In a study led by Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, in collaboration with the Environmental Working Group and Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found 167 chemicals, pollutants, and pesticides in the blood and urine of nine adult Americans. Study results appear in a recently-published edition of the journal Public Health Reports (Thornton, et al. 2002) – the first publicly available, comprehensive look at the chemical burden we carry in our bodies.

None of the nine volunteers work with chemicals on the job. All lead healthy lives. Yet the subjects contained an average of 91 compounds – most of which did not exist 75 years ago.

A growing body of literature links low dose chemical exposures in animal studies to a broad range of health effects previously unexplored in high dose studies. In low dose testing, scientists are using sophisticated techniques to measure subtle but important changes in the functioning of apparently undamaged organ systems, including alterations in immune function (such as antibody response), enzyme activity, hormone levels, cellular changes in tissues, neurobehavioral parameters, organ growth, and hormone and neurotransmitter receptor levels. Importantly, many low dose effects are detected following developmental exposure. These tests focus on the effects of chemical exposures comparable to those that occur in the general population, and far below the levels that have traditionally been considered safe based on the results of studies that feed lab animals high doses of a given compound. Using these protocols, scientists are finding that low doses of chemicals can be far more harmful than previously believed.

Study Shows Toxic Chemicals in Newborns

But Chemical Manufacturers Say It's Not an Indication of Health Risk
By Todd Zwillich
WebMD Medical News
Reviewed By Brunilda  Nazario, MD
on Thursday, July 14, 2005

Please visit: http://www.webmd.com/content/article/108/109035.htm?z=1833_00000_5022_pe_01

July 14, 2005 -- Hundreds of toxins, including industrial chemicals, pesticides, and other pollutants may be contaminating some U.S. newborns, according to a small study.

In a study of newborn blood released by the Environmental Working Group, an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants were found in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies.

The babies were born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals. The newborns' blood was collected after the umbilical cord was cut, according to the EWG, which may indicate that the infants were exposed to the compounds while still in the womb.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers, released a statement saying that the information in Thursday's report was not new.

"Scientists have long understood that our bodies can absorb substances present in our environment," the statement says. "The measurements by themselves are not an indication of a health risk and should not be cause for alarm," the group says.
Researchers randomly tested cord blood anonymously donated to the Red Cross. They did not pinpoint where in the U.S. the exposures occurred.

Environmental activists are taking the study as evidence that hundreds of common industrial chemicals -- some of them never before detected in newborns -- can pass from mothers to fetuses.

"This study represents the first reported cord blood tests for 261 of the targeted chemicals and the first reported detections in cord blood for 209 compounds." they write in their report.

But Chemical Manufacturers Say It's Not an Indication of Health Risk

Chemicals and Public Policy

The study's release was timed to coincide with the introduction of a bill on Capitol Hill designed to force manufacturers to test the safety of chemicals before putting them on the market. The measure would also require the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to determine the safety of 300 industrial chemicals within the next five years.

"It's not a definitive measure of pollution in newborns, but we think it should spur public health researchers and spur policy makers," says Timothy Kropp, PhD, senior scientist with the Environmental Working Group.

Tests uncovered an average of 200 different chemicals in each cord blood sample, including a wide variety of pesticides, fire retardants, and industrial coatings used in electrical insulation, carpets, furniture, and other products.

"We don't know what safe levels are for many of them. We must know more before chemicals end up in children," Kropp says.

Eighteen different forms of dioxin were also found in the samples, according to the report.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer designated dioxin as a "known human carcinogen" in 1997, though very low levels of exposure are believed not to cause tumors in humans, according to the World Health Organization.

A Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday concluded that manufacturers have provided the EPA with health and safety data on only 15% of industrial chemicals sold in the U.S. in the last three decades.

Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) told reporters Thursday that she was one of several who anonymously donated blood for a continuation of the analysis. More than 270 toxic chemicals were found in her blood, said Slaughter, who is 75 years old. "I'm a walking chemical plant. That's hardly the picture of health I had hoped for," she said.

SOURCES: Environmental Working Group. Timothy Kropp, PhD, senior scientist, Environmental Working Group. World Health Organization. American Chemistry Council. Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.).

Workplace Chemicals Drop Sperm Count

Doctors from Canada found that exposure to organic solvents in jobs such as painters and decorators, printers, laundry and dry cleaning workers, shipbuilders, and repair workers can, in fact, cause the sperm count to fall.

Please visit: http://www.webmd.com/content/article/34/1728_88879.htm

Dozens of Chemicals Found in Most Americans' Bodies 
    

By Marla Cone,  The Los Angeles Times, Friday 22 July 2005
The concentration is especially high in children, a national study says. But experts aren't sure what the health effects are.

   In the largest study of chemical exposure ever conducted on human beings, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday that most American children and adults were carrying in their bodies dozens of pesticides and toxic compounds used in consumer products, many of them linked to potential health threats.

    The report documented bigger doses in children than in adults of many chemicals, including some pyrethroids, which are in virtually every household pesticide, and phthalates, which are found in nail polish and other beauty products as well as in soft plastics.

    The CDC's director, Dr. Julie L. Gerberding, called the national exposure report - the third in an assessment that is released biennially - a breakthrough that would help public health officials home in on the most important compounds to which Americans are routinely exposed.

    The latest installment, which looked for 148 toxic compounds in the urine and blood of about 2,400 people age 6 and older in 2000 and 2001, is "the largest and most comprehensive report of its kind ever released anywhere by anyone," Gerberding said. Findings were broken down by age group and race.

    At Thursday's news conference, CDC officials emphasized the good news: Steep declines were found in children's exposure to lead and secondhand cigarette smoke.

    Lead levels in children have dropped significantly over several years, which Gerberding called an "astonishing public health achievement" attributable largely to its removal from gasoline and paint.

    About 1.6% of young children tested from 1999 to 2002 had elevated levels of lead, which could lower their intelligence and damage their brains, compared with 88.2% in the late 1970s and 4.4% in the early 1990s.

    But the discovery of more than 100 other substances in humans, particularly children, distressed environmental health experts.

    "The report in general shows that people - kids and adults - are exposed to things that aren't intended to be in their body," said Dr. Jerome A. Paulson, an associate professor of pediatrics at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences who specializes in children's environmental health. "In and of itself, that is a concern. Whether it's harmful or not we can't tell from this particular study."

    The new data in the 475-page report reveal how "we have fouled our own nest," Paulson said. "We contaminated the environment sufficiently that there are measurable amounts of potentially toxic substances in people - kids and adults."

    The CDC did not try to gauge the health threat the chemicals might pose. A measurable amount of a compound in a person's body does not mean it causes disease or other damage, the agency noted.

    For many compounds in the report, experts have little information on what amounts may be harmful or what they may do in combination.

    "We are really at the beginning of a very complicated journey to understand the thousands of substances we are exposed to," said Thomas Burke, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

    The discoveryof pyrethroids in most people is especially important, as no one had looked for them in the human body before. Pyrethroids are synthetic versions of natural compounds found in flowers, and they have been considered safer than older pesticides, such as DDT and chlordane, that build up in the environment and have been banned in the United States.

    But in high doses, pyrethroids are toxic to the nervous system. They are the second most common class of pesticides that result in poisoning. At low doses, they might alter hormones. The compounds are used in large volumes in farm and household pesticides and are sprayed by public agencies to kill mosquitoes.

    Pyrethroids "were a step forward [from DDT and other banned pesticides], but now we're beginning to understand that while they don't persist in the environment, many of us are exposed," Burke said. "We don't quite know what those levels mean."

    Eleven of 12 phthalates tested were higher in children than adults. All of the phthalates but one are used in fragrances. In animal tests, and in one recent study of human babies, some of the compounds have been shown to alter male reproductive organs or to feminize hormones.

    Representatives of the chemical and pesticide industries praised the study, saying that human biomonitoring is the best available tool to measure exposure. They echoed the CDC in saying that discovery of the chemicals in the human body did not automatically mean they posed a threat.

    The report demonstrates "that exposure to these man-made and natural substances is extremely low," said American Chemistry Council spokesman Chris VandenHeuvel.

    The CDC's Gerberding said that "for the vast majority" of the 148 chemicals in the report, "we have no evidence of health effects."

    Many toxicologists and environmental scientists disagree.

    Studies of animals, and in some cases people, suggest that most of the compounds can affect the brain, hormones, reproductive system or the immune system, or that they are linked to cancer. "These are some bad actors," Burke said.

    Many of the compounds have not been studied sufficiently to know what happens with chronic exposure to low doses. "No evidence of health effects does not imply that they are not harmful," Paulson said. "It just means we don't know one way or another."

    Environmental groups have called for U.S. law to require chemical companies to test industrial compounds more comprehensively, a proposal similar to one that the European Parliament is to debate in the fall.

    The evidence that many contaminants amass in children more than in adults could mean that they are exposed to larger amounts - perhaps from crawling, breathing more rapidly or putting items in their mouths - or that their bodies are less able to cope with or metabolize them.

    In the womb and in the first two years after birth, children undergo extraordinary cell growth, from brain neurons to immune cells, so there are more opportunities for toxic compounds to disrupt the cells, Paulson said. Animal tests show that fetuses and newborns are the most susceptible to harm from many chemicals.

    In the CDC study, one of every 18 women of childbearing age, or 5.7%, had mercury that exceeded the level that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency deemed safe to a developing fetus.

    Tests on schoolchildren show that mercury exposure in the womb can lower IQs, with memory and vocabulary particularly impaired.

    The CDC plans to expand the national chemical report to more than 300 compounds in two years and about 500 in four years. An estimated 80,000 chemicals are in commercial use today.