Scientists begin measuring pollution in human bodies

[donsu]

http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/8009659p-8946009c.html

Davis Baltz shops for organic food and otherwise tries to live as healthy as he can.
So he was shocked to learn that the pollutants collecting inside his body sounded much like a Superfund cleanup site: pesticides, flame retardants and other nasty, man-made chemicals turned up in a recent test.

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Now, in a process called biomonitoring, scientists are sampling urine, blood and mother's milk to catalogue the pollutants accumulating in humans. They call the results "body burden." Commonweal and the Washington-based Environmental Working Group funded tests for Baltz and eight others at $5,000 apiece.

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In March, California researchers reported that San Francisco-area women have three to 10 times as much chemical flame retardant in their breast tissue as European or Japanese women.

- Indiana University researchers reported at the same time that levels in Indiana and California women and infants were 20 times higher than those in Sweden and Norway, which recently banned flame retardant.

- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this year released data from 2,500 volunteers tested for 116 pollutants and found such chemicals as mercury, uranium and cotinine, a chemical broken down from nicotine.

The CDC also reported that Mexican-American children were found to have three times the amount of a chemical derived from DDT compared with other children. Scientists suspect that Mexico and Latin American countries may still be using the banned chemical.
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of course the bushgang poo poos this saying tiny amounts of this or that in your body are of no consequence.