News Coverage
Maine weighs ban as anti-flame chemicals turn up in humans
Published January 26, 2004
Maine legislators are being asked to ban flame retardants widely used in upholstery, carpets, mattresses, plastics, electronics and other products because the chemicals are now turning up in the breast milk of American women.
If the measure passes, Maine would become only the second state to address the issue. California lawmakers banned two types of flame retardants in August.
Brominated flame retardants are a large class of chemicals that make everyday items fire-resistant. But as they have been added to more household items - computers, televisions, sofas, stereos - they have been showing up more often in the environment.
The chemicals have turned up in house dust, in harbor seals in San Francisco, fish in Maryland and Virginia, the eggs of peregrine falcons in Sweden - even in lakes in the Arctic.
And studies have shown that concentrations are rising in humans. In 1998, Swedish researchers found that levels of flame retardants in breast milk had increased 40-fold since 1972. They also have shown up in blood taken from office workers who use computers and workers who dismantle electronics.
"Scientists are now concerned that the brominated flame retardants are going to be the DDT and PCBs of this generation," said Steven Gurney, science and policy director for the Environmental Health Strategy Center, an advocacy group in Portland.
The United States is the largest user and producer of flame retardants. Concentrations in American women's breast milk are 10 to 100 times higher than in European countries.
Brominated flame retardants have been linked in animal studies to effects on developing nervous systems, developmental problems in the ovaries and testes, and effects on thyroid hormones. Because the chemicals look and act like PCBs - polychlorinated biphenyls - scientists are worried they could cause cancer.
But Peter O'Toole, spokesman for the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum, an industry group, says researchers have never shown there are negative health effects in human beings.
"There have been animal studies, but you cannot extrapolate those findings out to human beings," he said. "That's the leap I think some people want to make - if these are showing up in the environment, then they have to have negative human health effects - but that's just not valid."
Linda Birnbaum, director of the experimental toxicology division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National Health and Environmental Effects Research Laboratory, says that although there's no evidence yet that the compounds are causing health problems in people, "there's clearly the potential for that based on a lot of our animal studies."
Birnbaum says the health effects seen in some animal studies are occurring at doses not that much higher than the chemical levels found in some of the most highly exposed people in the United States.
She also says that although the number of people who have been tested is still small - about 200 in North America - results of those studies have been consistent.
"We have growing evidence that the levels in people are much higher in the U.S. than in Europe, and the levels are increasing," she said. "Those are the kind of red warning flags that say maybe this isn't something that we want to continue to be producing and using."
Dr. Arnold Schecter, a public health physician at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Dallas, recently published the study of nursing mothers that showed levels of the chemicals in their breast milk that were 10 to 100 times higher than in European women.
Schecter says it's prudent to assume the chemicals are toxic to humans until more research can be done. "We don't know how much of a problem this is," he said.
Schecter says he is "astonished" that the issue hasn't gotten more attention from the media, environmental regulators and the public.
"I'm astonished because it's in everyone," he said, "but also because nursing infants have no other source of food and there's nothing you can do about the intake before birth. So to me, it seems like a real potential health hazard of some magnitude."
The most commonly used flame retardants are polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs. They come in different formulations, depending on how many bromine atoms they contain. The penta-BDE formulation, for example, contains five, the octa-BDE mixture contains eight and deca-BDE has 10.
The deca-BDE mixture is used worldwide in electrical and electronic equipment, including televisions and computers.
No one knows exactly how the chemicals are getting into humans. Scientists are just beginning food studies to see if that's a potential source. However, research has shown that once the retardants are taken out of the environment, the levels in people drop. After Sweden banned their use in 1998, for example, levels in breast milk began declining right away.
"That speaks to the fact that if we get rid of them, we get them out of our bodies," Gurney said.
The European Union has decided to phase out the use of all three types of PBDEs in electronics beginning this year. The penta and octa formulations will be phased out of all consumer products by 2006.
In August, California decided to ban the penta and octa compounds by 2008.
Some corporations, including IKEA, Intel, Apple, Phillips, Ericsson, Sony and Panasonic, have voluntarily decided to switch to alternatives.
In October, the U.S. manufacturer of the penta and octa formulations entered into an agreement with the EPA to stop production of the chemicals by the end of 2004.
But that doesn't mean the issue will be off the table, Birnbaum said.
"Although they're going to stop producing it in another year, because these chemicals are persistent and bioaccumulate, we are going to continue to have the legacy of this use for decades in the future," she said. "If, in fact, we find that these are very, very nasty products, do we want to treat disposal of electronic equipment or polyurethane foam in a different way than we're doing now?"
There also is a concern that foreign manufacturers could step in and provide the chemicals to U.S. manufacturers.
Maine's bill addresses five types of flame retardants. The bill, sponsored by Rep. Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, is similar to legislation passed in the past couple of years banning the sale of items that contain mercury.
Pingree's bill would phase the chemicals out of consumer products in favor of safer alternatives, using rolling deadlines of 2006, 2008 and 2010. Exemptions would be allowed for products where there is no alternative.
The bill also requires warning labels for consumers and a notification system so that the Maine Department of Environmental Protection can track the products being sold in the state. The program would be funded through a manufacturer's fee.
Pingree's bill has drawn the support of eight environmental and public health groups in the state. In addition to Gurney's group, they are the Natural Resources Council of Maine, the Toxics Action Center, the Maine Public Health Association, the Learning Disabilities Association of Maine, Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Maine Peoples' Alliance and the Maine Labor Group on Health.
O'Toole, the industry representative, says the bill could be interpreted too broadly and outlaw all flame retardants, which he calls "silent sentries" that save many lives.
"Sometimes it's difficult to demonstrate how a fire retardant is doing its job and is saving lives because those are fires that don't happen," he said.
From 1992 through 2001, he notes, more than 200 people have died in Maine fires.
O'Toole says alternatives to flame retardants do not carry the same level of safety, and no one knows what environmental effects they may have.
The debate over brominated flame retardants has raised the issue of whether women should continue to breast-feed.
"Breast milk is definitely the best food there is," Gurney said, "and even though it's being contaminated at an increasing rate, we still think that mothers should breast-feed because that's the best thing to do."
Schecter agrees, but only to a point.
"That's the gut reaction, that breast-feeding is best," he said. "That's what we were made to do. But we can't keep adding dioxins and PCBs and dibenzofurans and brominated flame retardants and DDT and other compounds and say that we should keep breast-feeding, or breast-feeding as long as we're recommending now.
"If these compounds are bad for people's health," he said, "there has to be a limit."