News Coverage
Exposure to flame retardants extensive
Published June 3, 2004
Dust samples swiped from computers in Maine's State House contain the same toxic flame retardants that legislators banned earlier this year, according to a new national study.
Flame retardants are chemicals that have been widely used for years in electronics, furniture and other consumer products as a fire-safety measure. But now there is concern that the chemicals are accumulating in the environment and may be neurological and reproductive hazards.
Maine legislators passed a bill this year banning two types of flame retardants in consumer products by 2006. A third will be banned in 2008 if safer alternatives are available by then.
The dust samples from the State House in Augusta were part of an eight-state study released Thursday by Clean Production Action and the Computer Take Back Campaign, two national organizations that promote clean production policies that protect the environment and public health.
Another dust sample was taken from a computer at the Children's Museum of Maine.
There were just 16 samples in the whole study, but public health advocates say the results - four different flame retardants were found in every sample - dramatize the prevalence of the chemicals in today's high-tech society.
"The value of this effort is that it demonstrates that these chemicals are in fact coming out of these computers, which is something which the manufacturers of these chemicals have denied for years," said Steven Gurney, science and policy director at the Environmental Health Strategy Center in Portland.
A spokesman for the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, an industry trade group, did not return a call seeking comment. But in testimony before the Maine Legislature earlier this year, manufacturers said the chemicals save thousands of lives every year, and numerous studies have found that the most widely used retardant is safe for both people and the environment.
In the national study, other samples were taken in places such as a university computer lab in Wisconsin and a legislator's office in Michigan. Gurney would not say exactly where the two samples from the Maine State House were taken.
The study found no correlation between fire retardant levels and the age of the computer, the brand or where the computer was located.
Parents should not be particularly concerned that the chemicals were found at the children's museum because they get more exposure to fire retardants at home, said Ann Blake, a California researcher who co-authored the study. The point of the study, she said, is that the chemicals are ubiquitous.
"Everywhere we've looked, there's no distinction between type of building or type of office or anything like that," Blake said. "Wherever we look for it on computers, it's there."
Flame retardants have been linked to brain and nerve damage in animals.
The chemicals appear to bioaccumulate in the environment, working their way up the food chain into human blood and breast milk. Some levels seen in peregrine falcons and other animals higher on the food chain "are starting to approach levels that we've seen, in the lab, cause neurological impacts on mice," Blake said.
Scientists don't know exactly how flame retardants are getting into humans, though some speculate that the primary pathway may be through food.
Dust could be a significant pathway, however, especially for children because they crawl and play on the floor.
"Dust is an important exposure pathway for ingestion and inhalation," Gurney said.
Sandra Cort, of the Learning Disabilities Association of Maine, said flame retardants are "a concern for us" because they are so similar to PCBs and act in much the same way as they move through the environment.
"It's kind of ironic, also, in that computer products are such a vital resource for kids with disabilities, in terms of helping them with their education," Cort said, "yet these very products can have these brominated flame retardants in them that can be a problem."