Researchers Explore A New Toxic Pollution Site: People
“Body Burden” Studies Are Raising Health Concerns And Prompting Stronger
Government Actions


WASHINGTON — After decades spent researching chemical contaminants in air, water
and on land, scientists have begun to turn their attention to an important
pollution site they have by and large neglected until now: people.

Using sensitive new laboratory techniques to detect chemicals and assess their
health effects, a growing number of researchers in the United States and abroad
are testing blood, urine and tissue for an array of environmental contaminants
that find their way into the human population through pollution or consumer
products.

Two studies being released this week are likely to give these “body burden”
studies new prominence in environmental science and policy.

Environmental Working Group (EWG), in partnership with Mt. Sinai School of
Community Medicine and Commonweal, today released the results of the most
comprehensive evaluation to date of multiple chemical contaminants in people.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Public Health Reports, the study results
offer an up-close and personal look at nine individuals whose bodies were tested
for 210 chemicals – the largest suite of industrial chemicals ever surveyed.

The web-presented report is available at www.ewg.org. It found:

Subjects contained an average of 91 compounds, most of which did not exist 75
years ago.
In total, the nine subjects carried 76 chemicals linked to cancer.
Participants had a total of 48 PCBs, which were banned in the U.S. in 1976 but
are used in other countries and persist in the environment for decades.
A second study will be released Jan. 31 by the federal Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC). It provides statistical data relevant to
Americans’ body burdens of 116 chemicals.

“The CDC has studied individual chemicals in a multitude of people; our study
examined individual people for a multitude of chemicals,” said Jane Houlihan,
EWG vice president for research. “The CDC’s work helps us assess exposure levels
for each contaminant across the population; our study begins to document the
complex reality of the human body burdenÑwhat we call the ’pollution in people,’
” said Houlihan.

She added: “Both studies are long overdue, and both reveal disturbing gaps in
scientific understanding of environmental contaminants and in our system of
regulatory safeguards.”

Body burden testing that has been conducted and made public to date often
results in swift action by government and corporate leaders. Following a medical
study showing high mercury levels in the blood of patients whose diets were high
in mercury-contaminated fish, the State of California recently sued five grocery
chains to force them to put labels on these products in the seafood aisle. When
Scotchgard was found in virtually all Americans, 3M Company was forced to change
the formula.

A majority (55%) of Americans mistakenly believe that the government tests
chemicals used in consumer products to make sure they are safe, according to
recent opinion research conducted by Washington Toxics Coalition. The federal
government does not safety-test industrial chemicals, nor does it require
manufacturers to submit testing data.

“People are loaded with chemicals,” said EWG Senior Vice President Richard
Wiles. “Some are known carcinogens, and many are banned. There are some about
which science knows virtually nothing when it comes to potential health effects.
We need a modern, common sense approach to identifying and protecting the public
from possible health effects from long-term exposure to low levels of multiple
chemicals.”



View the Interactive report at
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden/





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