New chemicals killing us, making us sick: Expert
By Pratap Chatterjee
WASHINGTON (IPS): A car, warm home and a telephone--some of the basic elements of the lifestyles of the average U.S. citizen--may be behind a whole range of modern maladies, from asthma and cancer to a steep drop in male fertility
A slew of recent scientific studies show that some of modern society's most common materials, such as rubber tires, plastics and fiberglass, pose dangers to human health.
"These studies show that the strange new chemicals that govern our current patterns of lifestyle and consumption are killing us and making us sick," says Peter Montague, editor of Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly, who has been tracking the effects of industrial chemicals on human health for nine years.
These chemicals are everywhere, says Montague. Their ubiquity makes the recent studies very alarming. Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), one of the most common materials in U.S. homes, is just one of a group of 11,000 organochlorine compounds that concern experts.
Fiberglass is used to manufacture 30,000 different products such as the insulations that is used in about 90 percent of the homes in this country.
Other chemicals such as pesticides and fumigants that make it possible to supply fresh fruit and vegetables to supermarkets in the winter are also hazardous.
Take rubber tires. when a rubber tire rolls across an asphalt or cement surface, tiny fragments or rubber break off and become airborne. Some 60 percent of these fragments, or 'tire dust,' are smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter--small enough to lodge themselves deep inside the human lung.
Research published in January in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology shows that tire dust may cause allergic reaction ranging from rhinitis (runny nose), conjunctivis (tearful eyes), to hives (urticaria), bronchial asthma, and occasionally even a life-threatening condition called anaphylactic shock.
"I've never heard of the magazine of this report. I would be the person who would follow this matter in this organization," an astonished Pete Pantuso of the health and safety group of the Rubber Manufacturers Association told IPS.
Fiber glass manufacturers, on the other hand, say they know about studies on the health hazards of their products but reject the conclusions. "People take these reports and blow them out of all proportion," says Jim Worden, corporate communications officer of Ohio-based Owens-Corning, the company that invented fiberglass.
Glass fiber
Research done over 20 years by Mearl Stanton of the National Cancer Institute in Maryland found that glass fiber less than three micrometers in diameter and greater than 20 micrometers in length are potent carcinogen in lab rats.
"It is unlikely that different mechanism are operative in man," he wrote recently.
"People took at these reports and say, oh my God, fiberglass products are everywhere," says Worden. "Stanton's studies were done on rats, not on humans, and they involved injections of huge qualities of fiberglass into these critters, and that's neither humane nor polite."
A new hypothesis, published by Anthony Seaton in January's lancet, theorizes that these "fine particles," ( less than ten micrometers in diameter) retained in the deep lung cause inflammation which, in turn, releases natural chemicals into the bloodstream.
These can cause coagulation of the blood that then leads to heart disease and even death.
A study published in l994 by Harvard University's School of Public Health estimated that about 60,000 deaths in this country each year--or roughly three percent of the annual total-- are attributable to "fine particle," soot created through the combustion of fossil fuels in cars, power plants, incinerators, and the like.
Body of Evidence, a report published by Greeenpeace in early June, documents the effects of organochlorines such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins, which are believed to cause deformities in fetuses, feminization of males, dramatic drops in sperm production in men, and breast cancer.
The two main sources of harmful organochlorines like PCBs and dioxins are the manufacture of PVC plastic products and the bleaching of pulp and paper.
"The piping in our houses, garden furniture, wallpaper, shower curtains, raincoats--all of these can be made of PVC,"s says Lisa Finaldi of Greenpeace International.
Some 90 percent of those organochlorines present in the human body come from food--principally meat, fish and dairy products, but also from fruit and vegetables sprayed with organochlorine pesticides such as DDT.
The effect of these new chemicals on human health have been subtle, but documentation that they may lead to lower sperm counts in men, for example, is growing.
A study published in April by the Danish environmental Protection Agency in Copenhagen estimates that there has been a two percent fall in male sperm counts annually over the last 20 years. The study attributes this to chemicals presents in many consumer products, including pesticides, detergents, cosmetics, paints, plastic containers and food wraps.
Another study of 1,351 men in Paris published this year in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed that their sperm count ha declines 33 percent on average over the past 20 years.
Yet another study of 3,729 Scottish men published last year in the British Medical Journal found that sperm counts had declined 41 percent among those born in l969 compared to those born in l941.
"There is a clear pattern in our history that shows that every time we discover a dangerous chemical, we substitute it with a different one that we know very little about,"says Montague. "We can't continue to do this. We have to stop using these chemicals and start living simpler lives.