Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Bacteria

OK, another mission. Look around and see if you have any products labeled antibacterial. Probably you do: 45% of all soaps and detergents now contain Triclosan or Triclocarbon--antimicrobial agents that the advertising industry has convinced us we need. They are not the only things containing these chemicals, which are added to a range of products from baby carriers to socks, and deodorant to toothpaste. Over a million pounds of the stuff finds its way into consumer products each year.

These chemicals were developed in the 1970s for surgical scrubbing. Soon they were extended to broader uses in hospitals, to help control the spread of infections. These are probably good and appropriate uses for such chemicals, afterall if the doctor is going to be cutting into me, I want him to scrub with an antimicrobial compound. But we don’t need that same level of protection for day to day use. Washing with good old-fashioned soap works fine for controlling the germs that the average American encounters.

You might say, "well it can't hurt to play it safe, and use an antimicrobial," but you'd be wrong. Studies have shown that when these chemicals mix with chlorine (which is found in most municipal water supplies in this country) it creates chloroform, a known carcinogen. Other studies have shown that these chemicals increase the development of resistant strains of bacteria in the environment, so when the surgeon scrubs with them, they may no longer work. And, still other studies demonstrate that they alter a person’s normal microflora, those microorganisms that live on our skin, in our mouths, and in other body areas, and that are absolutely critical to good health. This negatively impacts our immune system and seems to lead to a greater chance of allergies, particularly in children. In other words, too much hygiene yields increased allergies, because the body's natural defense system hasn't been adequately trained to attack invaders. In the immune system's case, practice makes perfect, and over-cleanliness doesn't give it the practice it needs.

Once they get washed down the sink, the antimicrobials pass through wastewater treatment, discharged to streams where they interfere with the balance of organisms living in the stream, or they accumulate in sludge, which is often applied to farm land that grows crops. Out in nature, they don't break down readily, so they just continue accumulating and working their way up the food chain.

Oh, and one more thing about them: they, too, are endocrine disruptors. So, the next time you go to purchase soap or any other personal care or household cleaning products, just pass over the containers that say antibacterial.

Clean Up Cleaning

Here's a challenge: Go to the bathroom or kitchen and look under your sink. How many bottles, cans, and containers of stuff are under there? For most Americans, there are a bunch: dish detergent, general-purpose spray and powdered cleansers, specialty cleansers (such as brass polish, furniture polish, or oven cleaner), maybe even some bug spray. That small space epitomizes our infatuation with chemical concoctions.

This month the environmental group Women's Voices for the Earth released a report, Household Hazards: Potential Hazards of Home Cleaning Products, on some of the health concerns associated with these products. For example, monoethanolamine, a surfactant found in some laundry detergents, all-purpose cleaners and floor cleaners, is a known contributor of occupational asthma, and glycol ethers, such as 2-butoxyethanol, are solvents commonly found in glass cleaners and all-purpose spray cleaners that have been linked to reduced fertility and low birth weight in exposed mice.

So, what can you do to keep your house clean, but protect yourself from these chemicals? First, begin winnowing out the stuff under the sink. If you haven't used it in a long time, just get rid of it. Next, when you go to the store, start looking for safer cleaning products: companies like Seventh Generation and Ecover have consciously reduced toxic chemicals in their products. Or learn some of the tricks your grandmother knew: use vinegar and baking powder (which are both also really cheap) instead of synthetic products.

Cheapy white vinegar (I buy it by the gallon) mixed one to one with water and a teaspoon of salt in a spray bottle makes a great general-purpose cleanser that readily cleans most surfaces, and is perfect for removing soap scum from around sinks and fixtures. A cup of pure vinegar poured in the toilet and allowed to soak for an hour or so is great for cleaning the toilet and makes brushing out alkaline deposits a cinch. Add half a cup to the rinse cycle in your washer, where it acts as a fabric softener.

Baking soda works in place of abrasive cleansers, but it won't scratch shiny surfaces. If something is spilled on the carpet, pour some baking soda on, work into the spill with a paper towel, let it dry, and then vacuum it up. Use it as a polish for aluminum, chrome, jewelry, plastic, porcelain, silver, stainless steel, and tin by moistening a little on a soft rag.

Kids and Chemicals

Yesterday the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a report, PRINCIPLES FOR EVALUATING HEALTH RISKS IN CHILDREN ASSOCIATED WITH EXPOSURE TO CHEMICALS . As Dr Terri Damstra, WHO’s team leader for the project said, "Children are not just small adults. Children are especially vulnerable and respond differently from adults when exposed to environmental factors, and this response may differ according to the different periods of development they are going through. For example, their lungs are not fully developed at birth, or even at the age of eight, and lung maturation may be altered by air pollutants that induce acute respiratory effects in childhood and may be the origin of chronic respiratory disease later in life."

This is a critically important point to those researching the health impacts of environmental toxins. For example, I interviewed Dr. Cheryl Walker, a geneticist at the University of Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center Science Park a few months ago. Cheryl is one of the leading researchers in her field, carcinogenesis, or the study of genetics and cancer, and her lab is a state-of-the-art facility for investigating the link between cancer, genes, and environmental “stressors” that can interfere with gene activity. Her research cohorts—the term scientists use for the participants in studies—are rats, which she uses to explore the question of how exposure during uterine development to xenoestrogens, or the endocrine disrupting chemicals that mimic the naturally occurring female hormone estrogen, might influence later-life incidence of fibroid tumors. Fibroid tumors are generally benign, but they are the most prevalent type of tumor in women, and account for 25% of all hysterectomies performed in the United States.

In Walker’s study, female rats that are genetically predisposed to developing these tumors were exposed to different types of manmade chemicals that act like estrogen at ‘environmentally relevant’ levels, or levels similar to those that a developing human fetus could be exposed to in the womb. The exposure was very brief—just three days—but at a critical window of time when the uterus was developing. The result? “We saw a huge increase in the risk of developing these tumors in the exposed rats,” she told me. “In our control group, which also had the genetic defect that predisposed them to developing these tumors, but that we didn’t expose to the chemicals, only half of the females developed the tumors. In contrast, 100% of the rats that we exposed to the xenoestrogens had tumors.”

But the result didn’t end with a doubling of the number of tumors. “The rats that were exposed also had tumors that were much larger—on average five times larger than in the unexposed animals. This clearly demonstrated that we had increased the risk of developing these tumors by this extremely brief yet inappropriate exposure to the xenoestrogens!”

I asked Cheryl how a such a small exposure during development could result in more and larger tumors in adulthood. She explained, “We found that this inappropriate interaction between the xenoestrogens and the developing uterus led to the ‘turning on’ of many estrogen-responsive genes at a time when they are normally protected from estrogen. As a result these genes became active too early, were reprogrammed, and then in the adult, became hypersensitive to estrogen.”

These findings aren't unique. As the WHO Report points out, "For children, the stage in their development when the exposure occurs may be just as important as the magnitude of exposure. There may also be a long latency period between exposure and effects, with some outcomes not apparent until later in life."

One of the most alarming statistics to me in the WHO report is their estimate that over 30% of the global burden of disease in children can be attributed to environmental factors.

Endocrine Disruptors Part 2--Theo Colborn, Grandmother of a Movement

In 1987, absolutely no one was talking about endocrine disrupting chemicals. You could say they were under the radar, but in that year, Theo Colborn, one of the authors of Our Stolen Future, began work for the Conservation Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based environmental think tank. As a newly minted (and grandmotherly) Ph. D., having just received her doctorate in zoology at the age of 58, Theo was tasked with reviewing all the studies she could lay her hands on related to the environmental health of the Great Lakes, and there were plenty of them.

Over the next couple of years, Theo accumulated two thousand papers and five hundred government reports, and it was clear something was very, very wrong, yet she couldn't quite put her finger on it. Forty-three boxes lined her office wall, each home to reports relating to a specific species, and each hinting at problems: there were vanishing mink, proliferating tumors in fish, large numbers of unhatched eggs in bird colonies, and bizarre mating behavior and birth defects across multiple species. She came across repeated references to the hormone estrogen, and to chemicals, like PCBs, that appeared to be mimicking estrogen in wildlife studies.

One particular piece of the puzzle involved "gay gulls," or female gulls that were nesting together. This was odd behavior for gulls, and she thought it might have some thing to do with the endocrine system, so she began studying endocrinology texts. Once Theo began thinking in terms of hormones, the pieces of her many puzzles seemed to fall into place.

In July of 1991, Colborn organized a meeting at the Wingspread Conference Center, in Racine. She invited dozens of the world’s leading scientists who were looking at hormone mimics and their impacts on reproduction and health in both wildlife and humans. By the end of the three-day meeting, the participants coined the term “endocrine disruptor,” and those attending felt like they had found their voice: they published a consensus document, known as the Wingspread Statement, which said, in part, “A large number of man-made chemicals that have been released into the environment, as well as a few natural ones, have the potential to disrupt the endocrine system of animals, including humans.”

In her 80s now, Theo is still one of the world's leading experts on endocrine disruptors. Her groundbreaking work laid the foundation for thousands of others researchers who are helping us understand how chemicals such as phthalates and bisphenol A, both used in various types of plastics, are acting as endocrine disruptors.

Endocrine Disruptors Part 1

According to the Environmental Protection Agency's definition, endocrine disruptors are chemicals that "interfere with the synthesis, secretion, transport, binding, action, or elimination of natural hormones in the body" and from an environmental health standpoint, they are of major concern. Why? Because, hormones are naturally occurring substances, produced in the body, which act as messengers, sending signals that tell genes, cells, and systems to turn on, turn off, increase production, or decrease production. Most are associated with the endocrine system, which includes the pituitary, pineal, thyroid, parathyroid, and adrenal glands as well as the pancreas, ovaries, and testes. Endocrine glands and organs produce and release twenty different hormones that are critical in regulating growth and development, mood, tissue function, and reproduction. Like a key and lock, each hormone (the key) is associated with specific genes or cells that have receptors (the lock) for that hormone.

Let's take a closer look at how hormones influence reproduction: Just two cells, a sperm and an egg, each carrying a set of instructions embedded in molecules of DNA, join together and direct the choreography of life: Forty hours after fertilization, the cells have divided four times; by three days, twelve cells have formed. The second week, the cells begin differentiating, and by eight weeks, the organs have begun forming and the heart begins beating. At birth those two cells have transformed into trillions.

If all goes well during the development dance a healthy baby enters the world, but this dance is intricately complex—a blend of eloquent ballet, some wild cha-cha, a turn or two of twist and shout, and a bit of polka. It relies on a mind-boggling set of exquisitely timed biochemical processes, controlled by unfathomably minute quantities of hormones. These hormones act as conductor, keeping the band on beat. Just one missed beat or crossed step, and the dancers—those emergent cells that are dividing and transforming into eyes and ears, fingers and toes, livers and lungs—go astray, and the pregnancy ends in miscarriage, or a child born with birth defects or chronic health problems such as asthma, ADHD, or autism. Missed beats and missteps also increase the odds of adult-onset health and reproductive problems, or may even cause problems in the children and grandchildren of generations to follow.

Unfortunately, this dance is one that clearly seems to be going off beat more and more often: impaired fecundity (or the inability to conceive or carry a child to term) is a problem that affects at least 12% of women and their partners who are of childbearing age and trying to get pregnant, and that number may be quite conservative because it’s based on the number of women seeking help at fertility clinics, thus losing count of those who can’t afford to seek such help, or who choose not to.

Your first thought might be, “Well, women are waiting longer to conceive, so its logical that conception is down,” but that assumption caves under scrutiny: "Fertility levels have declined 50% worldwide between 1950 and 2000," Shanna Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist at the University of Rochester Medical Center, said at a recent conference (held in January at the University of California San Francisco) on Environmental Challenges to Reproductive Health and Fertility. “The most disturbing news is that the greatest increase in infecundity is among women under 25. These women and their partners should not be subfertile.”

What Swan, and dozens of other scientists presenting at the conference pointed to as a likely driver of this trend is endocrine disrupting chemicals--and there are thousands of them.

Coming tomorrow: Part 2

Organic Milk

The National Dairy Council, like other main-stream agriculture organizations and food producers, say on their website, "It's great to have choices in the marketplace, but there is no difference in the safety or nutrition of organic dairy products compared with conventional dairy products." Well they aren't quite right.

A study just published in the British Journal of Nutrition (published on line at the The Cornucopia Project) finds that nursing mothers who consume organic meat and milk have higher nutritional quality in their breast milk, with a significant increase in CLA, or conjugated linoleic acid, a beneficial fatty acid.

I'll drink to that!

Mercury levels in fish eaters

This week the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene issued a report on mercury levels in the city's population. Taken from the city's Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (HANES), the report found that "among women 20-49 years old in New York City, the average blood mercury level is 2.64 µg/L (micrograms per liter), three times that of similarly-aged women nationally (0.83 µg/L)," and "approximately one quarter of New York City women in this age group have a blood mercury level at or above 5 µg/L."

Another interesting fact from the HANES study: "Higher-income New Yorkers have higher mercury levels; New Yorkers in the highest income bracket average 3.6 µg/L, compared to 2.4 µg/L among the lowest income group."

We usually think that high-income people are healthier because they have access to better food and better health care. So why do high income New Yorkers have higher mercury levels? Because... they have access to better food. High-income people tend to eat more fish, and more expensive fish (can you say sushi?) and it is this fish that is contributing to higher levels of mercury in these women's blood.

I met Dr. Jane Hightower earlier this year at a conference. In the mid-to-late 1990s, Hightower, a thin, dark-haired woman with the intensity of a bloodhound following a choice scent, had dozens of patients being referred to her who had similar yet indistinct symptoms. Other doctors may have finally given these patients a diagnosis of something—Lyme’s disease, chronic fatique, fibromyalgia—but the patient’s tests didn’t quite fit the normal profile for the diagnosis that they had received; nor had treatment seemed to make them any better. Desperate for help, and often years into their hunt for an answer, they’d show up in Hightower’s office.

“I enjoy problem solving,” Hightower, an internist at San Francisco’s California Pacific Medical Center, explains, “so I get a lot of patients that have been through numerous doctors, and through even more numerous tests. These patients were coming in and saying to me, ‘I just don’t feel well. I have a headache all the time, and always feel like I have a hangover. My stomach’s upset. I have muscle and body and joint pains, and I have trouble thinking.’

These patients were a mixed lot: they spanned all age groups, from young kids to the elderly, included both men and women, and represented various ethnic groups. There were CEOs and physicians, secretaries and soccer moms. Many mentioned loss of motor control, and a number added hair loss to their complaints.

“All these patients had one thing in common—they had a laundry list of non-specific symptoms,” Hightower says.

For a long time, her patients’ symptoms had Hightower stymied, but one day in 1999 one of her colleagues, dermatologist Kathy Fields, mentioned that on a recent trip to Idaho she’d heard a call-in radio program about people with high mercury levels in their hair and blood. The common denominator among the callers was that they fished in Idaho lakes, and ate the fish. One symptom really piqued Fields’ attention: hair loss. Dermatologists frequently deal with hair-loss patients, and Fields knew that at least some of Hightower’s mystery patients reported hair loss.

The two doctors teamed up, arranging to test just one of Hightower’s patients who was suffering from hair loss. “We didn’t even really know what test to ask for,” Hightower says. “But we checked her blood, and it came back with what seemed like a high organic mercury level.”

With the results in hand, Hightower had to figure out what they actually meant. She tried to search the medical literature, but there was a paucity of information on mercury in the common texts that doctors refer to. Next, she checked with the California Department of Health; they said organic mercury could go up to 200 µg/L in blood, so mercury wasn’t the patient’s problem. But Hightower did a little more research, and found that the Environmental Protection Agency put the safe level for blood at less than 5 µg/L. The lab, which typically tested occupational exposures, told Hightower they use 13 µg/L ‘at the end of the work week,’ as the safe figure. Hightower pauses in telling her tale: “I scratched my head, and said, ‘Houston, we have a problem. No one is on the same page.’

Hightower reported the patient’s results to the regional poison control center. They put together a team, and went to the patient’s home and place of business. They searched for a source—and didn’t find one. But they tested all the employees at the business, and found two that also had high levels of mercury. The common denominator seemed to be the same one the Idaho callers had talked about on the radio program: high-mercury results corresponded to frequent fish consumption. Hightower tested a few more patients from the laundry-list group; they too had high levels of mercury.

Knowing that a few of her patients indeed had high mercury—which appeared to be associated with their fish consumption—Hightower decided to look more closely at mercury across the spectrum of patients coming into her practice. She designed an experimental program that involved all 720 patients who came to her office for a one-year period. Each patient was asked to complete a survey that asked questions about fish consumption, vaccination history, and about the number of amalgam, or silver fillings the patient had in their teeth because amalgam is another source of mercury. Her findings: patients who ate a lot of fish had significantly higher mercury levels than patients who consumed little or no fish, frequently exceeding the mercury levels EPA reported to be safe.

Emerging contaminants

In 1991, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) initiated a major study called the North American Water Quality Assessment, or NAWQA—(pronounced “knock-a” in government speak). USGS scientists have collected data in all 50 states, for the NAWQA study, which has helped illuminate a new area of chemical concern: emerging contaminants. The emerging contaminants include a wide array of drugs: from antibiotics to Ibuprofen,and Ritalin and Warfarin (an anticoagulant), prescription and nonprescription drugs are found in rivers, downstream of wastewater plant discharge points. There are insecticides and herbicides (often in higher concentrations within cities than out in farm territory from home and garden use), flame retardants, plasticizers, fossil fuel byproducts and Triclosan (the antimicrobial disinfectant that has suddenly shown up in the majority of hand soaps) also in the mix.

The mix is then sucked in at the intake of downstream water plants. Water treatment technology was never designed to take that stuff out. One of USGS's study's has a disconcerting finding: "This study shows that some chemicals found in commercial household products survive [wastewater] treatment, ecologic conditions between a [wastewater plant] discharge and a [drinking water] intake, and [drinking water] treatment.

Scientists acknowledge that there are more questions than answers right now. They don't know what impact these chemicals have when we drink the water (and tap water is as safe, or possibly safer, than bottled water so don't choose bottled over tap). But, the question is critically important to study: What impact do the tiny traces of these emerging contaminants have on us?

Mercury releases from chlorine production

This week, Oceana, a nonprofit that works to protect the world's oceans, released a new report, Cleaning UP: Taking mercury-free chlorine production to the bank. Their report outlines how a handful of producers are still releasing large amounts of mercury when there are cost-effective alternatives. According to their report, "Globally, the chlorine industry had largely moved to mercury-free technology by the turn of the 21st century. In the United States, the industry reported that by 2004, 90 percent of its chlorine was produced using mercury-free technology and no new mercury-cell plant has been built since 1970. Oceana’s Campaign to Stop Seafood Contamination targets the plants responsible for the remaining 10 percent."

Why does this matter? Because mercury is a known toxic, and persistent chemical: once it is released into the global mercury pool, it doesn't go away. Mercury is then deposited in the oceans, where it is taken up at first in microorganisms. These are eaten by higher organisms, which are eaten by higher organisms, which in turn are eaten by even higher organisms. The mercury eventually finds its way into the fish we eat. The predator species in the oceans, such as tuna, shark, and swordfish, have some of the highest levels of mercury in their flesh.

In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency jointly issued an advisory on fish consumption to begin addressing mercury concerns. The mercury in fish can be dangerous to anyone, but babies in the womb and small children are particularly vulnerable, so the federal advisory recommends that women who may become pregnant, pregnant women, nursing mothers, and young children avoid some types of fish and eat fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury.

By following these 3 recommendations for selecting and eating fish or shellfish, women and young children will receive the benefits of eating fish and shellfish and be confident that they have reduced their exposure to the harmful effects of mercury.

1. Do not eat Shark, Swordfish, King Mackerel, or Tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury.

2. Eat up to 12 ounces (2 average meals) a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury.

   • Five of the most commonly eaten fish that are low in mercury are shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish.

   • Another commonly eaten fish, albacore ("white") tuna has more mercury than canned light tuna. So, when choosing your two meals of fish and shellfish, you may eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) of albacore tuna per week.

3. Check local advisories about the safety of fish caught by family and friends in your local lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. If no advice is available, eat up to 6 ounces (one average meal) per week of fish you catch from local waters, but don't consume any other fish during that week.

The Environmental Defense Fund has a great site on fish consumption recommendations at their Oceans Alive website.

Fish advisories may help reduce problems, but reducing mercury emissions from sources such as the chlorine-production industry is a real key to long-term environmental health--for us and the fish!

Welcome

I'm an author, and journalist. My interest in chemicals and human health was spurred on by health problems that were plaguing my family and my friends. I began researching the topic, and the more I learned, the more concerned I became. From now on, I plan to share information with readers at this blog.