A class of potentially toxic chemicals, known as PBDEs, is being found in higher levels in people in North America. The chemicals are used to prevent fires in everything from couch cushions to televisions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
A class of potentially toxic chemicals, known as PBDE’s, is being found in
higher levels in people in North America. The chemicals are used to prevent
fires in everything from couch cushions to televisions. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
PBDE’s are used extensively throughout North America. In Europe and Asia
the chemicals are hardly used at all for this purpose. To date, four studies have
indicated that North Americans have considerably higher levels of the
chemicals in their bodies, than do Europeans and Asians. The most recent
study tested the breast milk of 47 women in Texas.
Linda Birnbaum co-authored the study published in the journal Environmental Health
Perspectives. She says while these chemicals were created to save lives,
other chemicals should be developed that won’t be absorbed by human tissue:
“Personally I’m concerned about chemicals that persist and bio-accumulate.
They eventually get to a point be that they can be a problem.”
Some animal tests have shown that the chemicals can be toxic. That’s why the
European Union and the state of California enacted a ban on certain types of PBDE’s.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.