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"[Rowan's] been on this planet for 18 months, and he's loaded with a chemical I've never heard of," Holland, 37, said. "He had two to three times the level of flame retardants in his body that's been known to cause thyroid dysfunction in lab rats." The technology to test for these flame retardants -- known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) -- and other industrial chemicals is less than 10 years old. Environmentalists call it "body burden" testing, an allusion to the chemical "burden," or legacy of toxins, running through our bloodstream. Scientists refer to this testing as "biomonitoring." Most Americans...

SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - California will become the first U.S. state to try to measure how its residents are absorbing chemicals from common products under a "bio-monitoring" bill signed on Friday by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. State health officers will use blood, urine, tissue, hair and breast milk samples collected voluntarily from a cross-section of California, taking into account ethnic, age, income and geographic differences, to gauge levels of exposure. "There are literally thousands of chemicals being used in our everyday products in the United States in cleaning supplies, pesticides, cosmetics and more. It's important to know more about how those...

Is there a connection between toxic chemicals and high rates of breast cancer in the Bay Area? Do pesticides build up in the bodies of Salinas farmworkers? Do people living near oil refineries in Martinez or along freeways in San Jose absorb harmful levels of air pollution? California may be on its way to finding out. A bill that would set up the nation's first statewide program to measure exposure to toxic chemicals by testing thousands of volunteers has overcome industry opposition and reached the desk of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bill, SB 1379, by state Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland,...

SACRAMENTO - California has been offered $1.7 million in training, laboratory tests and technical support from the federal government to help measure levels of toxic chemicals in state residents. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's offer came in response to a request by U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, for a federal commitment to biomonitoring in California, the Breast Cancer Fund said Monday. The Oakland Tribune published a series of stories in March on the increasing amounts of manmade chemicals and environmental toxins showing up in humans. The paper spent $17,000 to test a Berkeley family and found...