Letter from Brussels

Crowne Plaza Brussels Le Palace
Rue Gineste 3
Brussels 1210
Belgium

Dear Friends,

It is Day 4 of the week-long Dioxin 2011 Symposium in stormy Brussels, where flame retardants triggered quite a heated debate between scientists and bromine industry lobbyists. With hurricane Irene approaching the Northeast, I must fly out tomorrow. But today in Brussels the sparks are flying!

The action started in the Risk Assessment session led by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Director Dr. Linda Birnbaum and Roland Weber, Stockholm Convention advisor, where I gave a talk highlighting our landmark publication, “Shaw et al. 2010 Halogenated Flame Retardants: Do the Fire Safety Benefits Justify the Risks?”. In this paper, prominent scientists including my co-authors Drs. Birnbaum, Blum and Weber concluded that adding brominated or chlorinated flame retardants to consumer products does not actually save lives during fires, whereas evidence of the damage they cause to health and the environment is staggering.

Our conclusions represent a major setback to the bromine industry.

They were published in distilled form in the San Antonio Statement on Brominated and Chlorinated Flame Retardants, signed by more than 200 scientists from 30 countries.

1. Many halogenated flame retardants are harmful to wildlife and people, especially children who can experience severe birth defects and lower IQ from early exposure.
2. Halogenated flame retardants have contaminated the entire globe – and their spread is out of control. Over time, they leach out of products, concentrate in dust, and enter the outdoor environment through waste water, landfill leachate, and e-waste recycling. Once they reach the oceans, they can recycle in food webs for decades. This is the “toxic time bomb” effect of halogenated flame retardants – compounding the risks posed by their continued use.
3. Many flame retardant chemicals have been banned or phased out, only to be replaced by others with similar structures and potential toxicity. Already these “novel” replacement flame retardants are accumulating in tissues of wildlife.
4. Adding toxic flame retardants to products has resulted in no proven fire safety benefit! For the first time, scientists are refuting industry claims that adding the chemicals to products saves lives during fires.
5. When treated furniture and other products are burned, halogenated flame retardants increase the toxicity of fires by forming cancer-causing by-products (dioxins) and other pollutants. This results in increased risk of cancers and other health problems among firefighters and among residents of e-waste recycling regions who use primitive methods including open burning to dismantle plastics and other treated products.

A bromine industry lobbyist gave a rebuttal using arguments the scientists told him were “baseless” and “canned.” It became apparent that the industry is aggressively marketing these chemicals as “safe” throughout Asia and Europe. To drive the expansion, they are lobbying for increased flammability standards that scientists refute as unrealistic, unnecessary, and ineffective.

For example, they are promoting a new global standard that the plastic cases around televisions be required to resist a candle flame. To meet this proposed standard the plastic TV cases would contain about 20% flame retardant chemicals – a huge amount that scientists claim is excessive in view of the fact that TV candle fires are very unlikely, especially with new TV designs and fire safe candles.

To enact the standards, the three bromine companies have launched very well-funded marketing campaigns with the advertising firm that led the campaigns for the tobacco industry.

 

Scientists Speak Out

NIEHS Director Dr. Linda Birnbaum
confronts bromine industry libbyist
at Dioxin 2011 in Brussels

Dr. Linda Birnbaum sharply questioned whether more bromine- and chlorine-based flame retardant chemicals should be added to household and commercial products – from TVs to foam furniture, carpets, and baby products.

Scientists confronted the industry lobbyist for dismissing health concerns and failing to prove the effectiveness of adding more flame retardant chemicals to products – from TVs to foam furniture, carpets, and baby products.
In a recent Consumer Reports blog, NIEHS Director Dr. Birnbaum stated: “With regard to flame retardants, I am concerned about not only cancer, but the developing brain and reproductive and neurological effects as well. I think the question should be: Why do we need these chemicals in these products at all?”
Dutch pediatrician Janna Koppe asked “Why are we polluting our whole population to try to prevent a few fires?”
As a marine toxicologist, my question was “Why are we fireproofing harbor seals and other marine wildlife?”
An Irish fisheries scientist asked “Why would anyone put flame retardants in the fish?”

 

MERI science in perspective

International conferences like Dioxin put MERI’s work in a global perspective. In the marine wildlife session I chaired with Prof. Tanabe this morning, our colleagues reported on brominated flame retardants in Antarctic humpback whales, Atlantic tuna, porpoises from the Japan coast and the North Sea, and cetaceans from the Gulf of California.

MERI scientists were the first to report brominated flame retardants in Gulf of Maine harbor seals and their prey fish - hake, herring, flounder, plaice, mackerel - and their PBDE levels were among the highest in the world. It was alarming to find such high levels in our marine predators - meaning the compounds have permeated the northwest Atlantic Ocean food web.

The fish that seals eat are commercially important Atlantic stocks destined for our supermarkets – which raises the question, are we poisoning what remains of our ocean food supply? The economics of doing this are baffling to me.

As a scientist, I have been worried by our findings - but the issue is personal as well. My blood was found to contain high levels of the toxic flame retardant Penta-BDE, even compared with other Americans who have 10-100 times higher levels than Europeans or Asians. Our higher levels reflect the aggressive marketing and heavy use of the Penta-BDE commercial mixture in foam furniture in the US. These high levels raise concern for the health of Americans, especially young children, who have the highest exposure from breast milk and contact with house dust.

 

Are the replacements for banned flame retardants safe?

Dr. Shaw examines stranded harbor
seal pup, Blue Hill Bay, Maine

As MERI’s latest study shows, industry is replacing banned flame retardants like Penta-, Octa- and Deca-BDE with new ones that are similar in structure and potential toxicity – and we are finding these “novel” compounds in the tissues of harbor seals. Their trade names may have changed to Firemaster 550 or Firemaster 600, but the new flame retardants are nearly identical to their predecessors – they are “chemical cousins”. Since their relatively recent introduction (Penta- and Octa-BDE were phased out in 2004), these replacement compounds are quickly becoming widespread global contaminants.

My Dioxin colleagues reported that these same novel flame retardants we found in the harbor seals are turning up in wildlife species around the world – in gulls and peregrine falcons from the Canadian Great Lakes, peregrines from the California coast, dolphins from the south China Sea. Some compounds, such as DBDPE, the replacement for Deca-BDE, appear to bioaccumulate in wildlife more readily than Deca did.

From Maine to the World

As an environmental leader in the state, MERI’s science and advocacy impacts policy in Maine, other states, and the world. MERI has been involved in flame retardant policy since 2007 when our findings helped the Maine legislature enact a statewide ban on the neurotoxic flame retardant Deca-BDE as of 2010. Other states followed, resulting in the phase-out of Deca nationwide as of 2013. We continue to work on flame retardant policy in Maine and the US, and on global ocean policy issues such as cruise ship pollution and oil spills.

MERI is leading the search for toxic chemicals that are building up in marine ecosystems – in the Gulf of Maine, along the northwest Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and in the Gulf of Mexico. Our colleagues doing similar work in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia are few in number – marine wildlife toxicology is a small world. But our studies are critical – they are the first line of evidence that harmful compounds are contaminating the global marine environment. Without such studies, we would never know which flame retardant chemicals are entering the oceans – and which ones are reaching levels that threaten the health of marine animals and people.

 

Dr. Susan Shaw
Brussels, August 25, 2011

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