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Enough to make the blood boil
JAMES REYNOLDS ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT
Seriously hazardous chemicals can be found in the tissue of nearly every person alive. It is a
frightening thought, but exposure to such toxic substances has been linked to a higher incidence
in several cancers, reproductive complications, a continuing decline in fertility rates and
birth defects.
Like the majority of people, I was unaware of the levels of these chemicals circulating in my
bloodstream, so when the opportunity to find out about them came along, I seized it.
Along with 150 others, from politicians and journalists to leaders of environmental NGOs and lobby
groups, I volunteered to have my blood tested for three groups of dangerous chemicals, including
PCBs, organochlorine pesticides and PBDEs, or flame-retardants.
The biomonitoring survey, which is the largest exercise the UK has seen in biomonitoring in over two
decades, is part of a chemicals and health campaign set up by the environmental organisation WWF.
It seeks to discover the extent of volunteers' contamination with the sort of chemicals and toxic
substances that, largely without consumers' knowledge, are routinely sprayed on crops and food,
added to paints and home-decorating products, and used in everything from furniture and carports to
computers and televisions.
In June, at the time the samples were taken, I did not imagine the analysis would turn up any
particular nasties.
For the first 18 years of my life, from 1972, I lived in a village on the fringes of the
countryside near the industrial town of Warrington, in Cheshire. Although in my early years the
claimed health benefits of switching to organic food had yet to made, my parents were aware that
agriculture was largely chemical-dependent, and our supermarket fruit and vegetables were always
washed before being eaten.
I have since continued in the same vein of my upbringing, avoiding the expensive switch to organic,
but conscious that supermarket fruit and vegetables may have residues of agricultural chemicals and
should therefore be washed before eating.
I am also a carnivore, and although I am not unhappy if I do not get a daily dose of
something's cooked flesh, I eat a lot of what is likely to be intensively farmed chicken and,
particularly, fish.
In short, as far as what I put into my body is concerned, I think I'm pretty healthy - but
not perfect.
But external influences, or the impact of a person's surrounding domestic, work and leisure
environment, can also affect their degree of toxicity. Since leaving home for university 13 years
ago, I have lived in the comparatively polluted atmospheres of major cities, but I have never worked
in any business close to the chemical industry.
My test results came back last week, detailing my exposure to 77 chemicals, along with the
collective minimum, maximum and median of the other volunteers.
When the full results are published in full later this month, they will reveal that not one of the
150 participants had clean blood.
One fortunate individual showed detectable levels of only nine of the 77 substances measured. I had
19, and this was below average compared with a maximum of 49 and a median of 27.
All of the results for the chemicals found are given in "ng/g lipid" - which stands for nanograms of
chemical per gram of fat tested. Put simply, this reveals how many thousand-millionths of a gram of
chemical were found for every gram of my fat tested.
It sounds negligible, but there is a catch. Virtually nothing is known about the long-term effects
on human health of these chemicals, in any quantity.
Many of them were first made when manufacturers had no legal requirement to carry out any safety
tests, and none has been tested on humans. Add this to the fact that no-one knows which of these
chemicals may react together, and things start to get scary.
In addition, the 77 chemicals tested are merely the tip of the iceberg. There are 100,000 synthetic,
man-made ones in the environment, with 30,000 of those traded freely in the EU.
If a perfect test were available, it would probably prove I am home to hundreds, possibly thousands,
of synthetic and toxic chemical compounds, the majority of which come under the umbrella of
persistent bioaccumulative endocrine disrupters.
This means that they do not break down readily in the environment and therefore remain at large for
many years once released, that they have the property of building up in living things in
progressively greater quantities, and that they can interfere with the normal functioning of the
hormone system of both humans and wildlife.
Icontain 11 of the 42 PCBs tested for in the survey, although all at levels lower than the median of
the volunteers. Considering that I was born after their manufacture was prohibited in 1970 and
because of the very fact that they build up in the environment, I am rather alarmed by this.
However, according to Dr Asma Khan, a London consultant hired by WWF to advise on test results, I
shouldn't be. Prior to being banned, PCBs were so ubiquitous you would be hard pushed to find anyone
in industrial countries without detectable levels in their blood.
They are highest in animals high up the food chain, with the main dietary sources being fish
(especially those caught in contaminated lakes or rivers), fish oils, meat and dairy products.
I am without doubt still being exposed to WWF's second target set of substances, organochlorine
pesticides, which includes DDT, DDE, Lindane and HCBs. No matter how furiously I scrub my
vegetables, I will be unable to erase chemical traces in certain food-stuffs, although I was found
to contain only three of the 12 tested for, again all at lower levels than the group median.
Developed and in widespread use in the 1960s and used widely to control agricultural pests, as well
as human and farm-animal diseases, many have now been banned in the UK after they were belatedly
found to be highly persistent in the environment and cause long-term toxic effects in wildlife.
Certain populations of birds of prey were devastated due to DDT causing their egg-shells to thin
and break.
DDT from the mother can enter her unborn baby through the placenta. DDT has been found in amniotic
fluid, human placentas, foetuses and umbilical cord blood. DDT has been measured in human milk, so
nursing infants are also exposed to it. In most cases, however, the benefits of breast-feeding
outweigh any risks from exposure to DDT in the mother's milk.
Most worrying of all the tests was the exposure to flame-retardants, or polybrominated diphenyl
ethers, PBDEs. These are used extensively in textiles and plastics, and are commonly employed in
polyurethane foam for furniture and upholstery to mitigate domestic fire risk.
Having purchased a new sofa a year ago, I was not surprised to learn that this was the area where I
was most contaminated. Although only five of the 23 tested for were found to be present, every one
found was at concentrations significantly above the average.
There is a theory that these chemicals escape from materials and enter our bodies via our skin or
lungs, so just by sitting on my new sofa, I am prolonging my contamination. Some scientists are also
concerned that PBDEs may enter food from packaging.
The list of potential harmful effects is similar to that of PCBs, but less is known about them.
Sadly, save for living in a Luddite world where all technological advances are outlawed, a PBDE-free
existence will forever remain a fantasy.
I am not at all surprised that I am host to chemicals about which little is known of their
consequences to human health. I am, however, angry that I have no freedom of choice in the matter.
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For information on the breast implant controversy, links to studies and other websites,
please visit:
www.BreastImplantAwareness.org
For links to an impotent fool trying to control my posts, please visit:
www.humanticsfoundation.com/BM.html