented shampoo. But I'll never feel quitethe same about the chemicals that

make life better in so many ways."Get off your ass and take your government back." ~Rocky Ward

Want to be your own boss? Learn how on Small Business.