I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) were widely used as flame retardants in furniture, carpets, and plastics until 2004.
Now, two new studies published in the public health journal Environmental Health Perspectives suggest PBDEs may impair women’s fertility and disrupt children’s cognitive development.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), up to 97 percent of Americans have PBDEs in their blood.
Higher concentrations of PBDEs in umbilical cord blood at birth were associated with imparied psychomotor, mental and verbal development later in childhood, CDC and Columbia University researchers found.
IQ at age three years was significantly lower for children with higher levels of the chemical in their cord blood, the scientists wrote.
The study was the second epidemiologic analysis to indicate a link between PBDEs and impaired brain development in humans.
In a separate study, researchers studied fertility in 223 pregnant women enrolled in the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS), a long-term birth cohort study focused on environmental exposures and reproductive health in California’s Salinas Valley.
Blood samples collected around 26 weeks of pregnancy were analyzed for PBDEs, and higher concentrations were found to be strongly associated with longer time to achieving pregnancy, one measure of fertility.
Production of most PBDEs ended in 2004, but for millions of people, exposure continues via old carpets, bedding and plastic consumer goods.
EPA relaxing access to chemicals’ health risks
As recently as 2008, trade secrets protections prevented the EPA from naming many chemicals (like flame retardants) in consumer goods tied to health risks. In some cases, even EPA scientists who were trying to determine the safety of products, were denied access to that information, officials have said.
Over the past year, the EPA has rolled back trade secrets rules that allowed the chemical industry to obscure the health risks of thousands of chemicals in consumer products for several decades. More than 500 chemicals were stripped of secrecy protections by the agency.
In January, the EPA announced that production of another flame retardant, the suspected carcinogen deca-BDE, will be curtailed by 2013.
Last week, the agency announced a new online database, called ToxFefDB, that allows scientists and consumers to download information about the toxicity and health risks of thousands of chemicals, including data previously kept secret to protect “confidential business information.”
