Chemophobia And The Chemical Body Burden Crisis
The false idea that our bodies have become ‘toxic waste dumps’ is not just wrong but counterproductive.
Chemophobia is not a new phenomenon in our culture. Since the 1960s, much of the public has been afraid of exposure to chemicals.
This is not surprising considering environmental disaster stories about toxic waste dumps or the history of chemicals such as vinyl chloride, aniline dyes, thalidomide, dioxin, and PCBs.
Exposure to toxic, or possibly toxic, chemicals has been drastically reduced over the past several decades through regulations and new ways of handling chemicals by industry. And yet the chemophobia epidemic has gained new momentum with recent media coverage of the “chemical body burden crisis” on websites, print articles, and TV specials (such as CNN’s “Planet in Peril”). The reality is that behind all of the media hype about chemicals in our bodies, there is little scientifically meaningful substance. In other words, it is not a crisis at all.
Some have said that finding answers is the easy part of science; it is knowing the right questions to ask that is difficult. The purveyors of the chemical body burden crisis exemplify this point.
The wrong questions people ask are:
1. Can toxic man-made chemicals be found in our blood streams?
2. How many of these toxic chemicals can be found in people?
The first question is silly, because we already know the answer: yes, of course. Pesticides, plasticizers, and the ingredients of many formerly and currently used products made with chemicals are everywhere, and we have all been exposed to them. Some of these chemicals persist, and remain in our bloodstreams for years. Until recently, these chemical traces from years of living in the modern world could not be detected in blood or urine because the technology to do so was not powerful enough. Now it is.
Analytical techniques to find chemicals in blood or urine have advanced to being able to detect such low concentrations of most chemicals (in some cases as low as 1 nanogram per liter, which is the equivalent of 5 grains of salt in Lake Tahoe) that it is actually surprising when some trace of a chemical in common use is not found.
The second question is not relevant to anything related to health, although it makes for lurid headlines, such as: “Alarming Body Burden Results: Tests Reveal 300 Chemical Compounds in Newborn Babies” or “89 of 116 chemicals detected in Americans’ blood and urine.”
One voice of reason, that of Elizabeth Whelan, president of the American Council on Science and Health, reminds us that the “dose makes the poison.” It is the first lesson that all toxicologists learn, she says, and one the public should also. “My concern about this trend about measuring chemicals in the blood,” Whelan says, “is it’s leading people to believe that the mere ability to detect chemicals is the same as proving a hazard, that if you have this chemical, you are at risk of a disease, and that is false.”
In fact, none of the discussions on chemical body burden that I have seen ask the right questions, which relate to the actual dose to which people have been exposed.
The right questions are:
1. How much of the chemical is found in our bodies?
2. Is the amount found sufficient to have any possible negative impact on our health?
3. What are the trends of chemical body burden with time? Are they increasing, decreasing or staying the same?
Finding 37 or 98 or some number of chemicals in the blood of a famous journalist such as Anderson Cooper means nothing. We all also contain measurable amounts of arsenic, cyanide, carbon monoxide, and many other “natural” poisons, but we don’t die from them, since they are present in low amounts.
So now that we know the right questions to ask, what are the answers? The answers are available, but not easily. It is quite difficult for someone surfing the Internet to find any data on the actual amounts of chemicals that have been found in people. And it is even more difficult to correlate these levels with those that could produce any toxic effects. For some chemicals, the information is simply not known.
It generally takes a considerable amount of research to determine what levels of each specific chemical are dangerous, and what levels can be assumed to not warrant concern. The question of trends is also sometimes difficult to answer, since most chemical exposures have not been carefully followed with time.
But the good news is that for many chemicals, accurate and precise measurements have been made on a large number of people by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which has published three reports with the data. For many of these same chemicals, we do have information on how much of a body burden is safe, and what level represents risk. These data, called Biological Exposure Indices, have been gathered from many research studies into the toxicology of chemicals in human beings.
The actual data paint a very different picture of human chemical body burden than one gets from the hysteria surrounding the issue in the media. In all cases, the levels of body burden seen in human blood and urine are below (and usually far below) the lowest level that is expected to cause any toxicity or clinical symptoms. Furthermore, for all of the chemicals that have been investigated there have been major and dramatic decreases in the body burden over time. For some compounds, these decreases can be seen over a single- or two-year interval.
For example, consider some toxic metals. Cobalt becomes a chemical of toxic concern at levels over 15 microgram per liter (ug/L) in urine. One CDC report showed an average level of 0.4 ug/L. The highest 5 percent of individuals had concentrations of 1.3 ug/L, about 10 times less than the level that would begin to show any effect. The insecticide para nitrophenol has been found at levels as high as 5 ug/L in urine, and the lowest toxic effect level is 500 ug/L—100 times higher. Body burden levels of pentachlorophenol are 1,000 times lower than toxic levels. And so on.
And what about trends? Is there evidence that we keep getting exposed to more and more chemicals in our environment? No. The evidence leads to the opposite conclusion: our chemical body burdens have been decreasing consistently over time.
Dieldrin is present in our blood at levels 10 times lower than in the period 1976–1980. PCBs are present from 3 to 5 times less than in 1988. The famous insecticides DDT and DDE are found at 15 times and three times lower concentrations than they were in 1976–1980. The chemical dichlorochenol is 10 times less prevalent in our bodies than it was in the period 1988–1994.
For some chemicals, like hydroxyphenanthrene, hydroxyfluorene, hydroxyl pyrene, several phthalates (plasticizers), hexachlorocyclohexene, trichlorophenol, dimethylphosphate, mercury, and lead, significant decreases can be seen within a two-year period, comparing 1999–2000, to 2001–2002.
The reasons for the decreases are obvious. We have been subject to much less chemical exposures than we were decades ago. The best example of this is lead. Since the ban on lead in gasoline and other products, human blood lead has steadily declined to levels 50 to 100 times less than in the 1980s.
When one looks at the real data in order to answer the questions that make sense, the conclusion is the opposite of the one generated by most of the media blitz about the chemical body burden “crisis.” In fact, there never was a crisis. And if there had once been a problem with chemical exposures, it has been getting steadily better over time.
I am not proposing that we totally ignore the issue of chemical contamination of our blood and tissues. For a few agents, like cadmium, the highest levels seen are not that far from those where toxic effects are possible. Therefore we need to carefully monitor cadmium in the environment, and take steps to reduce further cadmium exposure.
But the false idea that our bodies have become “toxic waste dumps,” as has become one of the latest mantras of the environmental doomers, is not only silly, but counterproductive. We cannot ban chemicals from our world, so the false crisis has no real solution. The crescendo of fear and outrage that it invokes in people serves no purpose. The best antidote for this irrational plague of fear is the same as it usually is: good science, clearly understood, and openly available to all.
Seymour Garte, Ph.D. is a professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public Health. He is the author of Where We Stand: A Surprising Look at the Real State of the Planet, Amacom Press, 2007.
Topics: 2010, administration, America, American, aniline dyes, arsenic, blood stream, carbon monoxide, CDC, Centers for Disease Control, chemical exposures, chemicals, Chemophobia, clinical, computer technology, crisis, cyanide, death, die, dimethylphosphate, dioxin, disease, future technology, good science, Governance, government, Health & Medicine, health care, hexachlorocyclohexene, human body, hustera, hydroxyfluorene, hydroxyl pyrene, hydroxyphenanthrene, information technology, innovation, lead, LIFE, lifestyle, medical, medical community, medicine, Mercury, moniter, monitor, Natural, new technology, news, PCBs, Pesticides, phthalates, plasticizers, poison, poisons, Public Square, science & technology, Science and Health, symptoms, technology, thalidomide, toxic, toxic waste dumps, toxicity, trichlorophenol, U.S., United States, US, vinyl chloride
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