Phthalates | Pesticides | Fluoropolymers | PCBs | Flame Retardants | Metals | Dioxins

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Hundreds of industrial chemicals have been dumped into our rivers, freely incinerated, amassed in landfills, sprayed on food, incorporated into everyday household items, and used in so much abundance that many of them can be found in the blood or fatty tissues of nearly every American.

From organochlorines to PCBs, fluoropolymers, heavy metals, flame retardants, and dioxins, an alarming number of toxic chemicals are inside all of us, affecting the way our body functions. This encumbering storehouse of toxic chemicals, pesticides, and heavy metals we carry inside our bodies is referred to by scientists as our "body burden."

Effects of Toxins
When toxins overwhelm our natural elimination systems, cells and tissue become inflamed, bacteria and waste increase, the kidney and liver are strained, fewer nutrients get absorbed, and our health declines [2].

Short-term health effects of toxins can include fatigue, occasional sleeplessness, constipation, lowered immunity, and more. But short-term effects may be just the tip of the iceberg. Often they are outward signs your body sends to tell you something more, maybe much more, is going on internally.

Dozens of laboratory studies published by different organizations, groups, and journals have described the increasing contaminants and toxins in our bodies. Their findings: No matter how clean a life we have lived, we are all walking toxin museums.

Mt. Sinai School of Medicine
Studies conducted by the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York , in conjunction with Environmental Working Group and Commonweal, surveyed the chemical body burden of nine average U.S. individuals who neither worked with chemicals nor lived near industrial plants. The researchers found 167 different industrial pollutants in the group overall, with an average 91 chemicals per individual. [1]

Biolab
London-based Biolab, a medical laboratory analyzing toxins in blood and fatty tissue, found that "a fat sample from an adult living today contains up to 500 different chemicals, but one taken from an Egyptian mummy has virtually none. The reason is simple — most of them are man-made and have been released into the environment in the past 60 years" [6]

CDC
In a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2,500 volunteers were tested for 116 different pollutants. One of these volunteers included public journalist Bill Moyers. He had 84 different toxins in his body, including lead, mercury, PCBs, dioxins, DDT, and dozens more.

Other volunteers had — in their toxin storehouse — uranium, used in nuclear bombs, and cotatine, a nicotine derivative from smoke [7, 8].

National Research Council
The National Research Council of the U.S. National Academies released a press release several years ago that stunned the nation, announcing that "approximately half of all pregnancies in the United States result in prenatal or postnatal death or an otherwise less than healthy baby."

They said that major deformities, such as heart and neural tube defects, occur in 120,000 of the 4 million children born each year, with approximately 3 percent of these deformities attributable to toxins, and 25 percent attributable to a "combination of genetic and environmental factors" [9].

Chemical Body Burden
"Coming Clean," an environmental organization analyzing the effects of toxins in the body, says that of approximately 80,000 chemicals currently in commerce, only 15,000 have been tested for safety. Of these tested, none is tested for the way it reacts in combination with other chemicals.

The way chemicals react with one another can be more significant than how they behave alone. This is because "no one is ever exposed to a single chemical, but to a chemical soup, the ingredients of which may interact to cause unpredictable health effects" [10].

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The EPA estimates that the average American, without any direct exposure to dioxins, already has 13 nanograms of dioxins per kilogram of body weight — just from consuming a normal diet! [3]. Unfortunately, dioxins are one of the most potent chemicals known to man.

This dioxin level in our bodies, the EPA says, is "uncomfortably close to levels that can cause subtle adverse non-cancer effects in animals and humans." Dioxins pose a serious health hazard because they are "persistent and bioaccumulative," meaning they don't break down, and they build-up continually in the body over a lifetime [4].

The Body Detox Solution
Body Detox can assist your body by specifically targeting and removing many of these body-compromising toxins. As a result, you can experience a revitalizing surge of energy and wonderful feeling of well-being and health.

Phthalates

Phthalates are plastic softeners, used in many common plastics, including childhood toys, vinyl floors, shower curtains, shoes, cling wraps, pipes, cosmetics, garden hoses, crib bumpers, rain coats, and other soft, pliable plastics. Phthalates can be inhaled in indoor air or leached from food wrappings into fatty/dairy foods. Landfill disposal and incineration release phthalates into air for further contamination. Phthalates may adversely affect male reproductive organs, among other effects. Infants/toddlers are at higher risk.

• "In a recent study of 289 adults, scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a metabolite of DBP [phthalate, a plasticizer] in the urine of every person tested, with the highest levels in women of child-bearing age." (Children's Health Environmental Coalition) [11]
• "Approximately 95% of di(2-ethylhyexl) [DEHP] phthalate is used as a plasticizer in polyvinyl chloride (PVC) resins for fabricating flexible vinyl products, including toys, dolls, vinyl upholstery, tablecloths, shower curtains, raincoats, garden hoses, swimming pool liners, shoes, floor tiles, polymeric coatings, components of paper and paperboard, defoaming agents, surface lubricants, disposable medical examination and surgical gloves, medical tubing, blood storage bags . . . and other products." (Environmental Health Perspectives) [12]

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Pesticides
There are two main types of pesticides: organophosphates and organochlorines.

Organophosphate pesticides include insecticides used on fruits and vegetables, which leave residues in food. Apples, peaches, pears, and grapes have the highest organophosphate risk. Commercial baby food also contains organophosphates. This chemical is related to nerve gas used in WWII.

Organochlorine pesticides include DDT, chlordane, and other insecticides used to kill mosquitoes, protect crops, and safeguard foods from insects. Organochlorines disrupt your hormone system, resulting in headaches, respiratory problems, nausea, and tremors. Chlordane was used from 1948 to 1988; DDT was used from 1940s to 1960s. Since these substances don't degrade easily, organochlorines are found in the body tissue of most individuals. If your house was sprayed for termites in 1980s, organochlorines can still be in the house's air.

• "Every day, 1 million American children age 5 and under consume unsafe levels of a class of pesticides . . . ." (Environmental Working Group) [13]
• "A comprehensive survey of more than 1,300 Americans has found traces of weed- and bug-killers in the bodies of everyone tested, leading environmentalists in both Canada and the United States to call for far tighter controls on pesticides. The survey, conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that the body of the average American contained 13 of these chemicals. A surprising finding was that 99 per cent of Americans, including virtually all children born in recent years, had DDT residues. The use of the insecticide has been subject to controls and outright bans since the late 1960s, and its presence indicates how persistent it is in the general environment." (The Globe and Mail) [14]
• "In a recent analysis of organochlorine residues in the U.S. food supply, Pesticide Action Network found that even those chemicals that have been banned for decades are showing up consistently in food samples tested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration." (Coming Clean) [15]
• "Dairy products are the main dietary source of organochlorine residues. In 1988 in the UK organochlorine residues were found in 44 per cent of 120 samples of milk. Cattle may be exposed to pesticides in grass and other fodder crops treated deliberately with herbicides or through the chemicals drifting in the air." (Global Change) [16]
• "Young children and pregnant women who drink milk from California cows may be exposed to unsafe levels of a toxic chemical used in rocket fuel . . . . Perchlorate has been found in drinking water in more than 20 states, including California, which has extensive ties to the military, defense industry and the space program. The chemical has been detected in the Colorado River, the major source of drinking water and irrigation in Southern California and Arizona. . . . The EWG tests, conducted by researchers at Texas Tech University, found the chemical in 31 of 32 samples from milk purchased at grocery stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The average level of the chemical was 1.3 parts per billion." (MSNBC News) [17]
• "The US Department of Agriculture found pesticides in over 70 per cent of juice samples they analyzed in 1996, including 98 per cent of apple juice and 96 per cent of peach juice. Pesticide residues are reduced in the processing of juice although some juice may also contain pesticides which are left on peel." (Global Change) [16]
• "A typical holiday dinner menu of 11 food items can deliver thirty-eight ‘hits’ of exposure to POPs [Persistent Organic Pollutants], where a ‘hit’ is one persistent toxic chemical on one food item." The report’s estimated holiday dinner includes turkey with stuffing and gravy, winter squash, green beans, boiled potatoes with butter, dill pickles, and pumpkin pie. (Pesticide Action Network, North America) [18]

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Fluoropolymers

Perfluorooctanoate acid (C-8 or PFOA) is a fluoropolymer used in many Teflon products, ranging from non-stick cookware to Gore-Tex clothing to Stainmaster carpet treatments, surgical tubing, orthopedic socks, and more. Previously fluoropolymers were also used in ScotchGuard, but 3M withdrew it in 2000.

One common danger lies in overheating non-stick Teflon pans, causing fumes to rise off that produce flu-like symptoms in humans and which actually kill birds. Pregnant workers at Teflon's Virginia plant (who had high levels of PFOA in their blood) have raised serious complaints and law suits for the effects experienced with Teflon.
Under current study by Environmental Protection Agency, PFOA is found in the blood of almost every American.

• "Scientists reported finding PFOA in the blood of 96 percent of 598 children tested in 23 states and the District of Columbia. . . . Once introduced, PFOA circulates in the body for years. If new exposures to PFOA could somehow be stopped, the body would require an estimated 4.4 years to excrete half the mass of PFOA accumulated in organs and tissues." (Environmental Working Group) [20]
• "There is widespread contamination of human tissues with trace amounts of organic fluorocompounds derived from commercial products . . . [such as] water and oil repellants in the treatment of fabrics and leather . . . [and] the production of waxed paper and the formulation of floor waxes. . . . The prevalence of organic fluorine in human plasma is probably quite high since 104 of the 106 plasma samples tested here and all 35 in an earlier study . . . had measurable quantities . . . ." (Dr. Taves in American Chemical Society) [21]
• "Even if PFOA were banned today, the global mass of PFOA would continue to rise, and concentrations of PFOA in human blood could continue to build. Long after PFOA is banned, other PFC chemicals from 50 years of consumer products will continue to break down into their terminal PFOA end product, in the environment and in the human body. . . . Unlike other persistent organic pollutants, all of which have some capacity to breakdown in the environment, PFOA will persist indefinitely even if banned, and will continually redistribute throughout the environment, the food chain, and the human population. PCBs and DDT have declined in total global mass in the decades following their respective bans in many countries, but the same will not be true for PFOA" (Environmental Working Group). [22]

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PCBs

From 1900 to 1976, manufacturers used PCBs ("polychlorinated biphenyls") for lubricants, adhesives, carbonless reproducing paper, and more. Dumped into rivers years ago, PCBs still move up the food chain. Researchers estimate that it will take seven generations for PCBs to disappear from the body. Though no longer allowed for industrial use, PCBs cycle between the soil, water, and air. They are also passed on through breast milk.

• "Tests exist to measure levels of PCBs in your blood, body fat, and breast milk, but these are not routinely conducted. Most people normally have low levels of PCBs in their body because nearly everyone has been environmentally exposed to PCBs." (Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry) [23]
• "Even though PCBs are no longer commercially produced in the United States, high levels of the chemicals remain in various parts of the country, in poultry, and in fish. . . . All people in industrial countries have some PCBs in their bodies. . . . There is no predictive test to indicate if an individual will experience harmful health effects from exposure." (Ohio State University) [24]
• "[The] national United States average of [of PCBs in the blood is] 0.9-1.5 ppb for people with no unusual PCB exposures. . . . Although production of PCBs was banned in the United States in 1977, PCB products are still in use in this country and elsewhere. Because of their persistence in the environment, they have been transported around the globe via wind and air currents. PCBs contaminate the bodies of every animal and human being on earth." (Coming Clean) [25]

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Flame Retardants (PBDEs)

Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDEs) are flame retardants used in a wide variety of household items, including electronics, mattresses, furniture, plastics, as well as automobiles. These retardants belong to a larger class of toxins known as "Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxics." Due to common use, PBDEs are doubling at fast rates in society and enter our bodies through the food chain. Mothers especially pass on PBDEs to their infants through breast milk.

• "The bodies of Puget Sound residents are contaminated by high levels of toxic flame retardant compounds that are known to cause behavioral aberrations, learning deficits, and other health effects in laboratory animals. An analysis of breast milk samples by nine Puget Sound mothers revealed high levels of the flame retardants in every sample tested. Concentrations of the chemicals were 20 to 40 times the levels found in Europe and Japan. These flame retardants, known as PBDE's (polybrominated diphenyl ethers) are commonly added to consumer and household products such as furniture foams, textiles, and electronics." (Northwest Environment Watch) [27]
• "Household products ranging from kids' pajamas to computers release these brominated flame retardants [PBDEs, polybrominated diphenyl ether]. The chemicals have been turning up in house and yard dust, as well as in specimens collected from sewage sludge, streams, and even people's bodies. For 3 decades, manufacturers have been putting these chemicals into a wide variety of products to reduce the risk that these goods will catch fire. . . . In the July Environmental Health Perspectives, the Indiana scientists report that although the average was around 40 parts per billion (ppb) of PBDEs in blood, some moms and babies showed concentrations up to 450 ppb." (Science News) [28]
• "A new study says chemical flame retardants are harming the brain development of children throughout Europe. Of particular concern is the retardant known as deca, used in many plastics in computers and televisions. A recent EWG investigation included the first tests for deca in the household dust of 10 American families, and found levels of the toxic chemical well above those that are causing concern in Europe." (Environmental Working Group) [29]
• "Studies in wildlife have shown that PBDE levels are rising at alarming rates, doubling every one to five years. In the Columbia River system, levels of PBDEs in fish doubled in a mere 1.6 years (Washington Toxics Coalition) [30]

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Metals
Heavy Metals: Mercury, Lead, Cadmium, Arsenic

Mercury
Mercury is used in computers, vaccines, medications, thermometers, and dental amalgams. Coal-fired power plants release mercury into the environment, and it accumulates particularly in fish and other seafood. Most fish consumption advisories are due to high mercury levels in fish.

• "The average amalgam filling has more than ½ gram of mercury, and has been documented to continuously leak mercury into the body of those with amalgam fillings due to the low mercury vapor pressure and galvanic current induced by mixed metals in the mouth. . . . Because of the extreme toxicity of mercury, only ½ gram is required to contaminate the ecosystem and fish of a 10-acre lake to the extent that a health warning would be issued by the government to not eat the fish." (Dental Amalgam Mercury Syndrome) [31]
• "In fully 10 percent of American women — roughly 7 million women — mercury levels were above the [safe] dose . . . Women who eat a lot of fish during pregnancy, or even as little as a single serving of a highly contaminated fish, can expose their developing child to excessive levels of mercury. (Ken Cook, President of Environmental Working Group) [32]
• "Until recently, a form of mercury called thimerosal was used as a preservative in many of the vaccines given to infants and young children, including vaccines for hepatitis B, influenza, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib). ("Mercury Amalgam Fillings," Shirley's Wellness Café) [33]
  

  Cadmium
  Cadmium is a metal used in batteries, electronics, metal plating/coating, and baking enamels (including some bakeware). Cadmium contaminates the soil and can leach into groundwater.

• "Tobacco smoking is the most important single source of cadmium exposure in the general population. It has been estimated that about 10% of the cadmium content of a cigarette is inhaled through smoking. The absorption of cadmium from the lungs is much more effective than that from the gut, and as much as 50% of the cadmium inhaled via cigarette smoke may be absorbed. / On average, smokers have 4-5 times higher blood cadmium concentrations and 2-3 times higher kidney cadmium concentrations than non-smokers." ("Heavy Meal Toxicity," Diagnose Me) [34]

  Arsenic
  Arsenic is found in most pressure-treated lumber (although it is currently being phased out) and is also used as a hardener for lead/copper alloys. Arsenic can contaminate soil and dissolve into water. It is especially dangerous to be around burning lumber or sawdust when the wood has been pressure treated. Many wooden jungle gyms for children are made of pressure-treated lumber; the arsenic leaches into the ground and can contaminate outward and downward from there.

• "The daily intake of total arsenic from food and beverages is generally between 20 and 300 µg/day. Limited data indicate that approximately 25% of the arsenic present in food is inorganic, but this depends highly on the type of food ingested. Inorganic arsenic levels in fish and shellfish are low (< 1%). Foodstuffs such as meat, poultry, dairy products and cereals have higher levels of inorganic arsenic. Pulmonary exposure may contribute up to approximately 10 µg/day in a smoker and about 1 µg/day in a non-smoker, and more in polluted areas. The concentration of metabolites of inorganic arsenic in urine (inorganic arsenic, MMA and DMA) reflects the absorbed dose of inorganic arsenic on an individual level. Generally, it ranges from 5 to 20 :g As/litre, but may even exceed 1000 µg/litre." (Green Facts: Facts on Health and the Environment) [35]

  Lead
  Between 1889 to 1970, lead was used in paint, and still lingers in about 6-16 percent of houses in the U.S. Old paint is particularly dangerous if it starts chipping. Lead was also used for decades in gasoline; much of the lead from paint or gasoline leaks into the soil, and cycles up from there.

  · "4.4% of all children aged 1 to 5 years have elevated levels of lead [from old paint and lead pipes] in their blood systems. Although lead poisoning can affect persons of any age, young children remain the chief risk group for the neurotoxic effects of lead." (Security World.com: Safety and Security Information Center) [36]

• "Higher prevalences of elevated BLLs [Blood Lead Levels] in U.S. children occur in urban settings, lower socioeconomic groups, immigrants, and refugees (Geltman et al., 2001). Children with BLLs greater than or equal to 10 :g/dL are at increased risk for neurocognitive decrements." (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) [37]
• "In late 1991, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services said, "The effects of lead exposure on fetuses and young children can be severe. They include delays in physical and mental development, lower IQ levels, shortened attention spans, and increased behavioral problems. Fetuses, infants, and children are more vulnerable to lead exposure than adults since lead is more easily absorbed into growing bodies, and the tissues of small children are more sensitive to the damaging effects of lead. Children may have higher exposures since they are more likely to get lead dust on their hands and then put their fingers or other lead-contaminated objects into their mouths." (Environmental Protection Agency) [38]

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Dioxins

Dioxins are used in the chlorine bleaching of paper and other chlorine products; they are also released from burning chlorine waste. When released, dioxins contaminate food, which is how they enter the body. Dioxin in its pure form is considered extremely toxic. With routine, normal diet you already have dioxins in you, about 13 nanograms per kilogram of bodyweight.

· "Current 'normal' body burdens of dioxin and several other organochlorines in humans are at or near the range at which toxic effects occur in laboratory animals" (Trade Secrets: Moyer's Report) [8]

· "The EPA estimates that the average U.S. citizen without any direct exposure to dioxins other than routine diet has an average body burden of 13 nanograms of dioxin per kilogram of body weight or parts per trillion. The level increases with age. Dioxin has been found in the sperm of Vietnam veterans 20 years after exposure." (Enviro-Net) [3]

· "Because dioxins are widely distributed throughout the environment in low concentrations, are persistent and bioaccumulated, most people have detectable levels of dioxins in their tissues. These levels, in the low parts per trillion, have accumulated over a lifetime and will persist for years, even if no additional exposure were to occur." (Environmental Protection Agency) [4]

· "Sex hormones are diminished in men with 13 ng/kg [of dioxins]; altered glucose tolerance has been observed in humans with 14 ng/kg; decreased growth is observable in humans having 47 ng/kg; endometriosis is produced in monkeys having 27 ng/kg." (Green Left Weekly) [39]

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