The Computer TakeBack study, which focused on computers as a source of household and workplace pbde contamination, concluded that “computers are likely to be a significant source of deca-bde exposure in the dust of homes, offices, schools, and businesses. All exposures, no matter how small, are of concern because deca-bde is a bioaccumulative substance. This means that multiple exposures to low levels of deca- bde add up over time and build up in the body. There is no safe dose associated with these chemicals.”
The Environmental Working Group conducted what it describes as the first nation-wide test for brominated fire retardants in US household dust. It found unexpectedly high levels of “neurotoxic” pbde chemicals in every home sampled, including one home with levels “twice as high as the maximum level previously reported by any dust study worldwide.” The Working Group study also concluded that pbde concentrations found in house dust “are much higher than levels previously reported in people, animals or the environment, and pose a more direct risk of exposure to people, especially children, who continually ingest or inhale dust. Even minute doses of brominated fire retardants impair attention, learning, memory and behavior in laboratory animals.”
Sonya Lunder, the author of the study, believes that even if the chemicals are banned, high levels of toxic contamination will remain for decades. “We are now completely surrounded by them in our homes and offices,” she says. “It’s just shameless in the face of strong scientific evidence to deny that pbdes in either food or household dust present a risk.”
The Working Group’s findings made headlines in the US and were presented in June at Brominated Flame Retardants 2004, when the largest-ever forum of pbde scientists, regulators, and manufacturers convened in a University of Toronto theatre—which just happened to be fitted-out with luxurious foam-padded seats and wall-to-wall carpeting swathing every inch of the floors and even some of the walls.
Scores of papers on every aspect of pbde safety were presented at the conference by a remarkably cosmopolitan register of the world’s top flame retardant experts, along with major presentations from US and Canadian regulators, lengthy abstracts of which remain freely available at the bfr 2004 website <bfr2004.com>.
Nevertheless, O’Toole says the Bromine Science and Environment Forum’s mandate (“dedicated to furthering the scientific understanding of bromine products”) doesn’t require mentioning the conference on its own website. “There were a lot of people we disagree with at bfr 2004,” he says, when pressed on why his website might want to at least mention the most important scientific congress ever held on brominated flame retardants.
Among the many bde researchers O’Toole says the Bromine Forum disagrees with were two representatives of the California Environmental Protection Agency, which, like the EU, has passed a ban on octa-bde and penta-bde, while driving ahead with more research into deca-bde. Researchers from both the EU and California delivered powerful messages about the harm deca-bde could unleash in the environment. They also dismissed the industry’s claim that Canadian regulators had no right to review deca-bde for safety. In fact, they strongly argued that the latest research proves beyond a doubt that deca-bde is unsafe. Kim Hooper, from the California epa’s Hazardous Materials Laboratory, suggested that new data indicate deca-bde is exactly what the industry says it isn’t—harmful. According to Hooper, “Deca-bde breaks down in the environment, disperses to even remote locations, [accumulates] in wildlife and humans, and causes neurodevelopmental toxicity.”
Thomas McDonald, of the California epa’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, delivered a similarly striking paper, stressing that levels of pbdes among North Americans are forty to seventy times higher than in Europe and Japan. And thanks to widespread pbde contamination in food, homes, offices, and the environment, McDonald has calculated that as many as fifteen million Americans may already have been contaminated. “If humans are as sensitive as animals to pbde-induced developmental toxicity,” says McDonald, “then the current margin of safety appears low.”
Animals and fish are definitely being contaminated, says Michael Ikonomou, a research scientist at the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans laboratory in Sidney, BC. In some cases, he says, fish are being poisoned at rates that outpace worldwide growth in pbde contamination.
The presence of deca-bde in humans and wildlife is now at the centre of the growing debate. While low levels of deca-bde have been found in humans, researchers say the results are misleading because it rapidly breaks down into different types of pbdes, including octa-bde and penta-bde.
