News Coverage
Missoula, Helena moms part of national breast milk study
Published September 22, 2003
Chemicals used as fire retardants were found in the breast milk of every woman who participated in a nationwide study released Tuesday, including a pair of new moms from Missoula and Helena.
"It was a real wakeup call," said Laurie Yung, a Missoula woman who joined the study shortly after now-5-month-old Conner was born.
Yung's breast milk was contaminated with 91 parts per billion bromine-based fire retardant, 10 times more than the highest levels reported during a similar study of Swedish women.
"It is challenging to wonder how I got such high levels of PBDEs in my body," Yung said. "It makes you realize how widespread these chemicals are in our environment."
Brominated fire retardants are used in hundreds of products, including carpeting, furniture, computers, televisions and many foam and plastic products.
The chemicals save thousands of lives every year, said Peter O'Toole, a spokesman for the Bromine Science and Environmental Forum.
"These products are peerless in reaching tough fire safety standards such as those found in the United States," O'Toole said.
Along with smoke detectors, emergency exits and rapid response teams, PBDEs are "all part of the safety net needed to provide several layers of protection needed in today's society," he said.
The Environmental Working Group's study is not valid, O'Toole said, because only 20 women were tested. The sample size was just too small.
Not so, came the reply from Sonya Lunder, the report's author.
The study released Tuesday was the first to test women nationwide, she said. But the sample size - 20 women - was comparable to other such studies.
What's important, Lunder said, is that the Environmental Working Group's study confirms recent findings that American babies are exposed to far higher amounts of fire retardants than are babies in Europe, where some of the same chemicals have been banned.
The average level of bromine-based fire retardants in the milk of the 20 first-time mothers was 75 times the average found in recent European studies. Two study participants had the highest levels of fire retardants ever found in breast milk in the United States.
Like the banned PCBs once used to insulate electrical transformers, brominated fire retardants build up in the body over a lifetime.
The chemicals are known to impair attention, learning, memory and behavior in laboratory animals at even low levels of exposure - including levels near those found in the Environmental Working Group study.
And the most sensitive time for toxic effects is during brain development, while babies are still in the womb, Lunder said.
Helena attorney Jennifer Scheinz knew about the prevalence of toxins in breast milk even before she agreed to participate in the study.
Still, she never wondered whether she should breastfeed 3-month-old Elijah.
"Breast milk is the best and most complete food for our baby," Scheinz said. "I wouldn't consider anything other than breastfeeding.
"But it is really, really important that we get the information about toxins out to the public, precisely because this is the best food for our babies, and we are contaminating it by our practices."
Scheinz is a board member of Women's Voices for the Earth, a Missoula environmental group that participated in the study.
"Fire retardants are of great concern to us," said Dori Gilels, the group's breastmilk campaign coordinator. "We ought to be looking at bans. We know more about the harmful effects of these chemicals than we did about PCBs when they were banned in the 1970s. How much more do we need to know before we act?"
Scientists are not certain how humans are exposed to the chemicals. It could be in dust. It almost certainly is from eating fish. But there are probably other, unknown pathways, Gilels said.
"The thing is, there are safe alternatives," said Yung, the Missoula mom, and also an instructor at the University of Montana. "We can create products that are resistant to fire without using this particular class of chemicals, or without using a lot of chemicals in general."
"We need to give our kids the healthiest start possible," Yung said. "And that ought to include removing these toxins from mother's milk."