Cascadia Scorecard News
September 2005

Last October, a Sightline study found toxic flame retardants in the bodies of 40 Northwest women at levels 20 to 40 times higher than in Europe and Japan. There's new evidence that the threats posed by these toxic flame retardants, PBDEs, may now be eclipsing the threat from PCBs, industrial chemicals that were banned in the 1970s because of health risks. Sightline co-authored a new analysis with the California EPA and found higher levels of PBDEs than of PCBs in 30 percent of the women in the Sightline study, suggesting that PBDEs have emerged as a major environmental and health concern.

What are the concerns about PBDEs?

• PBDE levels are rising: PBDEs are widely used as flame retardants in furniture foams, industrial textiles, and consumer electronics. For the last 20 years, levels of PBDEs in humans have been rising, with concentrations of the compounds doubling about every two to five years. Significant increases have also been found in marine mammals and fish. As it turns out, PBDEs aren't staying in the consumer products they're added to-like PCBs have for decades, they are leaching into the environment in minute quantities, and accumulating in our bodies.

• Health effects of the chemicals: At the same time that this rapid rise of PBDEs was detected, new evidence was uncovered that they may have similar health effects as their close chemical cousins, PCBs. Tests on laboratory animals showed that a dose of PBDEs during a critical phase of early development could cause memory deficits and behavioral aberrations-effects very similar to those caused by PCBs. And the two chemicals may actually work together to cause greater harm than each individually.

• Exposure through food and house dust: The recent analysis by California EPA and Sightline found no correlation between PBDE and PCB levels in the women, suggesting that the two chemicals enter people in different ways. PCBs are believed to enter the body through food, particularly from consuming fish. Although no one knows for sure how PBDEs enter our bodies, several recent studies point to house and office dust as a significant exposure pathway.

Even though PCB levels are still higher than PBDE levels, we may soon be approaching a point at which PBDEs are more of a concern than PCBs. There has been some action in the Northwest, including partial bans on the chemicals on Oregon and Washington. (Click here to read about what's happening in your region.)

Sightline also has recommendations on how to deal with these and other toxic chemicals in the long term:

• Continue to monitor levels of PBDEs and other toxics that accumulate in people. Monitoring the levels will help scientists, government, and health officials get a clear picture of what's happening and identify places with higher levels of contamination.

• Identify methods for safely removing PBDE-laden products from people's homes. Despite being banned almost 30 years ago, PCBs are still present in people's bodies and the environment, partly due to products and machinery containing PCBs that continued to leach the chemical into the environment. Banning PBDEs is the first step, but removing products already in people's homes will help curb exposure.

• Learn our lesson about the risks posed by untested chemicals. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that PBDEs posed some risk-their chemical structure is very similar to that of PCBs, dioxin, and DDT. Some 80,000 different synthetic compounds have been introduced since the 1940s, yet only a relative handful have been tested for their potential health effects in humans. To prevent the release of "the next PBDE," we need to stop releasing potentially hazardous compounds without adequate testing.

More information on toxic chemicals

Why breastfeeding is still best

What you can do to protect yourself

What your region is doing about PBDEs

Sightline's 8/05 report on PBDEs and PCBs

Sightline's 10/04 report on PBDEs in Northwest women

Sightline's pollution indicator