11-04-2011, 06:55 AM
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Join Date: May 2009
Location: In my head
Posts: 480
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Girls, early puberty and flame retardants
Check out what happened in 1973 in Michigan:
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First, girls who hit puberty sooner are more likely to wind up with a long list of health and social problems.
Second, it raises the unpleasant possibility that something sinister in our environment may be sabotaging the complex hormonal system that governs sexual development.
Biologist and author Sandra Steingraber, an interdisciplinary scholar at Ithaca College in upstate New York, spent a year reviewing the scientific literature on the subject.
According to Steingraber, the main forces driving the acceleration of puberty are obesity and premature birth. But she remains convinced that environmental exposure to chemicals, particularly endocrine disruptors, also may play a significant role.
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In 1973, approximately 4,000 Michigan residents were accidentally exposed to a flame retardant (polybrominated biphenyl or PBB) that was inadvertently mixed into cattle feed.
The daughters of pregnant or nursing mothers with high levels of PBBs subsequently entered puberty at 11.6 years old, more than a year earlier than those with low levels, according to a 2000 study published by HM Blanck in the medical journal Epidemiology.
Several studies suggest that girls whose mothers were exposed to high levels of pesticides, particularly the banned pesticide DDT, show signs of accelerated puberty.
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www.portlandtribune.com/sustainable/print_story.php?story_id121078392475499700
Flame retardants are still in baby products:
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In a survey of 101 commonly used baby products containing polyurethane foam, 80 percent contained toxic or untested halogenated flame retardants. Alarmingly, 36 percent contained a flame retardant, chlorinated Tris, that was removed from pajamas in the 1970s because of concerns that it was as toxic as its banned cousin, brominated Tris.
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Yet flame retardants have remained in many consumer products, including those used by infants and children. And because these chemicals are semi-volatile, they get into the air and drop into dust where they can be ingested or form thin films on walls and windows.
A recent UC San Francisco study showed that California dust contains as much as eight times the amount of flame retardants as does dust
elsewhere in the United States. An April 2011 UC Berkeley study showed that Latino children in the United States have seven times the level of flame retardants in their blood as do children living in Mexico.
Both animal and humans studies suggest that halogenated flame retardants�those containing bromine or chlorine�can cause endocrine disruption, immunotoxicity, reproductive toxicity, cancer, and adverse effects on fetal and child development and on neurologic function.
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www.futurity.org/health-medicine/baby-items-still-toxic-40-years-after-ban/
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