Across Generations:
The Chemical Pollution Mothers & Daughters Share and Inherit
MAY 10, 2006
The unique bond between a mother and daughter starts in
the womb and lasts a lifetime. This Mother's Day, lab tests
of mothers and their daughters show that they share another,
unwanted bond: a common body burden of industrial chemicals
that can be passed down across generations.
Tests commissioned by the Environmental Working Group (EWG)
of four mothers and their daughters found that each of the test
subjects' blood or urine was contaminated with an average of
35 consumer product ingredients, including flame retardants,
plasticizers, and stain-proof coatings. These mixtures of compounds,
found in furniture, cosmetics, fabrics, and other
consumer goods, have never been tested for safety. The study
is available at
http://www.ewg.org/
Earlier
EWG body burden testing, as well as tests by the Centers for
Disease Control and other researchers, has found these and many
other chemicals are building up in the bodies of all Americans.
But these tests produced three eye-opening findings about the
pollutants that can pass through a mother's placenta or breast
milk into her daughter's body:
All four
daughters tested had more chemicals in common with their mothers
than with a group of 16 other women who were tested. This underscores
the long-lasting influence of the pollution passed from mother
to daughter, and their shared exposures as the child grows up.
Much of
the chemical burden inherited by daughters at birth will last
for decades, some for a lifetime. The daughters will likely
pass on to their children some of the very chemical molecules
they inherited from their
mothers. The estimated age by which a daughter will purge 99
percent of the inherited pollution found in this study ranges
from one day for phthalate plasticizers, to one year for mercury,
to between adolescence and 60 years for common flame retardants
and stain-proofing chemicals, to 166 years for lead.
Chemicals
that persist in the body were found at higher levels in mothers
than daughters, showing how chemicals can build up in the body
over a lifetime. Mothers had an average of 1.5 to 5.2 times
more pollution than their daughters for lead, methyl mercury,
brominated flame retardants, and the Teflon- and Scotchgard-related
perfluorochemicals PFOA and PFOS.
The findings
were released today at a briefing at the California State Capitol.
Joining public health advocates and four of the mothers and
daughters were Senate President Pro tem Don Perata, Sen. Deborah
Ortiz and Assemblyman John Laird, authors and co-sponsor of
SB 1379, a bill to establish the nation's first state-level
biomonitoring program to track pollution in people.
"We
monitor the pollution in our air, our water, and even our fish.
It's time to start looking at the pollution in our bodies,"
said Perata. "The report discussed today, which shows how
chemicals can be passed from
mother to daughter, is another vital reason Californians need
the information provided by SB 1379, which would create the
nation's first statewide biomonitoring program to measure chemical
contaminants in humans."
The mothers
and daughters in this study join 64 other people tested in six
EWG biomonitoring programs conducted between 2000 and 2006.
In total, EWG biomonitoring has found 455 different pollutants,
pesticides, and industrial chemicals in the bodies or cord blood
of 72 different people - including 10 newborn babies with an
average of 200 chemicals in each child.
This is
a burden of pollution made even more troubling by the lack of
health studies or safeguards for the chemicals' individual or
combined toxic effects. And exposures in early life heighten
concerns over health risks.
"EPA
studies show that children from birth to age two are 10 times
more sensitive to cancer-causing chemicals than adults,"
said Jane Houlihan, EWG's vice president for research. "Scientists
have found that chemicals' toxic effects can be passed down
for four generations, by causing permanent genetic changes that
can be inherited. A stew of toxic chemicals is not the legacy
mothers want to hand down to their children."
Source:
Common Dreams Progressive Newswire: Latest news from America's
Progressive Community
Ref: http://www.commondreams.org/news2006/0510-01.htm
CONTACT:
Environmental Working Group - Bill Walker, (510) 444-0973 x301;
Lauren Sucher, (202) 667-6982
