Breast milk awash in chemicals

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ecialScienceandHealth/

Breast milk awash in chemicals


By ANDRÉ PICARD
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

A new study conducted in British Columbia and the U.S. Northwest has
found chemical flame retardants in the breast milk of every woman
tested. Not only were the chemicals, polybrominated diphenyl ethers or
PBDEs, omnipresent, but they were among the highest levels recorded in
humans.
"Contamination with PBDEs is ubiquitous," said Clark Williams-Derry,
research director for Northwest Environment Watch (NEW), the
Seattle-based group that conducted the research.

"The levels we found were 20 to 40 times higher than what you find in
Europe and Asia," said Mr. Williams-Derry, who heads up NEW, which
describes itself an independent, not-for-profit research and
communication centre.

Earlier this year, Health Canada released a survey that found that
women in Canada had levels about five to 10 times higher than those in
other advanced industrial countries, such as Japan, Sweden and
Germany. The survey indicated that Canadian women have the
second-highest levels in the world, after the United States.

PBDEs are chemicals widely used as flame retardants in furniture
foams, industrial textiles, and consumer electronics. It is not known
exactly how PBDEs migrate from household products into human tissue.
They have been found in household dust and sewage sludge, in many
fatty foods such as meat and fish, and in wildlife.

Mr. Williams-Derry said that while there is little research on human
health and PBDEs, animal experiments have linked the chemicals to
learning difficulties, memory impairment, and changes in thyroid
hormone levels.

The similarity of these effects to those of childhood
attention-deficit disorders, and the rising tide of adult thyroid
problems, have led to suggestions that PBDEs play a role in these
ailments.

"You can't avoid exposure to flame retardants any more, even if you
have the cleanest lifestyle. That calls for some public safeguards,
some regulatory action," he said.

Alexis Doctor, a Vancouver woman whose breast milk was tested as part
of the research, said that she was shocked to learn of the
contamination, and that her 14-month-old son, Ethan, could be
ingesting chemicals.

"I don't have a safe feeling any more," she said. "I work in an
office, not a chemical factory, so I can't believe that all this stuff
is in my body."

Ms. Doctor was one of 40 women in British Columbia and the states of
Montana, Oregon, and Washington whose breast milk was tested as part
of the research. Her milk contained 23 parts per billion of PBDEs,
well below the median level of 50 ppb, but still not negligible. The
highest level recorded in British Columbia was 381 ppb.

The researchers stressed that women should continue to breastfeed
because the benefits of doing so almost certainly outweigh the risks.
They tested breast milk only because it is a simple means of
determining environmental exposure to chemicals.

Paul Muldoon, executive director of the Canadian Environmental Law
Association, said that while the sample was small and tests were done
only on the Pacific Coast, there is every reason to believe this level
of contamination exists across North America. "People in Eastern
Canada should be just as alarmed about these findings as people in
Western Canada and people in Central Canada," he said.

Mr. Muldoon said while it is unclear what safe levels of PBDEs might
be for humans, regulators should not be complacent. "We need to take a
precautionary approach, and that requires some direct intervention."

Mr. Muldoon said that, legally, PBDEs are a tough substance to
regulate. Environmental laws tend to target emissions, while in this
instance the potentially dangerous chemicals are discharged from
common household products.

Mr. Williams-Derry said that there should be a rapid phase-out of the
use of PBDEs in manufacturing, and a push to find alternatives. He
noted that countries like Sweden have banned PBDEs without difficulty.
"This is not an insurmountable problem."

Until PBDEs are banned, or phased out, Mr. Williams-Derry said
consumers should try to minimize their exposure by buying furniture
and carpeting made with natural fibres, or sold at companies such as
IKEA, which has stopped using the chemicals.

Health Canada and Environment Canada recommended earlier this year
that some forms of PBDEs be declared toxic and eliminated from use.

International comparisons done by Health Canada scientists show that
breast milk has about 100 times more PBDEs today than 30 years ago.

Over the past three decades, increasing amounts of PBDEs have been
added to consumer products such as televisions, computers, and to the
polyurethane foam used in furniture. The good news, according to
health and environmental experts, is that the problem can be fairly
easily reversed. After Sweden banned PBDEs, contamination levels in
breast milk declined sharply.

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www.BreastImplantAwareness.org