Lacnetters,

I had the chance to speak with Dr. Kim Hooper this weekend as we were
both attending a conference of physicians in Maine.  Hooper is
analytical chemist and the principle investigator for the studies on
flame retardants in U.S. mothers' breast milk.

I asked him the question that a lot of you asked me:  why do we have
to use breast milk to monitor pollution in people?

He response was

1) breast milk is easier to obtain than blood (don't need to employ a
phlebotomist;  need only one-tenth the volume)

2) breast milk empowers communities to do their own testing.
(mothers can simply hand-expressed milk and send it in to  a lab.)

3)  "When breast milk talks, people listen."  Kim said that he had
previously reported alarmingly high levels of brominated flame
retardants in seal blubber in San Francisco harbor seals, in lake
sediments, and in human breast tissues....but little or no political
response followed the publication of these data.  Suddenly, with the
announcement that human milk contains PBDEs, the story became
headline news.  And now the state of California is deliberating an
outright ban on PCBEs in their economy.

Kim said the story is very similar in Sweden.  There were lots of
reports on PBDEs preceding the one that documented their presence in
human milk.  It was the breast milk discovery that prompted Sweden to
ban the chemicals five years ago, which has led to a falling rate of
PBDEs in mothers' milk there now....which means that EVERYONE'S body
burdens are falling.

4)  liposuction samples would work, but, he believes,  nobody cares
what chemicals their unwanted fat contains.

Nevertheless, biomonitoring using blood is also becoming increasingly
popular.  Here below is a recent story from England.  It claims that
first born babies (breastfed) receive 30 percent of their mother's
body burden; second-born 20 percent; and third-born 15 percent.  I've
never seen these exact numbers in the literature, but they sound
about right.

You can just click on the link to get the full text article:

28 October.
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/health/story/0,3605,1072228,00.html>Toxic
shocker. Whoever you are, wherever you live, chances are your body is
a chemical dump. The Guardian's environment editor knows this for a
fact - in a pioneering study, his blood was tested for pollutants,
and the results were alarming. London Guardian, England.


Sandra

--
--

Sandra Steingraber, Ph.D.
Distinguished Visiting Scholar
Division of Interdisciplinary Studies
307 Job Hall
Ithaca College
Ithaca,NY 14850-7012
[log in to unmask]
www.steingraber.com

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