Photo Credit: Arek Socha - Pixabay
Dear Reader
I was thinking about health scares the other day. It seems I’ve reached an age where they are quite common. It is like waiting at the bus stop, watching the world go by, waiting for the bus that takes ages to come, and then from nowhere all the buses turn up at once.
These events, which are just scares at the moment, made me think back to my university thesis. Back in the day my research focused on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), how they are ingested by humans and how they become what the medical community call endocrine disruptors.
The original 2004 report that I read was called Bad Blood, published by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The goal of the experiment was to detect harmful chemicals in the blood. Fourteen ministers of the European Union agreed to give blood samples.
The samples were to be tested for one hundred and three harmful chemical POPs. All fourteen of the ministers returned positive results.
Out of the one hundred and three chemicals tested, fifty-five were detected in the minister’s bloodstream, returning a positive, yet unwanted outcome of fifty-three percent.
The chemicals detected were: brominated flame retardants, phthalates, perfluorinated chemicals, PCBs, organochlorine pesticides, synthetic musks, and antibacterials.
My research focused on polybrominated flame retardants, which I will tell you about in another article soon. I will tell you about all the above chemicals below and give you their common uses.
Some have been banned, and some, although banned many years ago, are still persistent in our environment today.
The punchline of the WWF Bad Blood report is that all fourteen ministers that agreed to be tested were all either E.U. Ministers for the environment or health! These guys did not just ingest these chemicals; they have been slowly absorbed into their bodies and ours over a lifetime of exposure.
As humans, there exist several pathways or vectors that cause these chemical POPs to enter our bodies.
Orally
We ingest food and water into our bodies by swallowing. POPs have been absorbed into the bodies of fish and animals. These guys are part of the human food chain and are themselves contaminated with POPs.
The liquids that we consume are all composed primarily of water. If you are lucky enough to live somewhere in our world that allows you access to clean drinking water, you are blessed; many others are not.
However, contamination can still affect even the cleanest water supplies. Water companies do a good job of removing harmful bacteria, but POPs are harder to manage.
We also have a habit of drinking water from plastic containers. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a synthetic chemical used to make polycarbonate plastics found in food and drink packaging and plastic water pipes. It can mimic lead in our bodies and act as an endocrine disruptor, causing hormone disruption and reproductive issues.
I will publish more articles on BPA and endocrine disruptors soon, but for now remember all plastics can leach chemicals; some we know about, others are yet to be discovered.
Absorption
Our skin absorbs what we touch into our bodies. Absorbing chemicals is more subtle that just putting our hands into or touching something, although that in itself can be an issue.
The most common way of absorbing anything into our bodies is touching something, but try to think beyond just touching with your hands.
We wear clothing. Work wear, which is personal protective equipment (PPE) and serves as a last line of defense, often gets contaminated with common workplace chemicals.
The Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) Directive EC 1907/2006 covers these chemicals in Europe . Once again, I will cover REACH in future articles, but for now just know that it exists.
With skin absorption, you need to be a little creative. It is anything that we put on or that can touch our skin. Cosmetics, soaps, laundry detergents, perfumes/aftershaves, gardening sprays, automotive oils, plastics.
The list is endless, and yes, they have most likely already banned the harmful stuff, but remember we are talking about POPs, and many POPs still exist in our environment.
Air Pollution
We breathe in and ingest particulate matter from the air. We cannot exhale particulates smaller than PM10 because their small size traps them in the fabric of our lungs.
Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are another topic of discussion for a later date.
Back now to our WWF Bad Blood report and the list of chemicals detected in the blood of the health and environmental ministers.
Brominated Fire Retardants
They are used to protect us from fire in our homes and workplaces, and the subject of my master’s thesis. Added to clothing and other materials with good intentions, some of these fire retardants, but not all, have been banned.
What was interesting about the results of my thesis which involved looking for banned fire retardants in Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) was that although banned they were being found in new electrical equipment, but at levels that would make them ineffective as a fire retardant.
I will post access to my research for subscribers, but as a spoiler alert, this is the reason. We, the U.K. and Europe, were shredding WEEE and recovering the plastics as a valuable resource for reuse.
These plastics were then being sent overseas to a well-known and very large country that makes lots of new electrical stuff. This and other countries were then selling back to us new electrical appliances that still had the banned flame retardants.
Despite being banned some twenty-plus years earlier, these chemicals, POPs, are still here.
Phthalates
Regulators have banned phthalates from plastics in children’s toys for many years now, yet kids still face a very real chance of phthalates remaining in their bodies since childhood.
Phthalates banned from children’s toys continued to be used in other industrial processes and consumer goods. My intention is to carry out some modern research to see where we are with them today. Stay tuned in or subscribe?
Perfluorinated Chemicals
Were at the time used grease-proof coatings in food packaging. Pizza boxes, microwave chips and in carpets, clothing and back in the day non-stick pans.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
They banned it in the nineteen seventies, and yet people found it in the 2004 WWF Bad Blood experiment. They bio-accumulated in human food chains, caused cancer, skin rashes and were a known endocrine disruptor.
Organo Chlorine Pesticides
These pesticides came in different labels, known as DDT, Aldrin, and Dieldrin. They were lipophilic, which caused bio-accumulation in fatty tissues, a known POP.
Developed countries have banned them, but research indicates their potential illegal use for pest control in developing nations. Residues are still being checked in developed countries some fifty-plus years later.
Using DDT figured in the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. Despite being an old book, as an environmentalist, it lit my fire. I recommend that you buy it and read it.
Synthetic Musk
Manufacturers still use them in aftershaves, soaps, personal care products, detergents, and fabric softeners to impart a long-lasting scent profile, while marketers promote them as sustainable and ethical. Deemed safe for the U.K. and Europe, regulators consider the older nitro musks a POP.
Anti Bacterial
At the time of the WWF report, manufacturers used them in everything from toothpastes, chopping boards, kitchenware, and washing-up liquids.
Conclusions
This 2004 report was groundbreaking. The report’s findings on POPs spurred environmentalists and researchers to search for them in our surroundings.
This report is dated, but there are more modern reports available! I will bring them to you. If you have liked what I have written here, then please consider subscribing?
Until next week, bye for now.