Eco-Sense References
Eco-Sense is a publication of the Environmental Health Association of Ontario. The references here are posted in support of articles in the most recent issue. For copies of the newsletter, or to learn more about this wonderful organization, you can check out their website (http://ehaontario.ca/), email them at office@ehaontario.ca, or snail-mail them at EHA Ontario, Box 33023, Ottawa, Ontario, K2C 3Y9.
Autoimmune; Allergies; Babies; Children; Chemical Pollution; POPs
“Study finds moms share phthalates with their babies”
Synopsis: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/phthalates-in-moms-and-babies/
Quote: “In the first study of its kind, researchers in Taiwan find that phthalates can pass from pregnant women to their unborn babies and affect reproductive development in their daughters.”
The original study: “Association between prenatal exposure to phthalates and the health of newborns”
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6V7X-4T1SFM6-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=d1af14ee9a35791ccc935faecfd35b05
“Phthalates worsen skin allergies in newborn mice exposed through their mothers.”
The study showed that exposure to phthalates via mother’s milk caused increased allergic reactions in offspring. Phthalates, of course, are found almost everywhere in the environment, and have been linked to reproductive defects, among other problems.
Environmental Health Perspectives 116:1136–1141
“Fewer Children Outgrowing Allergies to Milk, Eggs”
Quotes: “Not only do more kids have allergies, but fewer of them outgrow their allergies, and those who do, do so later than before.”
“We may be dealing with a different disease process than we did 20 years ago. Why this is happening we just don’t know.”
http://www.cbc.ca/cp/HealthScout/090126/6012602AU.html
More information:
The U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,
http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/foodAllergy/understanding/whatIsIt.htm
“Lawmakers Agree to Ban Toxins in Children’s Items” (US)
A ban on phthalates, significant in its own right but also because: “It also signals an important crack in the chemical industry’s ability to fend off federal regulation and suggests that the landscape may be shifting to favor consumers.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/28/AR2008072802586_pf.html
“Perfumed Mother’s Milk”
Study showing that chemicals from soaps and personal care products gets passed on to children – as well as PCBs and pesticides.
Science News, Aug. 8, 2008.
http://www.precaution.org/lib/08/ht080814.htm#Perfumed_Mothers_Milk
“Women warned not to wear perfume during pregnancy”
Quote: “Pregnant women have been advised to avoid using perfumes or scented body creams after research suggested the products can cause unborn boys to suffer infertility or cancer in later life.”
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/health/Women-warned–not-to.4443471.jp
Diabetes; Obesity; Cardiovascular; POPs
“Persistent pollutant may promote obesity: Compound shown to affect gene activity at extremely low concentrations”
The chemical, Tributyltin, is used in anti-fouling paints for boats, as a wood and textile preservative, as a pesticide on high-value food crops, and for many other applications.
Quote: “The rise in obesity in humans over the past 40 years parallels the increased use of industrial chemicals over the same period. Iguchi and Katsu maintain that it is “plausible and provocative” to associate the obesity epidemic to chemical triggers present in the modern environment. Several other ubiquitous pollutants with strong biological effects, including environmental estrogens such as bisphenol A and nonylphenol, have been shown to stimulate the growth of fat storage cells in mice. The role that tributyltin and similar persistent pollutants may play in the obesity epidemic is now under scrutiny.”
Another of the ubiquitous effects of POPs, in other words…
http://www.aibs.org/bioscience-press-releases/081201_persistent_pollutant_may_promote_obesity.htm
“POP Goes the National Diabetes Rate”
Quote: “The conventional wisdom says too many Americans simply have a lousy diet oversaturated with fats and sugars that combine in the body to promote the obesity that causes the insulin resistance that triggers type 2 diabetes. But some new research says maybe the cause is chemicals in the environment.”
And the chemicals in questions are, of course, POPs.
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/learn/blog/pop-goes-national-diabetes-rate
“Pollution can make you fat, study claims”
This study, published in September of 2008, was the first to link chemical contamination in the womb with obesity. Quote: “Children exposed to pesticide in womb twice as likely to be overweight, refuting idea of sole personal responsibility.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/pollution-can-make-you-fat-study-claims-921696.html
“Research links common chemicals to obesity”
Quote: “Exposure in the womb to common chemicals used to make everything from plastic bottles to pizza box liners may program a person to become obese later in life, U.S. researchers said.”
http://www.canada.com/topics/bodyandhealth/story.html?id=2b026a0c-f6e2-4aa8-899c-ee3ed918121f
“Study associated BPA to diseases in adults”
Quote: “Adults exposed to higher amounts of the plastic compound bisphenol A are more likely to be afflicted by cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes, and have liver enzyme abnormalities, according to a new study issued Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080916.wbisphenol0916/BNStory/Science/home
Chemicals in daily life; Fragrances; Scented Products; Sexual Health
“Canada Declares Chemicals Used in Cosmetics to be Toxics”
Quote: “The Canadian government today declared two chemicals used in lipstick and other personal care products to be toxic to the environment” [January 30, 2009]
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jan2009/2009-01-30-01.asp
“Home Sick”
Book reviews in The Washington Post of Poisoned Profits: The Toxic Assault on Our Children, by Philip and Alice Shabecoff, and The Body Toxic: How the Hazardous Chemistry of Everyday Things Threatens Our Health and Well-being, by Nena Baker. Reviews by Seth Shulman.
Quotes: “The Shabecoffs deserve credit for forcefully urging the issue of our children’s environmental health onto the national agenda where it surely belongs.”
“Baker has written an illuminating, consumer-oriented book that sifts through some of the latest findings about the dangers of everyday chemicals.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/04/AR2008090402404_pf.html
And reviews of the same books in the San Francisco Chronicle by a staff member of the San Francisco Medical Society:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/10/RVA813D4LD.DTL
“Neurotoxin In Everyday Household Items”
Quotes: “Everyday household things could be doing our kids harm and we don’t even really understand what they can do yet,” said mother Christi Williams.
“Many of these chemicals are linked not just to the petro-chemical industry but to the toxins that infuse our daily lives: solvents, detergents, cosmetics, herbicides, pesticides – plastics. As the Commonweal Biomonitoring Resource Center concluded in its recent study of chemical contamination: ‘much of our exposure may be from products we have assumed to be safe for use.’ “
http://wcco.com/local/neurotoxin.household.items.2.811758.html
“This toxic life”
Sarnia’s “chemical valley”, Aamjiwnaang, gender-bending, carcinogens, asthma – warning us of where we’re all headed: “where the environment is concerned we all live downstream”.
Quotes: “‘Millions of tons of reproductive toxins are spewed out by these facilities year in, year out. Their effect on animal life has been well documented throughout the Great Lakes. To think these poisons would affect everything else and not the human population is bizarre.’ ”
“Critics predict that in 10 years the fallout from the petro-chemical and plastics plague will rank with tobacco and pesticides as a major global public health issue.”
http://www.newint.org/features/2008/09/01/keynote-plastic/
“The Health Hazards of ‘Fragrances’: Toxic chemicals found in common scented laundry products, air fresheners“
Quote: “A University of Washington study of top-selling laundry products and air fresheners found the products emitted dozens of different chemicals.”
Each of the products tested gave off at least one chemical Federally classified as toxic or hazardous, yet none – repeat, none – of them listed those chemicals on their labels.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/25/health/webmd/main4295506.shtml
And a link to more info on the major researcher, Dr. Anne Steinemann, http://water.washington.edu/Outreach/Events/SpecialEvents/oslsAS.html
“Essential vs Fragrance Oils: The Hazards of Scents”
Quote: “95% of the chemicals found in these oils are synthetic compounds derived from petroleum, and include chemicals such as benzene derivatives, aldehydes, and others capable of causing cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders (CNS) and allergic reactions. Today, fragrances are marketed to an unsuspecting public who think that these scents are natural.”
Phthalate esters, hormone disruption, neurological and respiratory effects – and if that’s not enough, waste water treatment facilities do not remove fragrance chemicals, and they have been found in our drinking water… not to mention lakes, rivers and groundwater.
http://www.hans.org/enews/issue/90#a5
http://www.herc.org/news/perfume/risks.htm
http://www.ourlittleplace.com/perfume.html
“Plasticizer related to lower hormone levels in men”
Synopsis: http://www.environmentalhealthnews.org/ehs/newscience/phthalates-and-mens-lower-hormone-levels
Quotes: “ Adult men with average amounts of phthalates in their urine had lower levels of two important hormones — testosterone and estrogen — in their blood. The hormones are necessary for normal sperm production and function.”
“This is the first study to show a relationship between phthalate levels and hormone levels in adult men.”
The original study: “Urinary Metabolites of di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate Are Associated with Decreased Steroid Hormone Levels in Adult Men”
http://www.andrologyjournal.org/cgi/content/abstract/jandrol.108.006403v1
“Common Chemicals May Affect Fertility”
Quote: “Exposure to a type of chemical found in everyday items such as clothing, carpets, and food packaging may be adversely affecting women’s fertility, delaying the time it takes them to become pregnant, according to a new study. In the study, the higher the concentrations of these chemicals — called perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) — in the women’s blood samples, the more likely the women were to take more than 12 months to get pregnant.”
http://www.webmd.com/infertility-and-reproduction/news/20090128/common-chemicals-may-affect-fertility?print=true
For a PDF of the study, “Maternal levels of perfluorinated chemicals and subfecundity”, go here: http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/den490v1
“Cui bono?”, “Who benefits?”, or: follow the money…
“The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A”
Quotes: “To some degree, the BPA controversy is a story about a scientific dispute. But even more, it’s about a battle to protect a multibillion-dollar market from regulation. In the United States, industrial chemicals are presumed safe until proven otherwise. As a result, the vast majority of the 80,000 chemicals registered to be used in products have never undergone a government safety review. Companies are left largely to police themselves.”
“Of the more than 100 independently funded experiments on BPA, about 90% have found evidence of adverse health effects. On the other hand, every single industry-funded study ever conducted — 14 in all — has found no such effects.” [Bolding by the author.]
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/132/the-real-story-on-bpa.html
“Environmental Skeptics Are Overwhelmingly Politicized, Study Says”
Quote: “A review of environmental skepticism literature from the past 30 years has found that the vast majority of skeptics, often identified as independent, are directly linked to politically oriented, conservative think tanks.”
And that’s not to mention who’s funding the think tanks…
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5782
The original study: “The organisation of denial: Conservative think tanks and environmental scepticism”.
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a793291693~db=all~order=page
Military; First Responders; Gulf War Syndrome; Pesticides
“Years later, Gulf ills linger: For war veterans backed by BU study, symptoms all too real” [BU = Boston University]
Quotes: “For more than a decade, federal officials have denied that sick veterans of the Gulf War share a distinct illness. But a 452-page federal report by an independent committee of scientists and veterans, released last month by the Boston University School of Public Health, found that at least 174,000 veterans, or 1 in 4 people deployed by the US military to the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991, have Gulf War illness, manifesting in a range of symptoms, probably caused by pesticide exposure and an experimental drug that hundreds of thousands were ordered to take as a precaution against chemical attack.”
“ “The physical symptoms are real and not in people’s heads,” said Roberta White, the scientific director for the committee.”
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/12/15/years_later_gulf_ills_linger/?page=full
