Are Californians paying a price for flame retardants?

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The Golden State’s penchant for tough laws to protect its residents from flammable furniture and other products may be among the reasons that flame-retardant chemicals are showing up in record levels in bloodstreams and in household dust here, Environmental Health News reports.

This week, a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology showed levels of polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, were higher in blood samples taken here than anywhere else in the country.

Levels found in household dust were highest in predominantly working-class Richmond, but even in more affluent Bolinas, where residents are less exposed to pollutants from highways and factories, they remained well above benchmarks in other parts of the country.

“It’s sobering to realize that this one well-intended regulation in California has resulted in the global contamination of a persistent toxic pollutant,” Ami Zota, a scientist at the Silent Spring Institute, a Massachusetts-based institution, told Environmental Health News. “These chemicals have been detected in nearly every species across the globe.”

Studies on animals have shown PBDEs can alter development of the brain and reproductive systems and disrupt thyroid hormones. Previous reporting showed the compounds were accumulating in human breast milk, as well as in children, wildlife, food and pets.

-- Geoffrey Mohan

Graphic courtesy of Environmental Health News, published by Environmental Health Sciences