Posted on 07/15/2005 2:06:25 AM PDT by Einigkeit_Recht_Freiheit
WASHINGTON — Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report to be released Thursday.
Although the effects on the babies are not clear, the survey prompted several members of Congress to press for legislation that would strengthen controls on chemicals in the environment.
The report by the Environmental Working Group is based on tests of 10 samples of umbilical cord blood taken by the American Red Cross. They found an average of 287 contaminants in the blood, including mercury, fire retardants, pesticides and the Teflon chemical PFOA.
"These 10 newborn babies ... were born polluted," said New York Rep. Louise Slaughter, who planned to publicize the findings at a news conference Thursday.
"If ever we had proof that our nation's pollution laws aren't working, it's reading the list of industrial chemicals in the bodies of babies who have not yet lived outside the womb," Slaughter, a Democrat, said.
Cord blood reflects what the mother passes to the baby through the placenta.
"Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or abnormal development in animal tests," the report said.
Blood tests did not show how the chemicals got into the mothers' bodies.
MERCURY AND PESTICIDES
Among the chemicals found in the cord blood were methylmercury, produced by coal-fired power plants and certain industrial processes. People can breathe it in or eat it in seafood and it causes brain and nerve damage.
Also found were polyaromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, which are produced by burning gasoline and garbage and which may cause cancer; flame-retardant chemicals called polybrominated dibenzodioxins and furans; and pesticides including DDT and chlordane.
The same group analyzed the breast milk of mothers across the United States in 2003 and found varying levels of chemicals, including flame retardants known as PBDEs. This latest analysis also found PBDEs in cord blood.
The Environmental Working Group report coincided with a Government Accountability Office report issued Wednesday that said the Environmental Protection Agency does not have the powers it needs to fully regulate toxic chemicals.
The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, found that the EPA's Toxic Substances Control Act gives only "limited assurance" that new chemicals entering the market are safe and that the EPA only rarely assesses chemicals already on the market.
"Today, chemicals are being used to make baby bottles, food packaging and other products that have never been fully evaluated for their health effects on children -- and some of these chemicals are turning up in our blood," said New Jersey Democrat Sen. Frank Lautenberg, who plans to co-sponsor a bill to require more testing of toxic chemicals.
Pollutants and other chemicals are believed to cause a range of illnesses. But scientists agree the only way to really sort out the effects is to measure how much gets into people and then see what happens to their health.
Don't forget the high concentration of dihydrogen monoxide, a potentially deadly chemical compound, in amniotic fluid.
"Blood tests did not show how the chemicals got into the mothers' bodies."
The control group of women hermetically sealed in lucite and who were given neither food nor water showed markedly lower levels of these chemicals. A substantially shorter lifespan was also noted.
Apparently, you were wrong. We ARE all gonna die!!!
These liberals are in an endless search for new ways that the government can take away all of our cares , all of our worries and all of our rights and leave them in the hands of people like Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
Hey, it killed the wicked witch.
Aw geez!
This guy Bush is at it again! When will he stop doing damage to the environment? Pretty soon they're going to find ANWR swamp moss in fetal blood!
It's all Bush's fault!
This reads like one of those cheap tabloids. I think the title is a sure grabber. NOthing else in the article is.
Would they be called "unborn babies" if the article topic was abortion?
My question also. Sounds like more scare tactics to me.
ping
A biochemist friend warned me many years ago that our ability to detect chemical substances was improving by an order of magnitude every three years. The environmental movement has long since turned this increasingly sensitive testing into a weapon of war. The cheat is, they don't tell you that the amounts discovered are infinitesimal.
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Which is the reason they are finding these things. Before they were undetectable. The real question is what is the tolerance level and how long are they there?
When a mother smokes, takes drugs, or drinks there is a much greater concentration of problematic chemicals than those in the article.
This is Reuters, not the AP. Their agenda is much less pronounced. By European standards they are extremely neutral. Moreover, these are probably samples of babies that were brought to term. I think you and the others who are reading an abortion agenda into this story are off-base. This is an environmental story through and through.
More alarmist bleating from a rigged experiment. Note that nowhere are the CONCENTRATIONS of the chemicals given. Given the extremely high sensitivity of today's analytical techniques, one can find any chemical or element that they wish in almost anything "environmental". The fact that these species are present at the part-per-trillion level and below is just sort of "ignored".
I'm surprised the abortion proponents haven't said yet "see, we need more abortions!"
Interesting that they actually use the word babies regarding this issue. I'll bet NARAL and NOW start screaming in protest soon.
Hmmmmmm. Maybe the folks pushing this very small sample of data have an agenda, like fetal tissue stem cell research, or maybe nice, clean human cloning.
Cord blood has shown great promise, but they don't get to kill anything.
Stupid article. No measure of how much of what chemicals were found. Nor was a benchmark mentioned for comparison. These chemicals are probably in such infinitesimal amounts as to be considered less than neglidgable. We are what is and you are what you eat. Ashes to ashes and all that.
"Unborn U.S. babies are soaking in a stew of chemicals, including mercury, gasoline byproducts and pesticides, according to a report to be released Thursday."
What a piece of garbage. Every hack involved with this kind of journalism ought to be canned. Oops! I forgot that IS the standard and state of journalism today. My bad. I'll be quiet now.
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