A study released Thursday confirms what many scientists have long suspected - that ordinary people carry in their bodies dozens of environmental pollutants, including a wide variety of industrial compounds, metals and pesticides.
While most of the substances were found in minute amounts, the study raises questions about what the cumulative effects may be of a mixture of substances known to individually have toxic effects at higher doses.
The study tested the blood and urine of nine people for 210 pollutants and found traces of 167 of those pollutants in one or more of the participants. The average number of pollutants found in the nine people was 91. None of those tested work with chemicals on the job.
The study was conducted by the Environmental Working Group, an environmental advocacy group in Washington; Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, and Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Bolinas, Calif.
Since World War II, the petrochemical industry has introduced more than 75,000 new chemicals, although only about 12,000 are produced in high volume.
"We've never been confronted with this chemical mixture in our bodies in all of evolutionary history until now," said Richard Wiles of the Environmental Working Group. "But we know from animal studies that they can be harmful and we know that the effects that they are likely to cause are increasing in the population."
Those effects include increases since the 1970s in autism, attention-deficit disorder, early puberty, birth defects in male reproductive organs, and certain cancers, including childhood leukemia and breast, testicular, prostate, thyroid and childhood brain cancer, Wiles said.
Jay Vroom, president of CropLife America, a trade association for the pesticide industry, said the study's sponsors are trying to scare the American public.
There needs to be more research, but "there is no reason to panic," Vroom said. "Almost all the products associated with these residues have benefits to society."
A statement by the American Chemistry Council, a trade association for the chemical industry, said: "For the vast majority of environmental chemicals, there is no reliable evidence to suggest that trace amounts in human tissue present a risk to human health."
In the study, the number of pollutants found ranged from a low of 77 in Monique Harden, a 34-year-old attorney from New Orleans, to a high of 106 in David Balz, a 48-year-old research associate with Commonweal who has traveled widely and spends a lot of time in the outdoors.
Among the substances found in the participants were:
- Phthalates, which are plasticizers used in a wide range of cosmetics, shampoos and other personal care products. They are suspected of causing birth defects in male reproductive organs. Some phthalates were recently banned in Europe.
- Four metals - lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium - that can cause lowered intelligence, developmental delays, behavioral disorders and cancer. Sources of exposure include lead paint, canned tuna, arsenic-treated lumber, contaminated drinking water, pigments and bakeware.
- Organophosphate metabolites, which are breakdown products of commonly used insecticides. Some organophosphates, which are toxic to the nervous system, have been banned for indoor uses, although agricultural use is still permitted.
- Volatile and semi-volatile organic chemicals, including industrial solvents and gasoline ingredients like xylene and ethyl benzene. Most are toxic to the nervous system and some are carcinogens.
- Furans, which are byproducts of plastics production, industrial bleaching and incineration. They persist for decades in the environment and can be dangerous to the developing nervous and hormonal systems of fetuses and young children.
"This is just a little sliver of the picture," Wiles said. "We know we could now test for 200 more chemicals than we tested for and we would probably find at least 100 of those in everybody.''
A similar study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is scheduled for release Friday. That study tested hundreds of people for 116 substances.
On the Net:
Environmental Working Group - www.ewg.org [1]
American Chemistry Council - www.americanchemistry.com [2]