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Smart discussion of the latest science and news on toxins in your food, water, and air, and what government agencies should be doing to protect public health. Written by EWG staff.
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EWG Congratulates Sen. Grassley on Payment Limits Amendment
California Paper Looks at One Family's Body Burden
GAO Clears the Air on EPA Pollution Analysis
Pesticides Linked to Increase in Canine Cancer and Hermaphroditic Frogs
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Why, oh why is there plastic in my aluminum water bottle?
Cell phone radiation series - Part 2: 8 Ways to reduce your exposure
Infant formula: How to choose it & use it
EWG's Tips for Parents: The Series
EWG's Tips to avoid BPA exposure
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Cutting the Pork from U.S. Farm Bill
Sunscreen safety & DC drinking water
Perchlorate in people, kids' personal care products & plastics, and sunscreen
BPA in baby formula & safe cosmetics
What can I do about fluoride in my water?
What is new carpet treated with? What can I do?
Are stainless steel water bottles safe?
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Monthly Archive
New Study Finds Chemical Cocktail in Household Dust
The study, which tested 70 homes across the country, was conducted by the Montreal-based group Clean Production Action, a nonprofit arm of the Tides Center in San Francisco. It looked for 44 different chemicals in six different classes, all of which studies have linked to cancer or reproductive, respiratory and immune system disorders. The EPA’s prime investigatory lab for chemicals in dust analyzed the samples.
Phthalates were found in the greatest amounts in the samples, and pose a problem for consumers who want to avoid them—they typically aren’t featured on product ingredient lists. Phthalates are particularly prevalent in personal care products—they make our lotions, shaving gel and hair mousse feel silky instead of sticky—but often get lumped in under a patented, and therefore undisclosed, formula for fragrance. And because there are no government regulations that require that even products listed as “fragrance-free” actually not contain fragrance, there’s precious little the public can do to protect themselves.
After phthalates, “Sick of Dust,” the group’s report, found the highest levels of alkylphenols, found in textiles, cleaners and paint; pesticides; flame retardants; organotins, found in vinyl, fungicides, wood surface treatments and cooling towers; and perfluorinated surfactants, the chemical class that includes the Teflon chemical PFOA and its cousin, PFOS. The health effects from this chemical cocktail are wide-ranging, including inhibited hormone functions and sexual development, reproductive and respiratory disorders, damaged organ function, and cancer.
View EWG’s reports on:
Phthalates and other chemicals in personal care products.
The Teflon chemical.
Flame retardants in dust and in breast milk.
Pesticide studies on children.
Bush administration, ACC battle EU cosmetic safety laws
This is a lot of effort for a relatively toothless policy, showing once again how little interest the Bush administration and the ACC have in protecting human health if it means the slightest expense to industry.
The chemicals Europe’s new laws regulate don’t show up in very many products, so banning them won’t have much practical effect. Also, Europe’s REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) policy doesn’t require that manufacturers of the most hazardous types of chemicals – those that have been linked to cancer, are bioaccumulative or cause reproductive or developmental problems – stop producing these toxics. They just have to prove that no alternative exists before they can sell them, and then show that they’ve reduced harm by “all technical means.”
Still, REACH attempts to set at least some safety guidelines, and it allows regulators to ban whole classes of chemicals at once. That’s more than can be said for the U.S. FDA, which allows a self-regulated, industry-sponsored panel to set its own safety standards and do its own testing.
The Environmental Working Group petitioned FDA last June to set up its own independent advisory panel to regulate product safety, and to enforce provisions of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that require products with untested ingredients to bear a consumer label to that effect.
For more information, please visit EWG’s Skin Deep report.
Lax Enforcement on Mercury Pollution Controls Linked to Economic Losses
EWG investigations have documented high levels of mercury pollution in seafood, especially in tuna and swordfish. Pregnant mothers consuming high levels of mercury can harm brain development and reduce IQ in infants and young children in utero.
A recent study in Environmental Health Perspectives found stunted brain development from mercury exposure is not just a health risk, but an economic one as well. Mt. Sinai Hospital pediatricians calculated the United States loses $8.7 billion a year due to mercury’s effect on children’s brain development. $1.3 billion of the economic loss is directly accredited to mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.
EWG is appealing another Bush decision on mercury that puts public health at risk: the FDA’s refusal to change its consumer advisory on seafood for pregnant women. The advisory recommends amounts of mercury-tainted seafood that would be unsafe for women to eat. According to EWG's analysis of FDA data, if women follow FDA's advice on "safe" levels of consumption of mercury-contaminated seafood like white (albacore) tuna, 74 percent of American women will go over the safe level for mercury in their blood. Already 630,000 babies are born in the U.S. each year with unsafe levels of mercury in their blood.
View EWG’s work on Mercury and Seafood
Will Congress cut food programs instead of wasteful farm subsidies?
The Associated Press reports that Congress is considering cutting food programs for the poor instead of reforming wasteful farm subsidies to huge agribusinesses. The farm programs cost taxpayers billions while hurting small family farms and ranches.
EWG President Ken Cook calls the possible move “a reverse Robin Hood effort to rob the poor to enrich the rich.”
EWG Congratulates Sen. Grassley on Payment Limits Amendment
Congressional Quarterly reports that Senator Grassley (R-IA) won support on his amendment to reasonably limit wasteful farm payments.
“We offer our congratulations to Senator Grassley on his victory," said Ken Cook, EWG president.
"This decision shows that there is momentum behind the reform of outdated,
wasteful taxpayer subsidies to agribusinesses. We are encouraged by this
decision and optimistic that if Congress will have a clean vote on reforms,
small family farms and taxpayers will come out the winners."
California Paper Looks at One Family's Body Burden
View EWG's report on Body Burden.
View the Oakland Tribune's series.
GAO Clears the Air on EPA Pollution Analysis
The EPA cooked its books by including savings from the Clear Air Interstate Rule (CAIR), a cap-and-trade proposal to reduce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The agency estimated savings of $55 billion to $68 billion for the cap-and-trade, or market-based, mercury proposal, well above the $13 billion savings released for the technology-based plan. EPA also used what the GAO’s report characterized as uncertain, “last-resort” methods for calculating the value of reduced mercury emissions, and failed to account for the health effects of mercury on women of childbearing age and children.
The GAO’s rebuke comes on the heels of a report from EPA’s inspector general stating that EPA scientists had been pressured to mold their findings to support the industry-backed cap-and-trade proposal.
President Bush’s “Clear Skies” air pollution bill was defeated by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Wednesday, at least temporarily allaying fears that the EPA’s distorted mercury analysis may have been a ploy to help push the bill through Congress.
Mercury causes developmental and neurological problems in children and fetuses and increased risk of heart attack and stroke in middle-aged men. Exposure has also been linked to autism. Pregnant women and children should moderate their consumption of some types of fish, including tuna, which are particularly high in mercury. For more information, please see the Environmental Working Group’s reports, New Government Fish Tests Raise Mercury Concerns and Overloaded? Mercury and Autism.
Pesticides Linked to Increase in Canine Cancer and Hermaphroditic Frogs
Phenoxy acid is an active ingredient in 2,4-D, a common herbicide that the EPA says is safe. However, the EPA doesn’t require that inert ingredients be listed on the labels of lawn products, and those compounds – which contain metals, petroleum-based solvents and cadmium – cause cancer.
A follow-up study will be conducted on children and dogs exposed to lawn chemicals to determine if the chemicals are in their systems, at what levels, and the nature of the exposure more than three days after their lawns are chemically treated.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also released a 150-year study showing a heavy increase in hermaphroditic frogs during periods of widespread pesticide contamination, the Los Angeles Times reports. This condition was rare until the 1950s, when the chemicals were most heavily used.
The phenomenon, which has also been observed in Florida alligators, is most obvious in the decline of cricket frogs in Chicago and other regions in the 1960s. DDT, PCBs and other pollutants are theorized to have had mutagenic effects that reduced the number of female frogs and caused the population to drop dramatically.
Unfortunately, scientists can’t tell if banning DDT and PBCs has made a difference in current populations, because where the animals were mutating into hermaphrodites the populations died out, and there are no longer any samples to collect. They do suspect that atrazine, a popular corn herbicide still in use, may also be responsible. Frog populations are low in central Illinois, where the herbicide is most used, and higher in southern areas, where it isn’t.
Pesticides may cause a variety of health problems in humans, including premature puberty in girls and reproductive diseases. The Environmental Working Group has petitioned the EPA to halt a study called CHEERS (Childrens’ Environmental Exposure Research Study) that offers families $970, a T-shirt, a bib and a videocamera to expose their children to household pesticides. The American Chemistry Council provided $2 million of the $7 million fund for the study.
View EWG’s work on pesticide testing on humans.
DuPont Agrees to Settlement After Poisoning Drinking Water
DuPont Corp. has agreed to pay a settlement of over $100 million to residents of Parkersburg, WV, after knowingly contaminating their drinking water with PFOA, a toxic chemical used to make Teflon.
DuPont will have to pay at least $107 million and possibly $235 million to the residents of Parkersburg, depending on the outcome of an upcoming study on the chemical.
Parkersburg is the home of the DuPont plant used to manufacture PFOA, a toxic chemical used to make Teflon. DuPont had knowingly been dumping this chemical into the town’s drinking water for decades and suppressing the dangers.
For more on DuPont and Teflon-related chemicals, please visit EWG's PFC World report.