California considers program to measure pollutants in people. (Brave New World Alert!)

SAN JOSE, Calif. - (KRT) - What sort of potentially toxic chemicals are floating around in your body? Four parts per billion of pentachloronitrobenzene, perhaps? Trace amounts of dibutyl phthalate? And can they make you sick?

Scientists aren't at all clear on the last question yet. But California lawmakers are considering a bill that wades deep into the national debate over biomonitoring - and asks chemical manufacturers and distributors to pay for it.

Biomonitoring is an emerging science that analyzes human blood, breast milk and urine for trace amounts of pollutants, from lead and mercury to a host of industrial chemicals with unpronounceable names. After decades of testing soil, water, air and food, scientists now are scrutinizing pollution in people, cataloging chemicals that take up residence in fat cells and body fluids in hopes of establishing links to cancer and other diseases.

Last week the state Senate passed the Healthy Californians Biomonitoring Program, carried by Sen. Deborah Ortiz, a Democrat, and sponsored by the Breast Cancer Fund and Commonweal, an environmental group. The bill will be considered in the Assembly this summer.

The legislation would create the nation's first state biomonitoring program, one that would start by looking for 57 chemicals in the breast milk of volunteer women in three California communities, then expand its scope to other body fluids, chemicals and communities. Details of the program would be left to an advisory committee overseen by the California Department of Health Services.

"This really is an opportunity for California to gather the data we need to determine whether or not exposures to toxic contaminants in our everyday life are affecting our health," Ortiz said.

What's drawing vociferous opposition from business groups is how Ortiz wants to finance that scientific endeavor: Her bill would require state environmental officials to identify and levy fees on manufacturers and distributors of those 57 chemicals "at their first point of sale in California." The program, which would start in 2006, could ultimately collect up to $12 million in fees annually.

The bill's political prospects are murky. Ortiz withdrew a similar bill last year for fine-tuning. It's supported by dozens of health, education and environmental groups, among them the California Medical Association, the Sierra Club California and the National Resources Defense Council. But the bill's defeat is a top priority for a powerful business coalition that includes the California Chamber of Commerce, the Silicon Valley Manufacturers Group and the American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical manufacturers.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has not taken a position on the bill, but he'll probably be advised by an influential political appointee, state public health officer Dr. Richard Jackson. Jackson oversaw biomonitoring programs when he ran the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Environmental Health.

All of us have chemicals, both manmade and natural, in our bodies. A 2003 CDC report evaluating 116 chemicals in more than 2,000 Americans revealed the presence of lead and mercury, as well as residues from pesticides, cigarette smoke, even shampoo. But with many chemicals measuring in a few parts per million or even billion, which ones should we worry about, and at what levels? How much pentachloronitrobenzene, a fungus-killing chemical, is dangerous? What about dibutyl phthalate, found in nail polish and plastic wrap? With a few exceptions, scientists still aren't sure.

Researchers have definitely linked brain damage to ever-smaller amounts of lead. Some pesticides have been linked to cancer. But the dangers of a vast majority of industrial chemicals remain an open question, one that may be complicated by an individual's genetic makeup.

"Biomonitoring is a very important first step in determining risk," said David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis. "But saying it's in you is not the same as saying it will make you sick."

Business groups opposed to the biomonitoring bill have seized upon that issue, saying it's unfair to make chemical manufacturers and distributors pay for biomonitoring programs when the science of harm lags behind the science of detection.

While Ortiz acknowledges that lag, she believes that biomonitoring will ultimately protect the health of Californians. Scientists haven't exactly pinpointed the levels at which the flame retardant chemicals known as PDBEs can harm, but preliminary research on its dangers prompted the state to pass a ban on some PDBEs that will start in 2008. Lead in paint and gasoline was banned before researchers how toxic it could be in extremely low amounts, and children are healthier for it, Ortiz points out.

"It took years to come to a consensus on lead," Ortiz said. "We are at the very beginning of that process in California for these chemicals."

More information about Senate Bill 1168 can be found on the California Senate's Web site, www.senate.ca.gov. Click on "Legislation."

Well, you knocked down all those straw men just fine. I am sure Senator Ortiz will be happy to know she has YOUR support for this, any further such grand plans she might later dream up with which to spend other people's money. If you really believe that her current scheme is something which we, the taxpayers, would voluntarily support, why don't you convince her to put it to a public vote, to prove it? She will not do that, and I think you already know why.

The state of California is already running on borrowed money. That is NOT because we are taxed too little. It's because the legislators are SPENDING too much. The taxpayers are tired of continually bailing out the legislators' inane little pet programs and bad decisions.

It's NOT just about whether this program you are advocating is, on balance, a positive thing. In ADDITION to it being objectively determined to have total positives exceeding its total negatives (of which I am STILL not convinced), it ALSO needs to be judged by the taxpayers to have MORE net positive value than all the other things which are currently, and simultaneously, competing for their same (finite) earnings. Further, the taxpayers need to be convinced, even IF it were to be determined to be a worthy program, that GOVERNMENT is the entity most qualified to do the job, AND that it is a job that government is AUTHORIZED to do (without FURTHER judicial mangling of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.)

I cannot speak directly to the quality of this particular program. Perhaps you are correct that it is on balance a positive thing. I CAN tell you however, that a significant number of Ortiz' past grand ideas wouldn't pass the SMELL test with voters if strictly subjected to the analysis described above.

Most of these grand schemes are not subjected to ANY real scrutiny whatever. Many of the past and current problems in this state have been caused by legislators NOT doing this analysis THEMSELVES prior to initiating legislation or, if they HAVE, not being truly honest with the taxpayers about the results of such analysis. For that reason, California legislators as a group are notorious all over the country as not being careful with the people's money.

Further, it is part of the Liberal disease (with which many in this state are afflicted), to never even CONSIDER the concept of 'limited resources'. Typically, it's "Oh let's commit funding for this or that inane little pet program, project or study now, and then, when we run out of money, we'll just threaten the taxpayers that we're going to have to put little old ladies out into the street, or fire half of the police force if we can't raise their taxes to pay for it.

Taxpayers are currently providing government, at one level or another, roughly HALF of everything they, the taxpayers, earn. In return, taxpayers are treated to waste, duplication of effort, pork barrel spending, and bookkeeping crooked enough to make the worst corporate accountant blush. …and that’s just with the ‘good’ programs.

I, for one, would like politicians like Sen. Ortiz to start being a little more careful with the people's money, and to stop assuming that all 'problems', even make-believe ones, are best 'solved' by ever-increasing the size of government.... but I won't hold my breath waiting.

The demand for 'free goods and services' in any society is infinite, and will always exceed the supply.

Now you have focused on a substantial point: the justification, extent, and mechanisms for public funding of medical research.

In the 1960's and 70's, primarily as a result of the Apollo program and the Nixon administration's bid for votes, the federal government began putting enormous sums into medical research. The "war on cancer" was the marquee slogan, with the formulation of the day being "if we can go to the moon, then we can cure cancer."

This was usually coupled with a sob story on the evening news about someone dying of cancer. I was a teenager at the time and thought that the public whining was undignified and manipulative, but the public, especially women, ate it up. Donahue and Oprah came years later, but the premise of their success was already evident.

Once massive cancer funding was established, other diseases could not be denied. Most prominently, AIDS was later taken up as club against the Reagan administration -- with a passion as if Ronald Reagan was personally spreading the disease or at least withholding a ready cure. Cancer and AIDS get disproportionate attention and funding, to the relative neglect of other diseases without their level of political heft.

Today, the federal government puts about 25 billion a year into medical research, mostly through the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda Maryland. I have been there, and it is an impressive collection of mostly brick buildings that looks like a state college campus in the Midwest. The NIH's libraries and online medical abstract database (Medline) are unparalleled -- and open to the public.

What more do we get for 25 billion of research a year? World leadership in medical research and treatment and a stream of innovations in health care. But cancer and AIDS are still with us and an awful lot of public money is misdirected, wasted, or used for politically-driven programs of little merit.

Researchers who analyze funding patterns according to objective criteria confirm that AIDS and cancer are grossly over funded. More provocative are the millions spent in the Clinton years for studies that regarded gun violence as an "epidemic" and supposed public heath issue, and even larger sums still spent promoting socialized medicine and the Planned Parenthood approach to sex.

More subtle distortions in our health care system are a disregard of alternative medicine, over-reliance on prescription drugs, group think and lack of daring in research, and a tendency toward excessive cost. The head of research for Smith-Kline-Welcome recently confessed an unappealing truth of modern medicine: most prescription drugs do not work most of the time for most people.

In sum, I recognize the problem, and for all I know, might very well oppose the measure at issue. But there is little doubt that the concern it addresses is legitimate and alarming. Pesticides and other toxins are accumulating in the human population.

The cumulative doses of these chemical are mostly unmeasured and of unknown effect, but there is credible evidence that they are implicated in a wide range of diseases that are mysteriously increasing in incidence: breast and prostate cancer, Parkinson's disease, impaired fertility,and disrupted gender development.

To me, there is a compelling case for the need for research so that the problem can be known and addressed. There is no conservative argument for ignorance even if there is reason to have misgivings about our current, government dominated funding regime for medical research -- and particular misgivings about the California legislature getting into the business of funding medical research. In the end, if the decision were mine, I would strongly advocate the research but likely urge other funding sources if there were not a public heath aspect unique to California. If we were both in the California legislature, we would probably spar over the issue but vote the same.

I do not mean to flog a dead, or at least very weary horse, but here is an example today of the reasons for concern over pollutants that are accumulating in the human population.

Flame retardant in breast milk raises concern
Canadian women have second-highest level in world, Health Canada finds

By MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
Globe & Mail
ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
Monday, June 7, 2004 - Page A9

The breast milk of Canadian women contains the second-highest levels in the world of a compound used as a flame retardant in computer casings and household furniture, according to a new survey compiled by Health Canada.

The highest amounts of the contaminants, known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, were detected in the milk of nursing U.S. mothers.

But women in Canada had levels about five to 10 times those in other advanced industrial countries, such as Japan, Sweden, and Germany.

The amounts in U.S. women were double those in Canada, and exceptionally high compared to those elsewhere in the world.

The international comparison was made by Jake Ryan, a research scientist at Health Canada, who is presenting the finding later today at a conference in Toronto devoted to the controversial chemicals, which some scientists fear may be as dangerous as the polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, that were banned as an environmental hazard in the 1970s.

Health Canada official Samuel Ben Rejeb said the department is studying why levels in Canadian women are so much higher than elsewhere in the world.

Health Canada and Environment Canada recommended last month that some forms of PBDEs be declared toxic and eliminated from use. The European Union has already issued restrictions on the substances, and several U.S. states plan to follow suit.

"This is a poster-child chemical for something that ought to be zeroed out," says Tom Muir, a researcher at Environment Canada who has studied PBDEs and is worried they may be contributing to thyroid disorders and children's health problems.

Although the federal government is proposing restrictions on PBDEs, Health Canada concluded that human exposure from sources such as breast milk had not yet reached harmful levels.

But Mr. Muir said PBDE levels in the breast milk of a small number of women surveyed in North America are approaching the critical concentrations associated with health impairment from PCBs.

The highest reading in Canada was of one woman who had 956 parts per billion of PBDEs in the fat of her breast milk.

The highest in the U.S. was just over 1,000 ppb. The average breastfeeding woman in Canada has concentrations of about 60 ppb. Samples were taken in all regions of Canada.

PCB concentrations become of concern when they reach 1,250 ppb, according to Mr. Muir.

Health Canada said confidentiality reasons prevented it from seeking clues on why concentrations seem to vary so wildly.

Mr. Ryan based his findings on a survey of almost all of the studies in the world that have analyzed mothers' milk for the chemical. Scientists have checked milk samples from Sweden and Japan dating back to the early 1970s, finding almost no PBDEs.

But over the past three decades, increasing amounts of PBDEs have been added to consumer products such as TV sets, computers, and the polyurethane foam used in furniture to make them less likely to burn during a fire.

Levels in human milk have been rising in tandem with the growing use of the product, and in Canada are now four times those in the early 1990s.

International comparisons made by Mr. Ryan indicate that breast milk has about 100 times more PBDEs than samples collected 30 years ago.

Health Canada has been studying the chemical because of fears it is a new pollutant in the food supply.

"We were interested in PBDEs as a new emerging class of persistent organic pollutant," said Mr. Ben Rejeb, who is associate director of Health Canada's bureau of chemical safety.

He said that while levels of most other harmful industrial chemicals found in breast milk, such as DDT, PCBs, and dioxin, have been falling in recent surveys, PBDE concentrations have risen rapidly.

"This is unlike the other persistent organic pollutants."

Health Canada denied a request from The Globe and Mail to interview Mr. Ryan about his findings, but had Mr. Ben Rejeb answer questions about his colleague's work.

It is not known exactly how PBDEs migrate from consumer products into human tissue. They have been found in household dust and sewage sludge, in many fatty foods such as meat and fish, and in wildlife.

Although there is little research on human health and PBDEs, recent animal experiments with the chemical have linked it to learning difficulties, memory impairment, and alterations in thyroid hormone levels.

The similarity of these effects to those of childhood attention-deficit disorders, and the rising tide of adult thyroid problems, have led to calls for studies into whether PBDEs and other pollutants play a role in these ailments.

Mr. Ben Rejeb said Health Canada has been checking PBDE levels in food to see if there is a link to the breast-milk findings.

The department has found the contaminant is present at about the same levels in Canadian and European food, suggesting the high Canadian readings in breast milk are due to some other source.

Because they're in computers and furniture, PBDEs are probably found in large numbers of homes and offices.

But they are also present in many manufacturing companies and recycling centres that deal with high-technology waste. "It would have to be related to the use of PBDEs," Mr. Ben Rejeb said.

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