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Body
pollution: We’re all exposed to chemicals
Aug.
25, 2003
By BOB DOWNING
Knight Ridder Newspapers
| CUT
HEALTH THREATS |
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Concerned
about low-level exposure to toxic
chemicals?
The Environmental Working Group, a
national eco-organization, offers
these suggestions for reducing the
threat to your health:
— Buy organic food.
— Avoid using pesticides at your
home.
— Use water-based solvents instead
of volatile organic compounds.
— Avoid eating fish that could
be contaminated with mercury and PCBs.
— Eat fewer processed foods.
— Reduce your use of cosmetics
and personal-care items.
— Avoid artificial fragrances.
— Reduce the number of household
cleaners you use.
— Avoid gasoline-powered yard
tools.
— Run your tap water through
an in-home filter.
— Eat less meat and fewer high-fat
dairy products.
— Don’t use stain repellents.
— Don’t microwave food in
plastic containers (use glass or ceramic).
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AKRON,
Ohio — California resident Davis Baltz has
learned that he has low levels of 106 toxic chemicals
in his body.
He wasn’t completely surprised by the finding,
but he was angry.
“It made me mad that that many chemicals were in
my body without my consent or my knowledge,” he
says.
Ken Taggart, who lives in Ohio’s Washington County,
is worried about one toxic chemical in his body.
Ammonium perfluorooctanoate (PFOA), or C-8, has been
found in drinking water supplies in his area, and he
also was exposed to it during his 32 years working at
the DuPont plant across the Ohio River near Parkersburg,
W.Va. His body was once so contaminated with C-8 that
his company told him not to donate at a blood bank.
“If C-8 were such a good thing, God would have
put it in your body when he made you,” Taggart
said.
It is almost impossible to avoid exposure to toxic chemicals.
An estimated 80,000 industrial chemicals are in use
today, and most have never been studied or analyzed
for their impacts on people or the environment.
COMBINING CHEMICALS
No one can say how much exposure is safe, which levels
lead to adverse health effects or which combinations
of chemicals could pose a threat.
“It is an issue that people should be concerned
about, but not alarmed,” said Stu Greenberg of
the Environmental Health Watch in Cleveland. “We’re
all exposed to chemicals every day in our lives. They
surround us and they’re everywhere. We need to
know more about what the risks may or may not be to
our health.”
Results released this year on two national studies provide
evidence on how many toxic chemicals Americans are being
exposed to.
The Environmental Working Group and Commonweal, in cooperation
with New York’s Mount Sinai School of Community
Medicine, conducted one study, called “BodyBurden:
The Pollution in People.”
The study analyzed the blood and urine of nine volunteers
for 210 environmental chemicals. Television commentator
Bill Moyer was one volunteer; Baltz, a 49-year-old senior
research associate for a Catholic social action agency
in Berkeley, Calif., was another.
SURPRISING FINDINGS
A total of 167 industrial chemicals — most in low
levels — were confirmed in the nine volunteers.
The average number of chemicals in the volunteers was
91.
Of the chemicals found in Baltz’s body:
— 61 can cause cancer.
— 65 can cause birth defects and developmental
problems.
— 68 can affect hormones.
— 73 can affect the brain and nervous system.
— 64 can affect the respiratory system.
— 68 can affect the digestive system.
— 64 can affect the kidneys.
— 51 can affect the liver.
— 66 can affect the skin.
— 62 can affect the immune system.
— 56 can affect the male reproductive system.
“We definitely expected to find things and, in
fact, we were a little surprised we didn’t find
more,” said Dr. Kris Thayer of the Environmental
Working Group, which is pushing to get the federal Environmental
Protection Agency to test more chemicals before they
go into use. “We know there’s environmental
contamination within all of us, but we wanted to provide
a glimpse of the complicated mixture. ... Chemicals
are everywhere. There’s no place to hide.”
In the other study, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention tested the blood and urine of 2,500 volunteers.
EXHAUSTIVE SURVEY
The two-year, $6.5-million study, called “National
Report of Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals,”
is considered the most exhaustive and detailed survey
of human chemical exposures.
The federal study looked for 116 chemicals and found
89. These included pesticides, herbicides, pest repellents
and disinfectants.
Most of these chemicals have been tested for toxicity
only in animals.
A key finding was that children have higher levels of
many industrial chemicals than adults do. That is especially
troubling because of the sensitivity and vulnerability
of children.
Mexican-Americans had more than three times the levels
of the pesticide DDT (banned since 1972 in the United
States) than non-Hispanic whites and blacks.
Though the CDC did not determine how many chemicals
were found on average or which were found most often,
federal officials say the study provides a base line
for levels of toxic chemicals in people and an indicator
of what needs to be done next.
“Just because a chemical can be measured ... doesn’t
mean it causes disease,” said Dr. Richard Jackson,
director of the CDC’s National Center for Environmental
Health.
Historically, chemical pollution has become a concern
when questions arise about the safety of a certain product.
Take C-8, which is used to produce coatings for furniture,
carpets and nonstick cookware.
The chemical has been used for 50 years at DuPont’s
Washington Works outside Parkersburg. It was dumped
into the Ohio River, discharged into the air and put
in landfills. It has been found in drinking-water wells
in West Virginia and Ohio.
And it has been found in the blood of DuPont workers
such as the 62-year-old Taggart, who retired seven years
ago.
DUPONT’S POSITION
DuPont has said in repeated statements and on its Web
site that such low-level exposure to C-8 is safe.
“DuPont remains confident that our use of PFOA
over the last 50 years has not posed a risk to either
human health or the environment, and that our products
are safe,” a company spokesman said in April.
The EPA says there is no proof that C-8 is a human health
threat at low levels, although the chemical can remain
in the body for four years.
Tests by 3M, the first producer of C-8, show that high
levels of exposure may cause liver damage and reproductive
problems in rats. Other studies suggest that the chemical
may lead to birth defects in children of employees at
plants where the product is made.
LAWSUIT VS DUPONT
A class-action lawsuit has been filed by 3,000 people
in a West Virginia court against DuPont. The Environmental
Working Group is pushing the issue.
Taggart said people on both sides of the Ohio River
near Parkersburg are ‘really concerned’ about
exposure to C-8.
He wonders whether the chemical could have contributed
to his arthritis or caused other medical problems.
He doesn’t know whether C-8 is still in his body,
but he and his wife now drink only bottled water.
The two national reports on exposure to toxic chemicals
can be found on the Internet. Go to www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden/
for the Environmental Working Group report. The CDC
report is at www.cdc.gov/exposurereport.
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