One flame retardant is linked to cancer and was voluntarily taken out of children’s pajamas in the 1970s after researchers discovered it mutated DNA.
The other was touted as an eco-friendly chemical that would neither escape from household furniture nor show up in people.
Signs of both compounds turned up in mothers and children tested for a new study that shows how difficult it is for even the most diligent parents to avoid toxic chemicals added to furniture, toys, electronics and other household products.
All 48 mothers and children tested had a chemical in their urine that breaks down in the body from chlorinated tris, a flame retardant widely used in upholstered furniture, baby products and crib mattresses. Because the chemical wasn’t formally banned after manufacturers took it out of children’s sleepwear a generation ago, companies can add it to other products without informing government regulators or the public.
Researchers from Duke University and the nonprofit Environmental Working Group found that average levels of the chlorinated tris byproduct in the kids they tested were five times higher than those in their moms, likely because young children ingest contaminated dust while playing on the floor.
One child had levels 23 times higher than the mother, according to the study posted online Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science & Technology.
It is unclear what, if any, hazards the flame retardants pose at the levels detected in moms and kids. But the results were sobering for Josephine Wilson, a study participant who said she tries to protect her 2-year-old daughter from hormone-mimicking chemicals that can pose long-term health risks.
Wilson and her husband went to great lengths last year to find a sofa made with naturally fire-resistant wool instead of chemical flame retardants. Yet both she and her daughter had traces of the chlorinated tris byproduct in their urine.
“I’d like to say I was surprised, but I know that even if we remove flame retardants from our home they are still out there in the world,” said Wilson, a website developer from Princeton, N.J., who is pregnant with her second child. “We’ve taken a lot of steps as individuals to reduce our exposure. What our results show is there is only so much that individuals can do.”
The study also found that more than a quarter of the mothers and 70 percent of the children tested had signs of another flame retardant known as Firemaster 550.
A 2012 Chicago Tribune investigation revealed that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency endorsed Firemaster 550 even though the agency’s own scientists were deeply skeptical of its safety. Studies conducted by its manufacturer found that exposing rats to the flame retardant can lower birth weight, alter female genitalia and cause skeletal malformations such as fused ribs and vertebrae.
Independent scientists later found that small doses of Firemaster 550 administered to rats can trigger obesity, anxiety and other problems.
Philadelphia-based Chemtura, the flame retardant’s manufacturer, has said the hazards of Firemaster 550 are “negligible” because it doesn’t escape from treated products. But chemicals in the flame retardant are being found everywhere from house dust in Boston to the air in Chicago.
The Duke/Environmental Working Group study is the first to show that the flame retardant’s breakdown products, or metabolites, are in people too.
Chemical industry representatives said they have not seen the full study. But based on a presentation at a recent scientific conference, the American Chemistry Council said “there was no suggestion that the flame retardants detected in the study caused adverse health effects.”
“At the same time, fire represents a very real danger in the U.S.,” said Bryan Goodman, a spokesman for the industry’s chief trade group. “Flame retardants help stop or slow the spread of fires and provide critical protection to people around the country.”
Marshall Moore, director of innovation and sustainability for Chemtura, said in an emailed statement that the company was evaluating the research.
“We take seriously any study published that might offer information about our products,” Moore said. “We work with our internal review teams to ensure our products meet the highest standards of safety and performance.”
The Tribune’s “Playing With Fire” series documented a deceptive campaign by the chemical and tobacco industries to increase the use of flame retardants. Promoted as lifesavers, the chemicals actually provide no meaningful protection from furniture fires, according to government and independent studies.
California has since overhauled an obscure furniture flammability rule that brought flame retardants into homes nationwide. The updated rule, which requires upholstery fabric to resist a smoldering cigarette, the leading cause of furniture fires, does not ban the chemicals. But manufacturers have said they expect to stop adding them to furniture foam by the end of the year.
Firemaster 550 and chlorinated tris are examples of the way the chemical industry has shifted over time from one worrisome product to another. Use of the compounds has risen in recent years as manufacturers phased out other flame retardants known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, that were linked to developmental and neurological problems in children.
“Phasing out the use of flame retardants, only to see them replaced with chemicals that might be just as harmful, is not progress,” said Johanna Congleton, a senior scientist at the Environmental Working Group who co-wrote the new study. “It’s even more troubling that we are finding them in young children who are in early and critical stages of development.”
The EPA’s top chemical safety official said the new study shows why Congress needs to overhaul the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act, the only major environmental law that has not been updated since it was enacted.
Not only does the law allow chemical manufacturers to put products on the market without evaluating their safety, it forces the EPA to prove that a chemical poses an unreasonable risk before banning it. Federal courts have established such a narrow definition of “unreasonable” that the government couldn’t ban asbestos, a well-documented carcinogen that has killed thousands of people who suffered devastating lung diseases.
“We’re not even required to evaluate these compounds once they are on the market,” said Jim Jones, the EPA’s assistant administrator for Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “There is no duty for the manufacturer to demonstrate that the compounds are safe. All of the burden falls on the government to get the data and find the resources to evaluate a compound for safety.”
The EPA announced last year that it would use its limited authority to assess the risks of chlorinated tris and Firemaster 550. Agency officials have been anticipating the Duke/Environmental Working Group study, Jones said, but remain hamstrung by the lack of research on Firemaster 550.
“There are key gaps that would lead one to be less confident in (an) analysis,” Jones said. “When you can’t speak with confidence about the risks, it questions the value of having an assessment.”
Other agencies have been more definitive about chlorinated tris.
The World Health Organization, National Cancer Institute, National Research Council and Consumer Product Safety Commission have identified the flame retardant as a carcinogen. Safety commission researchers in 2006 cautioned that adding chlorinated tris to upholstered furniture could expose children in their first two years of life to a cancer risk seven times higher than what most scientists and regulators consider acceptable.
In 2011, California added a form of chlorinated tris known as TDCPP to its Proposition 65 list of cancer-causing chemicals. Officials are moving to require warning labels on products that contain the chemical.
Two of the world’s leading manufacturers of flame retardants later pledged to stop making chlorinated tris, though older products containing the chemical remain on some store shelves and in homes. Overseas companies also continue to make it.
Louisiana-based Albemarle, one of the companies that stopped making chlorinated tris, said in a statement that “we have always and continue to believe” the chemical is safe.
Heather Stapleton, a Duke University chemist who co-wrote the new study, said it has taken years for independent scientists to figure out how to track exposure to chlorinated tris and Firemaster 550, in part because there is relatively little publicly available research on the flame retardants.
“Almost everybody is exposed to these chemicals,” Stapleton said. “Some of these kids with high levels in their bodies likely are exposed in their home on a daily basis.”
Mothers who participated in the study filled out a questionnaire that asked whether their kids used a pacifier or frequently ate with their hands. If a child had more than six reported hand-to-mouth contacts a day, levels of the chlorinated tris byproduct in their urine were 60 percent higher than those for kids who didn’t put their hands in their mouths as often or kids who frequently washed their hands, Stapleton said.
The next step for researchers is determining how the chemicals might affect people at the levels detected. If the example of PBDE flame retardants is a guide, answering that question could take several more years.
“This is something that policymakers need to address,” said Wilson, the New Jersey mom who participated in the study. “It isn’t something that individual families can take on. We tried and yet we still had these chemicals in our bodies.”