When I first wrote this post in 2011 at energyskeptic, nothing was being done, despite years of work by Arlene Blum. She’s the one who discovered that flame retardant TRIS in children’s clothing caused cancer and got it banned in 1977. Then she moved on from chemistry to mountain climbing and became famous for leading an all woman team up Annapurna. After 30 years of adventures she returned to Berkeley and discovered that TRIS-like chemicals were in even wider use (there are 360 of them that are chemically similar, and she got just one of them banned).
So in 2007 she co-founded the Green Science Policy Institute to try to eliminate flame retardants (and other toxic chemicals). Yet every time legislators in California tried to ban them from furniture and other products, the chemical lobbyists donated $10 million or more to opponents and reform was voted down every time.
Finally in November of 2022 California’s attorney general Rob Bonta on Thursday sued 3M Co, DuPont de Nemours Inc and 16 other companies to recoup the “staggering” clean-up costs from toxic pollutants known as “forever chemicals.” Bonta said the lawsuit followed a multiyear probe that found the companies marketed products containing polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) for decades despite knowing they cause cancer, developmental defects and other health problems. Bonta said the lawsuit could ultimately seek hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and costs.
But for the most part they are still out there, and getting replaced with variations when they are finally removed from a product (Zanolli 2019). Still, you can avoid them in some products: Flame Retardants in Furniture, also: building materials, etc., Green Science Policy also can help you avoid BPA products here: Bisphenols & Phthalates, and fill you in on the latest the latest information. As well as PFAs, antimicrobials, some solvents, certain metals, and more.
Likewise, Bisphenols and phthalates have been supposedly banned in a few products, but new variations are replacing the old ones. A recent study found that American’s are exposed to levels of these dangerous compounds at rates 5,000 times higher than what the European Union considers safe. The chemical mimics estrogen and is linked to a range of serious health problems, including cancer, immunotoxicity, neurological toxicity, mammary gland disease, behavioral changes and decreased sperm counts, among others. Male and female brains in mammals are physically different, and Maffini noted a study that found BPA exposure altered male brains to look more like female brains. EFSA’s research pointed to evidence suggesting harm from BPA exposure can occur at levels 100,000 times lower than previously thought, and scientists have found immune system disruptions occur at particularly low levels (Perkins 2022).
Below describes some of the history of trying to get flame retardants banned, the harm they do, and where they’re found. Although the material is from 2012 and earlier, it’s still true, not much has changed sadly. Just like climate change, biodiversity loss, and dozens of other ongoing calamities, toxic chemicals are yet another sign of overshoot as we kill ourselves with pollutin in our fossil-fueled industrial society.
What finally started to make a dent after years of fighting were these 2012 articles in the Chicago Tribune, exposing the lies and dirty tricks of the chemical industry.
Flame retardants, also known as PBDE’s are not only carcinogenic, they also cause liver damage, sterility, thyroid disorders, endocrine disruption, reduced IQ in children, developmental impairment, birth defects, early onset of puberty, etc., even at very low doses. Like PCBs, these chemicals live a long time and accumulate at the top end of the food chain, i.e. us.
About 65,000 chemicals that were grandfathered in when the FDA was founded from being regulated. One of these was a flame retardant chemical, Tris, a known carcinogen and finally banned 1977. But there are 359 nearly identical chemicals like it and they have been re-introduced as flame retardants.
Flame retardants in Furniture, baby products, electronics
Flame retardants are in chair, couch, car seats, baby changing pads, nursing pillows, portable cribs etc. They also are found in some electronics and electrical equipment. And the $4.6 billion industry is growing. Global flame-retardant revenues are likely to reach $5.8 billion by 2018.
You would think that since Tris was banned in 1977 this couldn’t be happening again. The story of how this happened the most simple and clear example of the corruption in our economic and political system I know of. Please read Liza Gross’s excellent article :Money to burn It’s a case study in buying influence: How the chemical industry spent millions in California to keep flame retardants in furniture” for details. The chemical industry bribed California legislators 5 times now to make sure that PBDE’s aren’t removed from products up to 2011, impossible to say how many times since then. And mainly three chemical companies, Albermarle, Chemtura, and Israeli Chemicals Ltd, spent 23.3 million dollars lobbying the California state legislature to require furniture makers to put these chemicals into foam.
Planet Money, in their December 20, 2011 Podcast: Jack Abramoff On Lobbying, had examples of lobbying return-on-investment that ranged from 220 to 100,000 percent for every lobbying dollar spent. State Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), calls California’s flammability standard “a multibillion-dollar windfall” for the chemical industry. So let’s see, 23.2 million to get 4.6 billion, is about a 20,000% return on investment of lobbying dollars spent.
Michael Hawthorne. 5 Jun 2012. Tiny doses of flame retardant have health impact, study finds. Chicago Tribune
Small doses of a flame retardant commonly added to furniture can trigger obesity, anxiety and developmental problems, according to the first independent study of a chemical promoted as safe by industry and government officials.
Baby rats whose mothers ate tiny amounts of the chemical, known as Firemaster 550, gained significantly more weight than others that weren’t exposed. The chemical made the female offspring more anxious, prompted early puberty and caused abnormal reproductive cycles.
“This raises red flags about a widely used chemical that we know little about,” said co-author Heather Stapleton, a Duke University chemist. “What we do know is it’s common in house dust and that people, especially kids, are being exposed to it.”
Arlene Blum on the Manitoba conference findings: Juliette Legler of VU University in Amsterdam spoke on how endocrine disrupting chemicals such as flame retardants and BPA may contribute to wild animals being too thin and humans too fat. She described Baltic wasting disease and that a decrease in fat content in fish, birds, and seals in the Baltic sea is leading to this wasting disease in these animals. Environmental chemicals might be part of the cause. Her talk suggested that flame retardants could be human obesogens – chemicals that disrupt normal development and metabolism. Early life obesogen exposure may explain at least some of the recent rapid increases in the rates of obesity and type II diabetes.
How to tell if a soda has flame retardants: 10% of sodas have BVO or Brominated Vegetable Oil in their ingredient list, such as: Mountain Dew, Squirt, Fanta Orange, Sunkist Pineapple, Gatorade Thirst Quencher Orange, Powerade Strawberry Lemonade, and Fresca Original Citrus.
Food. Flame retardants (PDBEs), are easily absorbed by fatty tissues. We found PBDE contamination in all food containing animal fats. Although these findings are preliminary, they suggest that food is a major route of intake for PBDEs” said Schecter, environmental sciences professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Dallas. Several studies have found them in meat, fish, dairy foods, vegetable-based foods, and eggs. The most heavily PBDE contaminated food was butter, followed by canned sardines and fresh salmon. It’s disturbing to know that these types of chemicals are present in our food at any level. Schecter et al found that all US women’s milk samples were contaminated with the highest levels of PBDEs in the world, orders of magnitude higher than European women.
Flame Retardants don’t work!
- A peer-reviewed study presented at the 10th International Symposium on Fire Safety Science at the University of Maryland on June 21, 2011, shows that California’s furniture flammability standard Technical Bulletin 117 (TB117) does not provide measurable fire safety benefits.
- TB117 requires foam to withstand a small open flame (i.e. a match) for 12 seconds without igniting. Yet the fabric cover doesn’t have to be flame resistant, so the standard makes no sense.
- At the very most you get 3-4 extra seconds to flee the fire — but it’s smoke and carbon monoxide that kill, not flames!
- Fire deaths in states WITHOUT flame retardants declined at the same rate as California over 24 years.
- 560 Americans died in furniture caused fires in 2003, but cancer killed more than 500,000 people. Most fires are caused by people passing out while smoking cigarettes. So 1) rather than put flame retardants in furniture, force cigarette manufacturers to make cigarettes go out that aren’t puffed on – which is required in Europe and 2) 80% of Californian’s don’t smoke — why don’t we have a choice of buying furniture without flame retardants? There’s a 90,000% greater chance of dying from cancer (perhaps caused by flame retardants) than a fire!
What you can do to fight PBDE flame retardants
If everyone refuses to buy furniture with flame retardants, perhaps we can pit retailing corporations against the chemical industry, because only large corporations have the money, clout, money, know-how, and money to fight chemical industry lobbyists. At this point, given the high level of corruption across all institutions, our best hope is to set one corporation against another.
There are hundreds of variations of flame retardants (see Appendix A: Too Much Information) that have bromine or chlorine bound to carbon, so like bop-a-mole, if you get one chemical banned, another pops up.
More scary facts
- These chemicals are semi-volatile, so they get into the air, dust, and stick to walls and windows. California dust has 8 times more flame retardant than the rest of the USA.
- Latino children in the USA have 7 times more flame retardant in their blood than Mexican children.
- In a survey of 101 commonly used baby products withpolyurethane foam, 80% had toxic or untested halogenated flame retardants.
- They’re accumulating long-term in the environment. Arlene Blum 12 Jun 2012: “Rob Letcher from Environment Canada presented the opening keynote address, entitled “Old to New Generation Flame Retardants: Chemical Instability Affects Environmental Persistence and Bioaccumulation.” He found many replacement flame retardants are unstable in the environment. This is despite industry claims that they are stable in the laboratory. A number of new flame retardants rapidly degrade to breakdown products that are more bioaccumulative than the parent compound, similar to the breakdown of decaBDE to more toxic forms.”
- 15 Nov 2012: Flame Retardants Used in Foam Upholstered Furniture and Other Products Linked to Neurodevelopmental Delays in Children.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alice Friedemann (www.energyskeptic.com) is the author of “Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy”, 2021, Springer; “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity, XX2 report.
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