California's poor, Mexican American kids highly exposed to flame retardants

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California scientists warn that the levels of flame retardants they found in children "present a major public health challenge."

Mexican American school children in California's Salinas Valley are contaminated with seven times more flame retardants than children in Mexico and three times more than their own mothers, according to a new scientific study.

The 7-year-olds in the low-income farm community had more of the chemicals in their bodies than almost all other people tested worldwide. Household dust, contaminated with flame retardants released by old furniture, is likely the major source of their exposure.

“The levels in young children noted in this study present a major public health challenge,” wrote the researchers, directed by University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health epidemiologist Brenda Eskenazi. “While this challenge is particularly pronounced in California children, it is also relevant to other regions in the U.S.” because the flame retardants are used in furniture and other items sold nationwide.

Health effects of the chemicals are largely unknown, but two studies have linked them to worse fine-motor skills and attention in children, and declines in fertility.

The findings suggest that low income, rather than race or ethnicity, is probably the major factor in determining who is highly exposed to brominated flame retardants. Poorly manufactured or deteriorating furniture may release more of the compounds, which are added to polyurethane cushions to slow the spread of flames when furniture catches fire.

The only people who have been found with higher levels in their bodies were Nicaraguan children living or working on hazardous waste sites, according to the study, which was published online last week in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

Arnold Schecter, a University of Texas School of Public Health researcher, was surprised by the high levels of contamination in the California children.

“My first reaction is surprise, then the thought that we believe intake is mostly from dust, soil and food,” said Schecter, who has studied flame retardants in the food supply and environment but did not participate in the California study. “Higher intake of house dust would be expected from a rural poor population.”

Schecter added that food also is a source. The flame retardants have been found in many U.S. foods, particularly fish, meat and dairy products.

Previous studies by other researchers found that U.S. adults have 20 times more of the chemicals in their bodies than Europeans, and that adults in California had the highest levels. The new study found that the California children are more highly contaminated than any adults, and more contaminated than Mexican children and Mexican American children living in other states.

Seven-year-olds in California's Salinas Valley, a low-income farm area, had more flame retardants in their bodies than almost all other people tested worldwide. Household dust, contaminated with chemicals released by old furniture, is likely the major source of their exposure.The high exposures of the California kids “may be an unintended consequence of government regulation,” the authors said in their study.

Large volumes of PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, have been used in the United States, particularly in California, to meet a state flammability standard for furniture adopted in the 1970s. Furniture foam sold in California must withstand 12 seconds of flame without catching fire, which has led manufacturers to add fire-retarding chemicals.

Furniture meeting that standard is sold nationwide, but the biggest problem appears to be in California homes.

California homes have seven to 10 times more brominated flame retardants in their dust than homes elsewhere in the United States. The highest levels have been found in Oakland and Salinas homes.

“And scientists know that when you have persistent pollutants in dust, they get into children,” said UC Berkeley environmental health scientist Asa Bradman, a co-author of the study.

Children are highly exposed because they play on the floor and have more hand-to-mouth contact than adults. In addition to furniture, the flame retardants also are used in carpet pads, car upholstery and child safety seats.

The new study was conducted on a group of Salinas Valley children who have been studied by the Berkeley scientists since birth.

Blood samples of 264 Mexican American children born and raised in the Salinas Valley were compared with tests of 283 children in Mexico, including three regions from where most of the Salinas Valley mothers immigrated. The team also had tested the blood of the California children’s mothers before they were born, when they were 26 weeks pregnant.

Concentrations of the flame retardants were three times higher in the children than they were in their pregnant mothers. And they were on average seven times higher in the Salinas Valley children than in the Mexican children. For the most abundant PBDE, it reached nine times higher.

The culprit does not seem to be breast milk. The researchers found a weak link to breastfeeding. “Instead, the principle sources of children’s exposure were likely house dust and food,” the researchers wrote.

For all types of PBDEs, “children born in the U.S. had significantly higher levels than children born in Mexico….even for the children whose mothers had lived in the U.S. one year or less at the time of pregnancy,” the authors wrote.

The longer their mothers were in the United States, the higher their child’s concentration of flame retardants. The chemicals increased on average 1.8 percent for each year the child’s mother, who immigrated from Mexico, resided in the United States.

California homes have seven to 10 times more brominated flame retardants in dust than homes elsewhere in the U.S. The highest levels have been found in Oakland and Salinas homes.The opposite was true for another contaminant, the banned pesticide DDT. The Mexican children had more than twice as much of a DDT metabolite in their bodies than the California children. DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972, but Mexico didn’t phase it out until 2000.

Both DDT and PBDEs persist in the environment because they are slow to break down, and they accumulate in tissues and breast milk.

One of the most persistent and abundant flame retardants, called penta, was banned in California and phased out nationally after 2004. Nevertheless, concentrations in people, food and the environment have not declined because old furniture is still in widespread use.

Newer flame retardants have taken its place in furniture, but the Berkeley researchers warned that little is known about their risks.

“The health consequences of these chemical replacements should be investigated and weighed against their purported fire safety benefits,” they wrote. 

California's poor, Mexican American kids have among world's highest levels of flame retardants. by Environmental Health News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.