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Stimulus Plan to Advance Research on Environmental Toxins and Kids' Health
Monsanto, the FDA, and genetically modified seeds
Toxic personal care products for children cont.
SEARCH ENVIROBLOG
FEATURED
Toxins in our Kids' Foods: Where is the FDA?
Why, oh why is there plastic in my aluminum water bottle?
Fluoride in Your Water: How much is too much?
Borax: Not the Green Alternative It's Cracked Up to Be
Test Your Knowledge of Cosmetics Safety: 8 Myths Debunked
EWG's Tips to avoid BPA exposure
EWG on TV
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?
Is mineral-based makeup safer?
PEOPLE TALKING TOXICS
TALK TO US
Did we miss something? Email Enviroblog.
Monthly Archive
Please don't paint her toes
Last week I took my kids for a haircut. We go to a terrific woman in our neighborhood who runs a hair salon out of her house, and she's cut my kids hair since their very first cut. She's warm, patient and loves my kids. While my 6-year-old son was squirming in her chair, she offered to have her daughter paint my 3-year old's toenails.
Since I'm hardly a fan of carcinogenic ingredients and am unsure which nail polishes contain them and which have removed them, I said no.
Saying "no" can be hard.
Saying no, of course, is far easier said than done. Oh, I can say no to my 3-year-old (do it all the time), but I also had to say no to this super nice woman who made a generous offer to please my daughter. Slightly trickier, right?
So I explained to my crying daughter that we can't paint her toe nails because the polish might have toxic ingredients that "aren't healthy for her body" (my kids hear this all too often). All said, of course, in front of our friendly hairdresser whose judgment I was insulting. Ugh.
How it should be.
What was running through my mind during this noisy, teary, confusing conversation was how great it would be if I could have said,
Sure, Ana, that sounds fun. You're really nice to offer. Georgia, would you like to have your toenails painted?
But I couldn't. And I won't until I can be confident that the personal care products being sold in this country are safe. Safe for me, super safe for my growing kids. But there's no way to be sure, because our laws are far too weak.
What can you do?
The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics offers this practical advice:
Look for less-toxic brands and formulations of nail polishes and treatments in Skin Deep, and practice BYOP -- bring your own polish -- on salon visits. Try buffing nails instead of lacquering, skip the mani and just get a pedi, limit polish use by children and pregnant women and always apply and remove polish in a well-ventilated area.
And be sure to read our Enviroblog post, "Making Makeup Safe for Kids." It covers nailpolish and more.
Be safe out there. There's a lot of unknowns.
Lawless Drilling Boom
Special to Enviroblog by Don Carr, EWG Press Secretary
Oil and gas drillers in the American West are exempt from most environmental safeguards.
You could imagine that companies engaging in hydraulic fracturing, the process by which highly toxic chemical are injected into the ground to force out natural gas, would be regulated by the Clean Water Act, at least, since ground water sources are sometimes near drilling sites.
But in fact, oil and gas drilling are exempt from the landmark 1972 statute
You might think that if a person came into contact with extremely hazardous drilling chemicals, and the person's life was at stake, emergency response personnel would know what to do.
That's not the case either.
In Colorado, a nurse nearly died after she touched the chemical-soaked clothing of a sick drilling worker. The drilling company refused to tell her physician exactly what she had encountered.
The exact composition of hydraulic fracturing, or fracing, chemicals is deemed proprietary - a trade scfret. And yet these chemicals, whose composition the public has no right to know, are pumped deep into the ground near precious water sources.
To make matters worse, the number of oil and gas wells drilled across the West has exploded by 120,000 since 2000. A recent EWG report, Free Pass for Oil and Gas, details the impact oil and gas drilling has had across the American West.
New Mexico and Colorado have passed tough new standards designed to minimize pollution from oil and gas drilling, but industry is attempting to roll back these protections. State standards often do not close the loopholes under federal law.
It's time the federal governement restored basic safeguards for people who live and work near oil and gas drilling.
PFOA: Science update
In a very short period of time - less than a century - chemical pollution has become a new, undeniable and inescapable fact of life for humans and ecosystems on our planet.
Chemical pollution is fast-moving, ubiquitous, and often invisible to the unaided eye, except for its effects on animals and plants, which are very visible and very deadly. As a result of ramped-up synthetic chemical production, river fish in urban watersheds and polar bears in the Arctic now carry heavy loads of pollutants in their tissues, often at such high levels so as to make them fit for hazardous waste disposal.
Having our cake and eating it too?
For a long time, humans were believed to enjoy only the benefits and suffer hardly any of the damages that came along with the chemical revolution of the 20th century. Chemical pollution was supposed to miraculously stop at the boundary of the human body, leaving human health unaffected even as our environmental health was devastated. This outdated line of thought crashed with the development of new analytical methods that demonstrated a heavy body burden of industrial chemical contaminants in people everywhere.
PFOA: "Miracle of Chemistry"
One of the chemical contaminants found in people and wildlife is perfluorooctanoic acid, better known as PFOA or C8, a fluorinated chemical that has been used in manufacturing of stain- and grease-proof coatings on cookware, furniture, carpet, clothing and food packaging.
Since the 1950s, PFOA has been in chemical production, widely used and equally widely released with industrial emissions into air and water. PFOA has been lauded as part of the miracle of chemistry, a central component in the manufacture of Teflon non-stick products - but it is now better known as a toxic contaminant that pollutes the bodies of more than 99% of all Americans. It is also virtually indestructible - all PFOA produced over the past five decades will stay in the environment for hundreds of years.
Although chemical manufacturers have known about PFOA contamination for a long time, the general public learned of it only recently, because our broken chemical policy has allowed manufacturers to put products on the market with little, if any, advance testing.
We need strict limits on human exposure
Now that nearly every one of us - including yours truly, the writer of this post - have PFOA in our bodies, the question about PFOA toxicity and the need for a safety standard becomes very personal. The more scientists study PFOA, the stronger the case becomes for extremely strict limits on human exposure. PFOA appears to be following the pattern set by other persistent, bioaccumulating toxic chemicals like PCBs, DDT, mercury and lead.
In those cases, trace amounts once considered safe were later found to present significant health risks, particularly to the young. It is important to learn from these experiences and adopt protective standards early on, to prevent avoidable harm that will almost certainly be discovered in the future.
Emerging science makes strong case
PFOA is also unique because there so much new information about the toxicity of this chemical that was published in the last several years, with new updates appearing nearly every month. PFOA causes cancers of the testicles, liver, pancreas, and possibly mammary cancer in rodents; it disrupts fetal development and affects the immune and the nervous systems.
Chemical plant workers exposed to PFOA on the job have higher rates of heart disease, diabetes, and cancers. At the levels found in the general population (nationally, the median level is around 4 parts per billion (ppb), according to CDC research), PFOA is associated with lower birthweight and size in newborn babies, infertility problems in women and decreased sperm viability in men.
It's in our drinking water
As of the latest count, PFOA has been found to contaminate drinking water sources and ambient waters in at least 11 states and the District of Columbia. Data generated by scientists from the University of Pennsylvania show that drinking water contaminated with PFOA leads to a 100-fold accumulation of this chemical in the human body.
The consequences of this exposure can be seen in the most extensive study of PFOA's impact on people, the 69,000-person C8 Health Project, carried out by an independent panel of academic scientists and paid for by DuPont. The ongoing results of the study are publicly available on the West Virginia University Data Hosting Website and the C8 Science Panel website.
The first publication on the C8 study findings, "Predictors of PFOA Levels in a Community Surrounding a Chemical Plant" with a summary of PFOA levels in the affected population appeared online in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives this Monday, March 23.
PFOA affects the body's endocrine system
Already, the C8 study indicated that PFOA is associated with significant dose dependent effects on the endocrine system, including decreased levels of reproductive hormones; weakened immune response, detected as decreased levels of disease-fighting blood proteins; and increased levels of uric acid, a bodily waste linked to hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases. PFOA is also associated with higher levels of cholesterol, another predictor of chronic health problems.
We need a national drinking water standard for PFOA
Widespread PFOA contamination in water urgently requires establishment of a national drinking water standard for this probable carcinogen and reproductive system toxin, wrote EWG in a letter to the EPA last week. The weight of the evidence argues for a stringent guidance value for PFOA in drinking water, along the lines of the 0.04 ppb standard established in New Jersey, or even lower. This is a much needed step forward in tackling the problem of pernicious PFOA environmental pollution.
No 'normal' level of PFOA pollution
It is important to remember that there is no such thing as "normal" PFOA pollution and there is no such thing as "normal" background levels of this contaminant. PFOA does not occur in nature and scientists are finding evidence of harm at PFOA levels in the general population, all of it due to chemical pollution.
Under the pressure from EPA and the public health community, PFOA manufacturing is actually winding down in the U.S. But it still produced at DuPont factories overseas, for example in China and Japan. Yet, we already know that wherever PFOA is produced, eventually it will travel back to our homes and into our bodies. The health of people across the globe needs to be protected from PFOA, no better where they live and work.
photo by pianetatschai
The Declaration: Sign it to send a serious, effective message
It's simple, really. It is morally wrong that kids are born pre-polluted with hundreds of toxic chemicals. I know it, you know it. Shouldn't Congress know it?? We think so.
That's why EWG created a simple but powerful way to tell our representatives in the U.S. Congress how we feel. We call it The Declaration - because we are declaring a truth: allowing pre-polluted kids is morally wrong. And we think that with enough signatures (that's where you come in), The Declaration will spur significant change.
Watch the video.
Then sign The Declaration & spread it. When the timing is right and the numbers are high, we'll hand deliver it to Congress, because there is strength in numbers.
Whatever brings you to this issue - your children's health, frustration that the government isn't adequately protecting us, anger that industry seems to continually triumph over human and environmental health - we share a common goal: we don't want our kids to be born pre-polluted any more. Not on our watch.
Stimulus Plan to Advance Research on Environmental Toxins and Kids' Health
One bit of good news to come out of the economic crisis: the stimulus bill's $10.4 billion for biomedical and behavioral research, to be distributed through the National Institutes of Health.
The infusion of funds comes not a moment too soon: federal government funding for basic research has been essentially flat since 2005, a circumstance that has caused many a promising young researcher to seek work elsewhere.
At least $200 million will go to researchers around the country to "jumpstart" two-year projects on high priority topics.
The National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, under the new leadership of microbiologist Linda Birnbaum, plans to channel stimulus funds to a several areas identified by many researchers as urgent. Among them:
- Reducing the human body burden of chemicals and reversing the course of environmentally-triggered diseases.
- Measuring the body burden of "emerging contaminants" whose damage to o health is little understood.
- Studying the changes in genes caused by environmental exposures and how prenatal chemical exposures may reprogram genes to trigger disease later in life or even in succeeding generations.
- Evaluating risks of nanomaterials.
- Using stem cells instead of lab animals to predict toxicity of chemicals.
- Studying health effects of climate change.
Birnbaum, who spent 19 years at the Environmental Protection Agency, has said that she will preside over a much more concerted effort to explore the effects of environmental chemicals during critical stages of development - that is, the impact of chemical exposures to the fetus and infants.
That's good news because the more solid science there is, the more we will understand about how environmental factors interfere with normal development. And the better equipped we will be to protect children from subtle toxins whose damage manifests itself decades later.
The past eight years of stalled budgets for scientific research have taken their toll on our nation's research laboratories, and, very probably, our children's futures. As we often say here at EWG, we only have one chance to protect our kids' health.
Monsanto, the FDA, and genetically modified seeds
Special to Enviroblog by Amy Rosenthal, EWG's Farm & Food Outreach Coordinator.
Here at EWG we spend a lot of time investigating the failure of the Federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to keep our food, water and consumer goods safe. We focus on toxic chemicals, but, as it turns out, the FDA works pretty much the same no matter what "innovation" is getting pushed onto the market without labeling or testing.
Take genetically modified (GM) foods. The new documentary The World According to Monsanto takes an in-depth look at the billion dollar, multi-national corporation Monsanto and its push to spread its bio-engineered seeds. Though Monsanto is the main villain of this story, the FDA, with its failure to regulate this new and controversial technology comes across as its unquestioning ally.
The beginning of GM seeds. In the mid 90's, when Monsanto wanted to start selling its genetically engineered seeds, the FDA decided to treat GM foods just like their conventional counterparts. If they look and taste and smell the same, they must be the same, right? In an on-camera interview, a former FDA official involved with the evaluation of genetic engineering recounts that the agency found no reason to be worried about any potential risks of the new technology.
Industry studies...again. The rationale? FDA staff had reviewed all of the studies provided by Monsanto! (Incidentally, the largest of these studies had been deemed flawed by several scientists.) FDA felt no need to consider, for example, a Scottish study showing potential complications from the use of bioengineering technology, or the case of L-tryptophan, a supplement made using genetic engineering that sickened thousands and killed two dozen in 1989.
Hard for consumers to avoid FDA has never officially approved genetically engineered foods as safe. But silence is assent. Today, genetically modified seed varieties make up over 80% of soybeans and over 40% of corn planted in the U.S. And even if you want to avoid them, you can't: there are absolutely no requirements for special labeling of products with genetically engineered ingredients.
It's the same game at FDA, no matter which industry: pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, toxic chemicals. Avoid independent testing, describe your products as identical to those already on the market, fight any attempts to label them. At least the FDA is consistent!
Is there PFOA in my butter?
What do popcorn bags, muffin and croissant bags, hamburger and sandwich wrappers, pizza box liners, French fry and hash brown bags and butter boxes have in common? If your guess was "savory food inside," this answer is only partially correct.
Turns out that all these products also share a set of secret and not-so-tasty ingredients, known as perfluorochemicals (PFCs), which are applied to the inner lining of the packaging to make it grease-proof. One member of the PFC family, PFOA or perfluorooctanoic acid, is well-known as a persistent, toxic chemical that pollutes the bodies of people and wildlife across the globe.
PFOA has been used for decades as a manufacturing aid for producing common household products such as Teflon non-stick cookware and water-resistant clothing. Industrial air and water emissions of PFOA led to widespread environmental contamination of the environment with long-lasting human health consequences, including negative effects on reproductive system and fetal development.
How do we get exposed? PFOA contaminated the bodies of over 99% of all Americans, likely due to multiple sources of PFOA that people face on a daily basis. We still don't know whether non-stick cookware, stain-resistant clothing, polluted drinking water, PFC-treated carpets and furniture, or packaging act as the primary source of PFOA exposure. For people who seek to avoid PFOA and other PFCs in their environment, manufacturing secrecy has been especially frustrating. Walking into a store, shoppers may not know which of the products are PFC-free, since manufacturers are not required to disclose all of the product ingredients.
The problem with food packaging. Food packaging is an egregious example of hidden PFC exposure. In theory, any material applied to food packaging should be thoroughly tested by the manufacturer and then evaluated for safety by the FDA. In practice, many food packaging materials get on the market with limited or insufficient safety data, as demonstrated by recent EWG research on new food packaging chemicals.
Frequently, manufacturers get away with limited tests of food packaging materials that assess a small number of exposure scenarios, use food simulant liquids instead of actual foods people eat, and rely extensively on modeling rather than real-life testing. As a result, instead of active, public-health protective oversight over food packaging, FDA generally plays catch-up, learning of the problem long after the product has been on the market, and then delaying taking an action even in the face of overwhelmingly convincing scientific data about the health risks of a food-packaging material.
Does PFOA leach into our food, like the butter pack I bought last week? Most likely, yes. In 2008, scientists at the FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition reported that fluorochemical mixtures applied to the surface of food packaging can contain up to 200 mg/kg of PFOA. In the final paper product PFOA levels may be decreased, but still very significant, remaining in the range of 0.3-1.2 mg/kg, as indicated by the FDA publication in the scientific journal Food Additives and Contaminants.
The most important finding from this research is that both the primary fluorochemical coating ingredient and the PFOA impurity migrate into the packaged food, ultimately ingested by unsuspecting popcorn- and butter-eaters like you and me. The good news is that the levels of migrating fluorochemicals are variable and not always high. The bad news is that for those of us who really like butter, exposures would add up after many years of eating this delicious product.
What the FDA has to say. The FDA study closes with seemingly simple and technical conclusions: "greater migration is always seen into butter, an emulsified food, than into typical food-simulating solvent" and "the significantly higher migration of fluorochemicals found for the emulsifier-in-oil systems compared to migration into pure oil has implications for the use of oil migration data in estimating dietary exposure to fluorochemicals transferring from treated food-contact paper into a fatty food."
The meaning behind this impartial conclusion is far from innocuous - the supposed safety claims that manufacturers made on behalf of fluorochemical-coated food packaging have been based on tests with oil simulants, not with actual foods - like my butter. Yet, as FDA research showed, butter stored in fluorochemical-treated packaging accumulates detectable levels of these chemicals, even when stored in a refrigerator, under conditions that limit migration of food packaging chemicals into food.
It's not on the label. While the problem of food contamination with packaging chemicals is an important health concern, fortunately this is an issue where shoppers can accomplish a lot by asking manufacturers and producers a simple question: what's in this box? The answer "just butter" is not sufficient, because we already know that it's not "just butter," but also a range of chemicals from the packaging itself.
Shoppers have a right to demand complete disclosure, and manufacturers will listen to the message. Food packaging should be guaranteed to be safe and fully labeled, allowing shoppers to make a choice that protects the health of their families.
photo by foodchronicles
Toxic personal care products for children cont.
Last week was particularly exciting to be at EWG and part of the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. The new report shed even more light on an old danger we all know about-- personal care products that our youngest use are loaded with a cocktail of toxic chemicals, including known and probable carcinogens. The U.S. government has not established any safety standards formaldehyde or 1,4-dioxane in personal care products.
The report was widely covered in the media which triggered action by a major supermarket chain in China that pulled some Johnson and Johnson products from its shelves. While we here at EWG are not advocating that U.S. retailers take similar action and make wholesale inventory dumps of all children's personal care products, we do believe toxic cancer-causing chemicals should not be in a baby's bubble bath or lotion, and urge manufacturers to test products for these and other toxins and remove them before they end up on store shelves.
The U.S. is at risk of falling behind other countries in addressing safety and public health concerns. If the U.S. wants to maintain its competitiveness in the world market, it needs to stop producing products that contain toxic chemicals. As Michael Wright, the Director of Health, Safety and Environment of the United Steelworkers union said during a hearing reforming federal toxics laws, "Made in USA should be a guarantee, not a warning."
So what products CAN we use?
Every time a report is released that reveals toxics in our consumer products, it's only natural to wonder what you can buy once you've learned what you can't.
In last week's Toxic Tub report, the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics cautioned us that 61% of the kids' bath products they tested contained both formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane - both probable carcinogens. Guess I know what not to buy.
Which brings me to a very important question: what can I buy if I want safe bath products for my kids? Good question for our Skin Deep database, which has a useful, easy-to-use Parents Buying Guide. This safety guide to children's personal care products includes better and best picks in nine products:
- Shampoo and conditioner
- Body wash and liquid soap
- Toothpaste
- Sunscreen
- Babywipes
- Lotion and moisturizer
- Diaper cream
- Baby powder
- Play make-up
Get the guide.
You can download a 1-page summary on our For Parents resource page, or you can make it interactive and head straight to the Parents Buying Guide on Skin Deep. Either way, you'll be on your way to finding safer products for your kids.
What about those products I already have?
Our Skin Deep database can help with that, too. Simply enter your product and assess its hazard rating - remembering that most ingredients are untested (ugh), so there is often a data gap that leaves a lot of unknowns. But understanding that a high hazard score definitely does contain ingredients to avoid and a low hazard score with a low data gap likely is safer because it contains fewer toxic chemicals and few unknowns.
More great Skin Deep tools.
Another excellent feature of Skin Deep is that if your specific product isn't included, you can add it by entering its ingredient information once you have signed up as a user. And finally, there's a terrific FAQ page in Skin Deep that can really help you navigate the database easily and successfully.
Chat with the experts about toxics in kids' bath products
If you've read the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics' new report on toxics in kids' bath products and are interested in learning more, we've got good news!
We're hosting an open conference call with several of the report authors - with time for your questions!
Jane Houlihan, Vice President for Research at EWG, and Stacy Malkan, Communications Director with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics will explain the research and its findings and answer as many questions as we can in an hour.
When? Tuesday, March 17th 1 to 2 PM Eastern
How to call in: Dial 1-800-490-7515, then code *1957929*
Please feel free to ask questions here and we'll bring them to the call. Talk to you Tuesday!
Toxins in your hood? You have the right to know, again....
Special to Enviroblog by Alex Formuzis, EWG Director of Communications
Amid all of the negative and downright depressing news about the global economic meltdown, Wall Street swindlers, pirates, middle east violence and the break-up of Bristol Palin and Keith Johnson - I didn't see that comin' - there was some very good news many in the environmental and public health communities have been waiting for.
"Companies will have to provide more detailed disclosure of toxic chemicals they release into the environment under a little-noticed provision in the massive spending bill President Obama signed into law yesterday," Juliet Eilperin reported in the March 12, 2009 edition of the Washington Post.
That provision was authored by New Jersey's senior Senator Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) to reverse a Bush-era regulation that had stripped away important reporting requirements for the chemical industry.
Before Bush and his industry-run Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) changed the rules, chemical facilities had to disclose to the EPA, and thus to the public, any chemical releases of 500 pounds a year or more. The mountain biker-in-chief thought that was just too much to ask of industry and did away with disclosure requirements for releases of less than 2,000 pounds a year.
If President Brush-Clearer thought at all about families living near chemical plants and the toxins being discharged into their communities, he sure didn't show it.
"The public has a right to know about chemicals in their air and water," Lautenberg said after his provision passed. "The Bush Administration watered down this law and let facilities hide critical data about their toxic chemical emissions. It is time to restore the public's right to know about the release of toxic chemicals in their communities."
Lautenberg is the author of the Toxic Release Inventory program, the public, EPA-hosted database that houses all information related to virtually all toxic chemical releases across the U.S.
Lautenberg's creation became part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986, passed in response to the 1984 disaster in Bhopal, India, in which a Union Carbide pesticide plant released 40 tons of a deadly gas (methyl isocyanate or MIC). The unofficial death toll climbed to as many as 28,000, according to the BBC, and some 50,000 people were left with lifelong disabilities. Union Carbide agreed to pay $470 million in compensation.
But Bhopal is the rare and extreme case. Most episodes of chemical pollution are silent, gradual and insidious, and their impact on human health is subtle and elusive. That's why we need to track even small toxic releases as they are occurring.
Or, better yet, prevent them from happening at all.
When "pure" is not pure or how did our lack of regulations allow cancer-causing chemicals in baby's products
Being a parent should not be a scary thing. It is supposed to be the time of joy, fun and reward. Ok, and a few boo-boos.
But trying to keep your child clean and healthy is serious business. Especially when you read the new report, released today, by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. EWG is the founding member of the campaign, along with groups such as Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, Breast Cancer Fund, Clean Water Fund, Commonweal, Friends of the Earth, Massachusetts Breast Cancer Coalition, National Black Environmental Justice Network, National Environmental Trust and Women's Voices for the Earth.
The study documents the widespread presence of formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane, potent cancer-causing chemicals, in bath products for children. Neither one of those chemicals are listed on labels, since both are by-products formed when preservatives react to one another.
The Campaign tested 28 products and found that
- Over 60 percent items contained both formaldehyde and 1,4-dioxane. These included Johnson's Baby Shampoo, Sesame Street Bubble Bath, Grins & Giggles Milk & Honey Baby Wash and Huggies Naturally Refreshing Cucumber & Green Tea Baby Wash.
- Over 80 percent of products contained formaldehyde at levels ranging from 54 to 610 parts per million (ppm).
- Almost 70 percent of products contained 1,4-dioxane at levels ranging from 0.27 to 35 ppm.
All of these products were marketed as "gentle" and "pure." Obviously they're not.
As regular readers of this blog know, the cosmetics industry is self-regulating and can do whatever it wants. Cosmetics companies can add nearly any ingredient to cosmetics without government-regulated safety testing. The system is so broken that parents cannot be assured that shampoos, bubble baths and lotions they put on their kids are safe. The standards in the U.S. are far behind the standards in Europe or Japan.
So what can parents do? It's impossible to shop your way out of this problem. But, you can use fewer products, use products with fewer ingredients and search our Skin Deep database for alternatives. And lobby congress to pass health protective laws. Or just move to Europe or Japan.
The Enviroblog Top 10 in 2008: What was on our minds?
If you, too, are a blogger, then you know how fascinating it can be to look at stats. Which posts were super popular, read across the nation - or globe? And which were duds, appreciated by none. What were we talking about way back then, anyway??
Well, we had a peek at our numbers the other day and found some pretty popular ones we like enough to share again - our way of highlighting the hottest toxic topics of '08.
Not surprisingly, the very top 3 were all about Bishpenol-A, the everywhere chemical that science has shown is really just not good for us. Simple as that.
- Cheatsheet: BisphenolA What is it? Bisphenol A is a toxic plastics chemical found in polycarbonate plastic and the resinous lining of food cans. What are the possible health effects? In April of 2008, the National Toxicology Program raised concerns that exposure to BPA during pregnancy and childhood could impact the developing breast and prostate, hasten puberty, and affect behavior in American children.
- Your BPA Questions, Answered When we posted a little analysis of the new research on the toxic plastics chemical bisphenol A (BPA) leaching from polycarbonate bottles, we had no idea how many questions it would inspire. This month, instead of the usual Ask EWG feature, we've put together a post in which we answer as many of your BPA questions as we can.
- This may be worse than we thought A lot of people have those reusable polycarbonate water bottles; you can't go to a college campus these days without seeing students carrying these multi-hued bottles around as they make their way through classes. Well, a couple weeks back researchers at the University of Cincinnati released a startling new study showing that many of these bottles leach bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine disruptor, into water that is being stored within the container.
- Ask EWG: How should I wash my fruits and veggies? How should I wash my fruits and veggies? Is water enough, or should I be using one of those bottled produce washes they sell in the supermarket?
- Back to school: Are we ready? Are we non-toxic? I was pretty delighted when a quick trip around the green parent blogosphere simplified my job immensely. In hopes of spreading this wealth, check out these handy how-to's and see if you, too, can make your back-to-school shopping a little less toxic this year.
- Cheatsheet: Phthalates Phthalates are a common industrial chemical used in PVC plastics, solvents, and synthetic fragrances. They've been around since the 1930's, and now they're pretty ubiquitous; when they tested 289 people in 2000, the CDC found phthalates in all of the subjects' blood at surprisingly high levels.
- Making make-up safe for kids So lets say, hypothetically, that your four year old has begun begging for a play makeup set. Some parents would react with a firm but gentle "no stinkin' way, sweetcheeks." I can understand that sentiment -- children grow up fast enough without the aid of adult trappings.
- Healthy home tips for parents Just yesterday I listened to EWG President Ken Cook give a terrific presentation in San Francisco based on the influential cord blood study we did a few years ago. During the Q & A, someone asked a question we hear often: If you could recommend one thing we should all do to improve the environmental health of our families, what would it be?
- Ask EWG: Which formula is best? I am unable to breastfeed for medical reasons. How can I choose the best possible formula for my child?
- Unilever takes a bite out of your face cream If you follow our work on cosmetics, you know that companies have free reign over what they put in your products. FDA can't require companies to test products for safety before (or after) they're sold, and unlike for food additives and drugs, FDA doesn't review or approve cosmetics before you buy them.
It is our sincere hope that by this time next year when we review the hottest toxic topics of '09, we'll have put much of this behind us and be celebrating safer products for all. It's actually more than our hope, it's what we work for every day here at EWG.
Shopper's Guide '09: Shop smarter & safer with EWG
Special to Enviroblog by Amy Rosenthal, EWG's Farm & Food Outreach Coordinator.
You're concerned about where your food comes from and whether it's as safe as you think it should be. You're trying to avoid pesticide exposure and bacterial contamination. You want to support better farming practices. Buying organic just makes sense.
But then do you find yourself standing in the produce aisle, looking at organic peaches for $4.99/lb and regular peaches for $2.99/lb and thinking, Do I need to buy everything organic?
Or you just can't find organic avocados, no matter where you shop - and you start to worry about how many pesticides were used on the conventionally-grown ones? Should you just skip the guacamole this time?
We can help!
Just download the updated EWG Shopper's Guide to Pesticides. You can print it, take it with you and cut down on all that time spent standing confused in the produce aisle.
Our guide lists the fruits and veggies with the most and least pesticide residue, so you can shop accordingly. It's based on EWG's recent analysis of pesticide residue data collected by the FDA & USDA.
Those peaches? Number one on the Dirty Dozen list - better spring for organic. Avocados? Number two on the Clean 15 list, so you can worry less about buying the conventional ones.
For some of you, this new version means it's time to trade in that beat-up paper copy that's been in your wallet for years; for the rest of you, now's the time to get this handy guide for yourself.
Visit our shiny new FoodNews website to download the printable pdf version. You can also see the full list of all 43 kinds of produce we analyzed to find out more about blueberries/bananas/cabbage/whatever your family's favorites are.
Happy shopping!
Health Canada Finds BPA in Most Soft Drinks -- Energy Drinks Top List
New tests by Health Canada's Bureau of Chemical Safety have found bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic sex hormone and common plastics component, in 85 percent of 72 canned soft drinks sold in Canadian stores. The chemical is believed to have leached into the drinks from the epoxy resin can linings, which contain BPA.
The good news, according to the Canadian health agency, was that BPA contamination in the soft drink samples -- mostly brands also sold in the U.S. -- was well below its "safe" level. The average BPA level in the samples was .57 μg/L (micrograms per liter).
Rockstar Energy Drink was the most BPA-adulterated drink, at 4.5 μg/L. Lost Five-O Energy drink scored second, with 4.2 μg/L. President's Choice Mountain Mania Citrus Soda ranked third, with 2.3 μg/L, and Diet Canada Ginger Ale, fourth, with 1.7 μg/L.
Health Canada said that an adult would have to drink 940 cans of Rockstar to reach its "provisional tolerable daily intake" dose of 25 micrograms per kilograms of body weight a day (25 μg/kg/day). At that rate, it would take thousands of cans of Coca Cola (.18 μg/L), Pepsi (.12 μg/L) and Dr. Pepper (.10 μg/l) to reach Canada's safety bar. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has set an acceptable BPA exposure level for humans at 50 μg/kg/day, double the level set by Canada.
But critics contend that the Canadian and U.S. government "safe" levels are too high, established years before scientific studies began finding that BPA is active in the body at far lower doses.
In 2007, a 38-member expert panel convened in Chapel Hill, N.C. by the National Institutes of Health concluded that experiments produced adverse effects in lab animals at levels at or below the level of BPA to which people are routinely exposed (Epidemiological surveys by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found BPA in 93 percent of Americans over 6 tested, with significantly higher BPA levels in children and adolescents than in adults.)
BPA exposure has been linked in laboratory tests to damage to the brain, neurological system and reproductive system, cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, diabetes, behavioral problems and other serious conditions.
Since people ingest BPA from a vast array of sources, including infant formula and food can linings, baby bottles, polycarbonate plastic water and beverage bottles, medical devices and other plastics, a growing number of scientists, health groups and environmental groups are pressing for a ban on BPA in all food packaging.
Last week, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal announced that he and his counterparts from Delaware and New Jersey had reached an agreement with major baby bottle manufacturers to stop making bottles with BPA-based polycarbonate plastics. Anti-BPA forces hailed the agreement as a major step forward. Blumenthal said he would press for state legislation to force the removal of BPA from can linings and other food packaging.
Other state and local anti-BPA initiatives are under way. Ultimately, what's needed is a comprehensive national policy that protects all Americans, especially the youngest ones, from this powerful endocrine-disrupting chemical whose subtle effects are only beginning to be understood.
Products or politics? What'll it be?
A few weeks back I read Peggy Orenstein's piece The Toxic Paradox in the New York Times Sunday magazine. It hadn't settled all that well with me, so when I saw an Environmental Health News editorial titled The Other Toxic Paradox a little later, I was eager to read it.
I liked it so much that I got in touch with the author, Rebecca Gasior Altman, who very generously agreed to a re-post here on Enviroblog. We've written before about how parents are part of the solution to the toxic onslaught our kids are exposed to from birth, and EWG President Ken Cook regularly reminds us that we can't shop our way out of it - no matter how hard we try. But Professor Altman really sums it up nicely when she says:
A profusion of green products allows us to excuse ourselves from acting beyond our own households. But we can't shop our way to safety. We must turn to politics, not just products, to solve our toxic problems.
Enjoy her editorial. And then get political! She writes:
One thing we know: bubbles burst. For writer Peggy Orenstein and residents of "eco-conscious" Berkeley, California, news of poor airquality near schools pierced the "green" bubble. Orenstein's recent commentary, "The Toxic Paradox," published in the New York Times Magazine, portrays the plight of parents who have "gone green" at home, only to realize they are having only modest effects on their kids' overall exposures. Parents feverishly scan the Internet for green products to avoid headline-grabbing chemicals, only to learn that research implicates another chemical, another product. Orenstein's commentary does little to help parents move through this frustrating reality. For Orenstein, community action is too fractious and individual action either irrelevant or futile. Parents' efforts at home are partial solutions, yes, but they're part of the problem, too. When products stymie political action, this creates another "toxic paradox" that Orenstein overlooks.
BPA (a constituent of some hard plastics), PBDEs (flame retardants), and other chemical acronyms float through playgroup and PTA conversations-- a sign that scientists have raised public awareness about the slow accumulation of pollutants in our everyday surrounds. Parents have stepped in to manage exposures in the absence of regulations. However, as sociologist Andy Szasz observes, we seek to "shop our way to safety." This profusion of green products allows us to excuse ourselves from acting beyond our households. Herein lies the other toxic paradox: We can't just turn to products rather than politics to solve our problems.
After we purge and green our homes, our next responsibility is to pick up the phone, to pick up our pens. A wave of new policies --from city ordinances to federal legislation and international agreements--seek to manage chemicals and pollution differently, including the Kid Safe Chemical Act under consideration now. We need a multitude of voices to support these policies and to ensure they protect all children, especially the most vulnerable. In addition, our elected officials need to hear that parents support research like the National Children's Study, a substantial step toward better understanding children's environmental health.
There is far more at stake than Orenstein lets on, especially for girls and women, whose health and well-being has been the centerpiece of her life's work. Infertility. Early puberty. Skewed birth ratios in some communities where more girls are born than boys. All are linked to chronic, low-dose exposures to chemicals. Also at issue is the ability of kids to metabolize food, fend off infection, develop a healthy attention span, and when they are older, to bear children as well. Cancer and birth defects are but the tip of the iceberg. We must look beyond our households to see these trends. We must widen our circle of concern for another reason. Too many kids live in "sacrifice zones," in a swirling eddy of chemicals that scientists have only begun to understand. These kids bear a larger share of pollution compounded by socio-economic stressors that exacerbate how pollution affects the body.
So beleaguered parents, bow just briefly to your frustration. You've shouldered a burden. Then gather yourselves for the opportunities before us to make a substantial difference for our children's health--mine, yours, and those yet to arrive. As history has shown, parents, especially mothers, have been the engine driving environmental change and progress.
Suffolk County leads the nation with BPA ban
The Suffolk County Legislature has voted to ban bisphenol A, a synthetic sex hormone and plastic component, in children's products, making the Long Island county the nation's first BPA-free jurisdiction. Tuesday's vote by the country governing body would bar the chemical from baby bottles and sippy cups designed for infants and toddlers 3 and younger.
"There are plenty of viable, cost-effective and safe alternatives," said bill sponsor Steve Stern, according to Newsday.
Newsday later reported that County Executive Steve Levy is still considering whether to sign the bill into law.
Because the federal Food and Drug Administration has rebuffed pressure from environmental and health groups to regulate BPA in food packaging, local and state lawmakers around the country are stepping into the breach.
In California, state senator Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills) has introduced Toxin-Free Toddlers and Babies Act, backed by Environmental Working Group to ban BPA-laden baby bottles, cups and can linings. BPA-based epoxy resin can linings are an even more important source of contamination of infant formula.
While I'm happy to see so many local and state actions, I hope that the federal government will order the removal of BPA from everything that comes in contact with food, especially those designed for babies and young children. None of us should be exposed to this potent endocrine-disrupting substance.
Support for overfishing?
Special to Enviroblog by Renee Sharp, Director, EWG California Office
This week, EWG published a peer-reviewed paper on fishing subsidies that was almost four years in the making. Sound boring? Think again.
First, there is the plain fact that the world's oceans are in serious peril. If the overload of press recent press stories weren't enough to convince you, then these stark numbers should: in 2007 the National Marine Fishery Service determined that a 24 percent of the nation's 530 monitored stocks were overfished and 17 percent were experiencing overfishing. The international Food and Agriculture Organization has come up with similar estimates for the depletion of global fish stocks.
Second, the numbers are so dang big: the U.S. government doled out more than $6.4 billion from 1996 to 2004, or an average of $713 million per year.
No one is suggesting that all of these subsidies are harmful or contributing to overfishing. But it is likely that many of them do encourage fishing operations to harvest more fish than can be naturally replaced.
Bottom line: it is clear that the U.S. and the world are going to have to shift subsidies to forms that enhance fishery conservation rather than depletion.
Third, EWG was honored to collaborate with the renown fisheries economist Ussif Rashid Sumaila on the study and to have the academic work supported by the fabulous folks at the Lenfest Ocean Program.
To read EWG's summary and analysis of the study, or to download the academic paper, click here.
Want some mercury with that?
I had the flu so badly last week I drank something I haven't drank in over 20 years: ginger ale. And no, it wasn't ginger beer, the stuff in the bottle at the natural grocery that actually has ginger in it. This was the the drink-with-saltines stuff 'cause it makes you feel better somehow.
As I was about to toss the empty bottle in the recycle bin, I decided to brave the label - I'm a devoted label reader, but when I know it'll be awful, I sometimes just pass. So here's what I found: water, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, natural flavors, sodium benzoate (preservative), and caramel color. Ugh.
I've seen the movie King Corn, so am well versed in this country's corn syrup problem. Normally, it doesn't cross our threshold. But now that it had, I was grimly reminded about the recent report finding mercury in high fructose corn syrup. So I got all wound up, because as both my husband and now 6-year-old would tell you, that's just what I do.
So the first thing I got mad about was the absurdity of that ingredient list. I mean, that's a drink for humans? The second thing I got mad about was the high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) issue, and how crazy screwed up our agriculture and nutrition policy has gotten. But the reason I'm actually writing about it here, with you, is because of the ingredient that wasn't listed on that label but may well have been in the drink: mercury.
Why would there be mercury in my ginger ale? 'Cause it's been found in high-fructose corn syrup, which was definitely present in my ginger ale. These days it wouldn't be far fetched to wonder if this could be an intentional/accidental contaminant that escaped detection. But it's not - it's actually a result of the corn syrup production process. That's right: to convert corn into corn syrup manufacturers use hydrochloric acid and caustic soda (yum) that often contains mercury. While some plants have switched to mercury-free 're-agents,' plenty still use the ones with mercury.
So every time you or your kids eat or drink something sweetened by corn syrup (and most of us do - studies show that 1 in 10 calories are from HFCS, an average of 12 teaspoons a day per person!!), how are you to know whether it has mercury in it? You can't.
The two studies that brought this to light back in January of this year found mercury in first 9 of 20 samples then 1 in 3 of 55 brand-name food samples. Feeling reassured? You can read the full report and see a list of the contaminated products on The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy's (IATP) web site.
Is this fixable? As I'm sure you know, mercury is dangerous business - in any form. So how can we get the mercury out of the HFCS (getting the HFCS out of all that food is a whole other can of worms)? IATP has three reasonable suggestions:
- Congress should enact legislation proposed by then Senator Barack Obama two years ago to phase out the use of mercury cell technology in U.S. chlorine plants.
- Corn refining companies that produce high fructose corn syrup should demand that their suppliers of caustic soda do not use mercury cell technology.
- The Food and Drug Administration should begin testing high fructose corn syrup for mercury and make those findings public.
[photo courtesy of flickr commons]
Oceans and human health
The oceans are connected to human health on multiple levels, from very basic, foundational need for recreation and cultural links with ocean livelihood, to the health of populations that live on the coast and look out to ocean for food, trade, and basic survival. For those who live away from the coast, the ocean connection often comes when they look for seafood in a grocery store or hear news stories on TV about devastation brought by coastal floods and changing weather patterns.
As described by many scientists who specialize in oceanography, marine biology, and environmental health, numerous connections between the oceans, human activities, and human health result in both positive and negative exposures and health effects. The influence of human-generated pollution that pours into the ocean from sources often hundreds or thousands of miles away, can be persistent and stark. A load of fertilizer applied to farm land half way across the continent frequently ends up polluting marine ecosystems, impacting both coastal recreational opportunities and productivity of fisheries. Pathogens discharged into riverways with manure from large-scale factory farms and animal feeding operations pose hazards to fishers and anyone boating or swimming near estuaries.
Some risks of marine pollution -- shellfish poisonings, harmful algal blooms (often called red tides), and water-borne pathogens such as cholera or viral diseases -- are relatively well understood. In contrast, the link between anthropogenic pollution discharged from land and toxins in the ocean water are infrequently discussed. Similarly, the marine dimensions of global climate change, for example ocean warming and subtle but profound changes in ocean chemistry can escape public notice. Yet, these changes would have life-or-death consequences for the majority of the inhabitants of Planet Ocean - from coral reefs to schools of fish and marine mammals. Changing marine conditions would also likely alter coastal environments by changing weather patterns - now that's one effect that will be readily noticed by over a billion of people living in proximity to the coast.
We now know that the health of the oceans is in dire condition and with it come threats to human health as well. As stated by Dr. Jane Lubchenco, a renowned marine biologist nominated as the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, "The evidence is now overwhelming that even the immense oceans are depleted and disrupted. Turns out that oceans are more vulnerable - and more valuable - than we thought." (see NY Times interview with Jane Lubchenco here). Ocean ecosystems are in "for a tough ride" - yet the news are not all doom and gloom. Restricting land pollution run-off and eliminating destructive activities such as over-fishing, ocean dumping, and unmitigated extraction practices will go a long way towards protecting the health of the oceans and the people who depend on them.
The most important step is for marine scientists, public health experts, and ocean lovers of all stripes and colors to come together in a concerted effort to protect the oceans from ourselves. We all love the oceans, but we should not love them to death. Many efforts are underway as communities are organizing towards ocean conservation. One such event is happening in Washington, DC during March 7-10, the Blue Vision Summit. Preserving the health of the oceans will take a lot of work - but it can be done!
photo by lakerae
Green Moms Carnival: 2009
If you've not happened upon this blog carnival before, I highly recommend it. Each month a group of 20 or so active green mom bloggers choose a single green issue to write about (like climate change or green cleaning), and lucky you can find it all in one place. The first two for 2009 are out with a third on its way, and they're definitely worth a look. Here's the skinny:
January 2009's topic was Global Warming, hosted by The Not Quite Crunchy Parent. 17 different green mom bloggers shared their unique perspective on the subject. There's advice on how to talk with kids about global warming, how to reduce it with reusable bags, how to tighten up your ducts, as well as broader policy and societal changes.
February 2009's topic was "I believe," hosted by The Smart Mama. There were a broad range of posts, two of which included the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act: Green & Clean Mom on her belief in social networking to connect people who are passionate about going green with their families and More Green Moms entirely in support of Kid-Safe.
The March 2009 carnival will go live on the 10th at Tiny Choices. It'll be all about green spring cleaning.
You can also follow the Green Moms Carnival on Twitter - they recently won a 2008 Shorty award for producing such great 'short' content. Go green moms!
