EWG’s leading research on BPA, mercury in fish, and cell phone radiation were all listed as a few of the ways we are changing the game. Our consumer guides, easy to navigate databases, and widgets all enable Ken and the modest staff of 37 to give consumers the information they need to make the healthiest choices, and lawmakers the facts they need to make needed changes.

Ken’s well-known quote on what fuels his work:

I often tell people that at EWG we are swayed by facts, not emotion. And the facts really piss us off.

Here’s the full press release:

Embracing New Media Tools to Protect Public Health and the Environment Earns EWG Top Web Honor

Co-Founder and President Ken Cook Voted Huffington Post ’09 “Ultimate Green Game Changer”

Washington, D.C. — The Environmental Working Group (EWG) is proud to announce that president and co-founder Ken Cook has been voted The Huffington Post’s Ultimate Green Game Changer of 2009 for harnessing new media to reshape federal environmental policy and public awareness.

In September, the consistently top-rated blog Huffington Post named Cook as one of its top ten “Ultimate Green Game Changers.” Over the past two months, votes cast by the blog’s readers carried him to the top of that list, with an average rating of 8.3 out of ten. Cook responded:

On behalf of the Environmental Working Group’s staff and supporters, I offer sincere thanks to Arianna Huffington, the editors and staff at the Huffington Post.  To win based in part on our ability to harness new media and communications tools is invigorating and renews our commitment to fighting effectively for public health and the environment.  It’s an honor to be listed alongside these nine extremely accomplished, innovative colleagues in the environmental movement.

Other Green Game Changer nominees included Isabella Rosellini, Kitchen Gardens International’s Roger Doiron, the Story of Stuff’s Annie Leonard, 350.org’s Bill McKibben, Treehugger’s Graham Hill, Climate Counts’ Gary Hirshberg, David De Rothschild, Carrot Mob’s Brent Schulkin and Avoiding Mass Extinctions Engine’s Gavin Starks.

Since founding EWG in 1993, Cook has been leading an information-driven campaign to focus attention on facts and data that are commonly overlooked or unpublished. In nominating him, Huffington Post editors singled out EWG’s data-driven work on a comprehensive cell phone radiation database, mercury contamination in tuna, the dangers of BPA and EWG’s heavily searched farm subsidy database.

The farm subsidy database is a powerful tool for lawmakers and media that reveals the billions of taxpayer dollars funneled to the largest and most profitable agri-business operations. The Huffington Post pointed out that the New York Times refers to the database as a “must-read for farmers.”

More recently, EWG has provided consumers with information needed to make the healthiest choices for them and their families, including a widget for finding the radiation output of popular cell phone models and a guide to avoiding mercury in seafood. These are all part of the more than 1,000,000 pages of robust web content EWG maintains with a modest staff of 37 employees.

With the rollout of each new consumer guide or study, EWG’s online list of supporters grows, currently in the hundreds of thousands. Those on the list receive regular updates about EWG’s work and are active participants when asked step up and help out, whether calling and emailing policymakers or flooding industry with phone calls demanding change.

The Huffington Post called Cook the “Clark Kent of environmental activists” and highlighted one of his most widely publicized quotes: “I often tell people that at EWG we are swayed by facts, not emotion. And the facts really piss us off.”

Of the 268 chemicals, there were two the agency found in every sample — mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Considering the health concerns related to mercury and health issues linked to PCBs, these are pretty disturbing results. Even worse, almost half of the fish (48.8%) had concentrations of mercury ABOVE what the EPA considers safe for people to consume.

The results of the EPA’s study come nearly ten years after Environmental Working Group (EWG) released its own study titled “Mercury Falling,” which called attention to pollution from coal-burning power plants, the single largest source of mercury pollution and source of 22.5% of America’s electric power.

Renee Sharp, EWG Senior Scientist and Vice President for California, said the EPA’s study is further evidence of the need to become independent of coal and to face the realities of the extent of water contamination in the United States: “Many people who eat fish from these lakes or take their families to them on vacation do it under the presumption they’re pristine and healthy. This study shows that unfortunately, that’s not always the case; pollution from these plants seems to be everywhere.”

The EPA study was designed so that the samples, taken from 500 lakes and reservoirs across the lower 48 states, would be representative of all American lakes. Two types of fish were tested per site: predators such as bass and trout and bottom-dwellers such as catfish and bullhead.  The agency says its sample of 486 predator fish is representative of the situation in an estimated 76,559 lakes; the sample of 395 bottom-dwelling fish is representative of an estimated 46,190 lakes.

Contamination of the fish calls for concern over the safety of the water. The EPA estimates that inland lakes and reservoirs are the source of 70% of the country’s drinking water. These bodies support multi-billion-dollar fishing and tourist industries, not to mention habitats for a diversity of species – common and endangered alike.

Peter S. Silva, assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Water, said the new findings reinforce EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s “strong call” for protecting these bodies of water and the people they affect.

The “snapshot” of data from the study provides a starting point for measuring the success of efforts to clean up the nation’s fresh water bodies. The data also allows the EPA to focus on areas of particular concern for chemical pollution, particularly mercury and PCBs.

Once mercury makes its way into a body of water, it is easily converted into methylmercury, a powerful toxin that can harm brain and nervous system functioning in both children and adults and seriously impair the neurological health of developing fetuses. In a 2005 biomonitoring study, EWG found mercury in all persons tested – 10 newborns and 3 adults.

The EPA’s lake fish tissue study is available online. Also, read EPA’s advisories on fish consumption to be sure you are feeding yourself and your family fish that are free of neurotoxins and other chemical pollutants.

Travis Mitchell contributed to this piece.

It’s titled “Toxic Environmental Threats to Children’s Development: What We Know and What We Can Do.” The Saturday program will include presentations by several nationally prominent experts in environmental medicine, not exactly standard fare for psychiatrists and psychologists.

But increasingly it should be, says Dean Abby, director of continuing education at the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, who helped organize the course. In an interview with Environmental Working Group, he noted that science has advanced in ways that now make it possible to study the often-subtle effects of chemical and other exposures on our bodies and on children’s vulnerable bodies. It’s important to make connections between those exposures and the behavioral and emotional problems that get treated by mental health professionals, he says:

It’s the same thrust that has come in the last 25 years in developing a scientific understanding of the mind-body connection. It just made sense to try to push the envelope a little bit, since developmental issues concern us. We train school psychologists particularly, who work in an environment where they see all kinds of developmental threats and problems whose source is hard to pin down.

The course is co-sponsored by the Boston Institute for the Development of Infants and Parents (BIDIP) and the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society. It is open to the public for a fee about half of what professionals, who can earn credit toward continuing education requirements, must pay. Among those who have registered in advance are parents and day care professionals. Said Abby:

Anybody today who’s not looking at this stuff with a bigger and broader perspective is missing something critically important. It’s designed to force people who have concerns about these questions to codify their thinking.

The invited speakers are pediatrician Philip Landrigan, M.D. of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine; toxicologist Bernard Weiss, Ph.D. of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry; neurologist David Bellinger of Boston’s Children’s Hospital; Megan Sandel, M.D. National Medical Director of the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership in Boston; and Barbara Brenner, executive director of San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Action.

EWG, a leader in documenting the effects of toxics such as bisphenol-A — and in the fight to reform the federal government’s regulation of chemicals — wishes it could be there.

Now a ground-breaking study released in the journal Human Reproduction offers what its authors call “the first evidence that exposure to BPA in the workplace could have an adverse effect on male sexual dysfunction.”

BPA factory workers suffer sexual problems

The scientific team, underwritten by Kaiser Permanente’s Division of Research in Oakland, CA., spent five years studying 634 Chinese factory workers whose bodies had been severely contaminated with BPA.

Animal studies link BPA to extraordinary array of subtle but serious chronic health problems, including impairment of the ability to think and behave normally, reproductive and cardiovascular system damage, cancer, diabetes, asthma and obesity. Evidence of BPA’s impact on human health has been more elusive – which is why the Kaiser Permanente study is making headlines around the globe.

After a year of being bombarded with BPA, the Chinese workers reported disturbing sexual problems: four times as much erectile dysfunction and seven times as many ejaculation difficulties as a control group, the Kaiser team found.

Nearly all Americans are BPA-positive

Most people don’t experience BPA exposure nearly as intense as the factory workers. But nearly all Americans test positive for low-level BPA contamination, as evidenced by body burden testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Environmental Working Group and other academic and non-profit organizations.

As Kaiser research team leader De-Kun Li, MD, Ph.D., put it, the China workers study “raises the question: Is there a safe level for BPA exposure, and what is that level?”

AMA takes up BPA battle

Many scientists specializing in hormonal and reproductive systems say there’s no such thing as a “safe” dose of BPA, a powerful endocrine-disrupting chemical. Earlier this week, the American Medical Association Board of Delegates resolved to work with the federal government to minimize the public’s exposure to BPA and other endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The measure was proposed by the Endocrine Society, which, with 14,000 hormone researchers and medical specialists in more than 100 countries, recently warned that “even infinitesimally low levels of exposure [to endocrine-disrupting chemicals] –indeed, any level of exposure at all– may cause endocrine or reproductive abnormalities, particularly if exposure occurs during a critical developmental window. Surprisingly, low doses may even exert more potent effects than higher doses.”

“The AMA represents a very important constituency of physicians who have a lot of credibility and clout,” says Andrea Gore, Ph.D., a University of Texas-Austin researcher who co-authored the Endocrine Society statement. “If members of the AMA can now get behind the statement and actually affect regulations, then I think we can consider it a victory.”

It’s in the cans

Most of the BPA in Americans’ bodies is believed to come from leaching from BPA-based epoxy food can linings and polycarbonate baby and drink bottles, sippy cups and other food containers. Under pressure from EWG and other scientific and environmental health groups, the federal Food and Drug Administration is weighing proposals to ban the chemical in food packaging.

Because of FDA inaction, last October EWG president Ken Cook wrote major infant formula and canned food producers urging them to take voluntary measures to remove BPA from their can linings.

20 of 28 canned food brands contaminated

Laboratory tests commissioned by EWG in 2007 found BPA in 20 out of 28 brands of canned food and drink, including B&M, Bush’s Best, Campbell’s Condensed (soup), Campbell’s Chunky, Campbell’s SpaghettiOs, Chef Boyardee, Chicken of the Sea, Coca-Cola, Del Monte, Dole, Ensure, Green Giant, Kroger store brand, Libby’s, Nestle Carnation, Pepsi-Cola, Progresso, S&W, Slim-Fast, Swanson and Wolfgang Puck.

An EWG survey found that all four leading makers of liquid infant formula sold in North America used BPA to line their cans. These included Nestle (Good Start), Ross-Abbot (Similac and Isomil), Mead Johnson (Enfamil), and PBM (maker of store-brand formulas sold at Target, Kroger and dozens of other retailers).

Last week, Consumers Union, an advocacy organization, reported that its laboratory tests had found BPA in canned food packaged under the brand names Campbell’s Condensed, Progresso, Del Monte and Nestle.

Top environmental regulator, scientist act on BPA

The FDA’s plans are, as yet, unclear. But other top administration scientists and regulators are zeroing in on BPA. Lisa Jackson, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has identified BPA as a priority for regulatory action. And Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, has recently committed $30 million in federal stimulus funds to research the many unanswered questions about BPA.

We know this much: with every day that passes, the cases against BPA hardens, like the plastics it makes.

We’re also blogging on Huffington Post. Visit us there.

Photo credit: abarndweller

EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson has now delivered three speeches in less than two months calling for reform of the failed Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), each time singling out kids’ health as her driving force. That’s three more than the last two administrators combined, according to my quick dig:

…both EPA and industry must include special consideration for exposures and effects on groups with higher vulnerabilities – particularly children. As you know, children ingest chemicals at a higher ratio to their body weight than adults. They are more susceptible to long-term damage and developmental problems.

Jackson also cited EWG’s landmark cord blood study from 2005, which identified over 200 chemical pollutants in the blood of newborns. It was the first study of its kind in the U.S.:

The Environmental Working Group has provided some startling research showing that our kids are getting steady infusions of industrial chemicals before we even give them solid food. Now, we know some chemicals may be risk-free at the levels we are seeing. But as more and more chemicals are found in our bodies and the environment, the public is understandably anxious and confused.

Her entire speech before the American Public Health Association meeting in Philadelphia can be found here.

Administrator Jackson cited her own son’s struggle with asthma as an example of why it is so important to tackle the issue of industrial pollution — in the air we breathe, the water we drink and the consumer products we use every day:

Across the US, almost 1 in every 10 kids has asthma – making this a critical children’s health issue.

One of those children is my 12-year-old son Brian. Brian has fought with asthma his entire life. His first Christmas was spent in the hospital, unable to breathe. All his life we have had to be careful when it gets too hot outside, and the ozone levels rise, or when other environmental triggers are present. My family can’t take for granted that Brian’s going to be able to breathe easy. I still pop up at night when I hear him stirring, and expect to hear the cough.

Along with asthma, other serious health problems linked to chemical contamination are on the rise in this country, including diabetes, childhood brain cancer and attention deficit disorder.

For all those reasons, those of us in the environmental movement who have spent considerable resources and countless hours on research and advocacy fighting for reform of toxics regulation were heartened to learn last week that the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act could soon be introduced in both the House and Senate.

Poking around the kitchen of our new house, Lena and I discovered a flat piece of synthetic something-or-other under the oven’s lower burner. Our landlord proudly explained that it was a Betty Crocker non-stick oven liner, a great labor-saving device.

Well, I’m all for avoiding oven-scrubbing. And, being a scientist, I’m naturally curious about how things work, exactly, so I pulled out the liner, stuck a thermometer in the oven and turned on the self-cleaning cycle. In a matter of moments, the needle had shot up past 600 degrees, the thermometer’s upper limit. The oven probably got much hotter.

Meanwhile, I took a hard look at the oven liner. What would have happened to it at 700 degrees?

It gets hot because it’s an oven.

The label wasn’t informative, so I went online. “PTFE-Coated Fiberglass,” the ads said. “Safe up to 500 degrees.”

That was all I needed to know. I was sure that anything half an inch from the glowing red burner would get hotter than 500 degrees, even in regular roasting and baking.

I also knew, from studies conducted by my colleagues at Environmental Working Group and other scientists, that PTFE would begin to fume gases so toxic they could kill a bird in a matter of moments.

Lena and I don’t have a pet parakeet. All energy goes to keeping up with our 15-month-old, Wyeth. Like all parents, we do our best to shield him from anything that has a chance of harming him.

That includes the chemical PFTE, which stands for polytetrafluoroethylene, the basis for DuPont’s “Teflon” brand non-stick coating and a member of the perfluorochemicals (PFCs) family.

Stain, grease and water-resistant coatings persist in the body.

Limiting Wyeth’s contact with PFCs is challenging, because, in addition to Teflon, these chemicals are in Scotchgard, Goretex, Stainmaster and other stain, water and grease-resistant coatings applied to textiles, carpets, food wraps and many other consumer products. Since members of the PFC family are notoriously persistent and bioaccumulative, nearly all Americans surveyed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention test positive for traces of the PFC family.

EWG’s landmark study, Body Burden: The Pollution in Newborns, found several PFCs among 287 industrial chemicals and pollutants in the umbilical cord blood of 10 newborns.

Fertility problems linked to Teflon chemical family

Some research has linked elevated body levels of some PFCs to fertility problems in women and men. Other studies have associated PFCs with toxicity to various organs.

These studies need much more confirmation, but they are troubling nonetheless.

The U.S. government does not regulate human exposure to PFCs, though we at EWG think it should move toward that goal.

Voluntary industry action against some PFCs

Under pressure from EWG and EPA, companies have taken voluntary action against some PFCs that raise the most serious health concerns. In 2000, 3M agreed to phase out perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS.) Dupont and seven more large makers of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), have agreed to a 95 percent reduction in emissions by next year and virtual elimination by 2015.

Other PFCs are still in consumer products.

While we are encouraged that the chemical industry has voluntary moved to reduce and eliminate production of the most notorious molecules used to make non-stick coatings, we remain concerned about the new replacements.

Lena and I would rather put up with a few carpet and sofa stains – well, a lot of stains – than have Wyeth crawling around on stuff that will stay in his body for decades, to what effect, we don’t know.

Spots, yes. Fumes no.

The oven liner – it’s going back to the landlord. We’ll scrub the oven the way EWG’s new Greener School Cleaners report recommends — with a stiff brush and baking soda.

During the Bush administration, the FDA contended that traces of BPA leached into food and drink from packaging were safe, even for pregnant women, infants and young children.   Despite contradictory findings from the National Toxicology Program (NTP), which last year said that BPA might damage the brains, reproductive systems and behavior of fetuses, infants and children, the FDA has refused to restrict BPA use in food packaging, provoking protests from scientists and environmental and health advocates.

Since President Obama took office, the agency’s leadership has given mixed signals, on one hand promising a “fresh look” at BPA safety but suggesting, on the other, that further studies could delay decisive regulatory action.

FDA officials have indicated they would detail their plans for the BPA issue later this month.   Meanwhile, several developments are intensifying the spotlight on BPA — and putting FDA on the spot:

• Thirty-three university and independent experts on BPA and other chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system have written FDA commissioner Margaret Hamburg urging her not to postpone restrictions on BPA while agency scientists conduct a five-year, $10 million study of the chemical.
• The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) has awarded $30 million in federal stimulus funds to fill research gaps on BPA.
• Consumer Reports, published by the non-profit Consumers Union, has made public new tests of canned foods, finding that nearly all brands tested contained BPA that had migrated from the containers. Even foods labeled “organic” and packaged in “BPA-free” cans showed low levels of BPA contamination, Consumers Union said.

BPA leaching in canned goods

The Consumers Union project augments and amplifies 2007 tests by Environmental Working Group that found BPA in more than half of 97 cans of common canned goods, including  infant formula.  BPA, made from feedstock tracing back to the petrochemical benzene, is an integral ingredient in epoxy resin, used in industrial paints and coatings, including food and beverage can linings. The chemical is also essential to the manufacture of polycarbonate plastic, found in thousands of products, from computer and cell phone casings and hard hats to water jugs and, until recently, baby bottles and sports bottles.

BPA-based synthetics are notoriously unstable.  Studies documenting widespread BPA migration into the food supply have moved an increasing number of scientists and environmentalists to press for enforceable regulatory curbs.

“If you can demonstrate that a chemical is endocrine-active,” said R. Thomas Zoeller, Ph.D. an endocrine system specialist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and lead author of the 33-scientists’ letter to FDA chief Hamburg, “then I think you need to look very serious at allowing every man, woman and child in this country to come in contact with it, period.”

More funds for basic research

On a second track,  NIEHS director Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., who also heads the National Toxicology Program,  using stimulus money to  fund basic research into how BPA and other chemicals that act like hormones in the body may be causing subtle changes in vital systems and gene expression, including behavioral changes, obesity, diabetes, reproductive system cancers adn other disorders, asthma, cardiovascular diseases and gene-level changes that transcend generations.

“The kind of sophisticated research that is being sponsored by NIEHS is required for us to understand endocrine disruptors in a broader way, “ Zoeller said,  “not just BPA and not just estrogen.  There are tentacles of endocrine disruptors in the environment that are acting like weak drugs,  that are being exposed to everybody on a daily basis.”

Significantly, the NIEHS stimulus awards are going to a number of researchers who have been highly critical of the FDA. Among them: Frederick vom Saal, Ph.D., a biologist at the University of Missouri at Columbia whose research team is credited with producing the first hard evidence that low doses of BPA caused irreversible damage to the male reproductive system.

“Even if BPA were banned in all products immediately,” said Vom Saal, “there would still be billions of pounds of this product out in the environment. There is a need for research to identify in more detail what the hazards are, what the molecular mechanisms are, particularly looking at infants. We have very little information about how much BPA is actually present in infants.”

Lynn Goldman on board at FDA

To date, the FDA has not moved aggressively, as its critics had hoped.   Last August, EWG  asked Hamburg to replace Mitchell Cheeseman, Ph.D., the agency’s lead scientist for the BPA review, on grounds that he was reported to have consulted closely with chemical industry officials and that his team continued to rely heavily on just two chemical industry studies that found BPA exposure to be relatively benign.

A course correction may be in the works.  EWG has learned that Jesse Goodman, M.D., M.P.H., the FDA’s Science Advisor, has engaged Lynn Goldman, M.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, a pioneer in research on endocrine-disrupting chemicals and a leading voice for strong environmental health policy, to act as a part-time consultant on BPA and related issues.

Industry opposition expected

Any effort by FDA to restrict BPA exposure is sure to be fought by chemical makers, who reap an estimated $6 billion yearly in global sales of BPA, and food processors hoping to avoid the expenses of developing alternative packaging and retooling assembly lines.

Advocates for a ban on BPA in food packaging argue that it constitutes a small percentage of the BPA market – and in any case, public health should take priority over corporate bottom lines, as the federal Pure Food Act intended.

Vom Saal:  FDA legal threshold met

“If you have a thousand papers and they’re showing that this estrogenic chemical impacts every system you look at adversely,” says Vom Saal, “ how can you possibly say, we’re going to tell you it’s safe?  We cannot tell the American public this chemical is safe.”

That slightly pungent “clean” smell that you sometimes notice in a freshly scrubbed classroom, restroom — or your kitchen — may be telling you something a lot less appealing.

Environmental Working Group (EWG) studied a sampling of 21 cleaning products that are widely used in schools in California and elsewhere and came up with findings that should concern parents, teachers, custodians and school administrators.

EWG’s tests showed that as a group, these 21 products release into the air no fewer than 457 distinct chemicals, some of which are no doubt the source of that nice clean smell. The trouble is, six of those airborne substances are known to cause asthma and another 11 are known, probable or possible cancer-causers in humans.

As it happens, some of the products tested are also under the sink in millions of American homes. One of them, Comet Disinfectant Powder Cleaner, released 143 contaminants into the air – including formaldehyde, benzene, chloroform and four others that California has formally identified as causers of cancer or reproductive problems. None of Comet’s competitors was tested in this limited sampling.

EWG’s study, conducted by Senior Scientist Rebecca Sutton Ph.D., didn’t attempt to link the presence of these airborne contaminants to actual illnesses in children who attend school the 13 California districts that provided information about the cleaning supplies they use. Cause-and-effect relationships between environmental pollutants and human disorders are virtually impossible to prove. But it’s well known that asthma has been on the increase in American children for decades, as have several childhood cancers. No one knows for sure why we’re seeing these trends, but plenty of people are worried about them. As Sutton said:

“What this means is that parents are sending their children into classrooms that expose them to something else besides an education.”

It’s hardly a big leap to think that it’s a good idea to keep noxious chemicals out of the air wherever young and not-so-young children spend hours every day. Ironically, the students who stay after school to take part in extra-curricular activities – not to mention detention – probably get an extra dose of whatever is in the air, since custodians often do a lot of their work after classes let out.

Worries about indoor air pollution are not new, of course. The issue came to the fore a few decades ago, driven in part by efforts to reduce energy use by insulating and sealing once-drafty homes and other buildings. Schools are hardly exempt. A U.S. Department of Education survey in 2007 found that one in four public schools has inadequate ventilation and one in five has unsatisfactory indoor air. It’s a good bet that chemicals released by school cleaning supplies often foul the air.

Well, what to do?

EWG’s study also looked at “green certified” cleaning products to see if they were less likely to release potentially harmful contaminants. Independent organizations (Green Seal, EcoLogo) that rate products on health-based standards had given them high marks. Both in individual product tests and in simulated classroom cleaning situations comparing them with conventional cleaners, the “green certified” ones came off much better. Overall, conventional general purpose cleaners emitted nearly 5 times more air contaminants than green cleaners. But EWG’s testing showed that even some products certified green had undesirable emissions, indicating the certifying process isn’t airtight.

EWG is urging parents, government officials and school administrators to take these findings to heart. Eight states have already passed laws requiring or encouraging the use of green cleaners in schools.  EWG and its supporters are calling on the California legislature to follow suit. (A similar measure failed last year.)

Government officials can and should also require comprehensive labeling of cleaning products to identify all their ingredients. There’s no such requirement today. And governments should also require safety testing of chemicals in cleaning products. That rarely happens.

Consumers can also take action to clean safely at home. EWG’s tips can help.

Schools can act on their own to adopt green cleaning practices, of course, and a number have done that, in California and elsewhere. Some measures are cost-free:  for instance, schools should be cleaned only when students are out of the building.

Finally, manufacturers could voluntarily disclose all ingredients on their product labels and eliminate all that have known risks to health.

But we’re not holding our breath.

• An Australian-European research team reported in the September 2009 issue of Surgical Neurology that using a cell phone for a decade “approximately doubles the risk of being diagnosed with a brain tumor on the same (“ipsilateral”) side of the head as that preferred for cell phone use.”
• U.S. and South Korean scientists, evaluating data from 23 worldwide studies in the October 2009 Journal of Clinical Oncology, cited “evidence linking mobile phone use to an increased risk of brain tumors, especially among users of 10 or more years.”

“Academic studies with data over 10 years are consistently finding an increased risk of tumors, exactly as we have reported,” said Environmental Working Group Senior Scientist Olga Naidenko, Ph.D..

EWG study echoed

Naidenko, lead author of EWG’s September 2009 report, Cell Phone Radiation: Science Review on Cancer Risks and Children’s Health, says both new studies bolster EWG findings that over the long term, people should take steps to minimize exposure to cell phone emissions, especially their children’s use of the devices.

“Now that four-fifths of the American population are using cell phones,” Naidenko said, “the U.S. government should take a hard look at these findings and update its last-century standards.”

Industry studies found lower risks

Joel Moskowitz, Ph.D., director of the University of California-Berkeley Center for Family and Community Health, and an author of the U.S.-South Korean analysis, said he and his colleagues had observed a “very disconcerting” pattern: “a large discrepancy” between rigorously-designed studies, generally those conducted by financially independent research institutions and “low-quality” studies funded mostly by the cell phone industry.

Industry-financed studies, Moskowitz said, tended to conclude that cell phone use was harmless, or actually beneficial.  “It almost seems like they’ve stacked the deck to not find an effect” from cell phone radiation, Moskowitz told Environmental Working Group in an interview last week.

The industry-backed studies “do find some inflated risks in terms of long term users,” Moskowitz said,  “but they dismiss [these findings] as not significant.”

By contrast, he said, “the higher quality studies have produced “very systematic and consistent evidence that there are [health] effects, and they see stronger effects where you’d most expect to see them — with longer exposure and on the same side of the brain where the phone is used.”

Conflicts of interest questioned

Because of reservations about potential conflicts of interest, the team, led by researcher-physician Seung-Kwon Myung of the South Korean National Cancer Center, who conducted the initial research while a visiting scholar at U.C.-Berkeley, took the unusual step of analyzing studies according to financial backing.   “We feel the need to mention the funding sources for each research group,” the research paper noted, “because it is possible that these may have influenced the respective study designs and results.”

Scientists urge global cell phone regulation reviews

The Australian-European study, led by Vini Khurana, Ph.D., of the Canberra Hospital Department of Neurosurgery and the Australian National University, reviewed 11 international studies of epidemiological data concerning long-term cell phone users.  The scientists found significant associations between glioma, an often malignant brain tumor and acoustic neuroma, a usually benign tumor, but not another generally benign brain tumor called a meningioma.

Although more study should be done, the scientists said, enough is known about the dangers of cell phone radiation to warrant “reassessment by governments worldwide of cell phone and also mast radiation exposure standards and the usage and deployment of this technology.”   They added:

“If the epidemiologic data continue to be confirmed, then in the absence of appropriate
and timely intervention and given the increasing global dependence on cell phone technology especially among the young generation, it is likely that neurosurgeons will see increasing numbers of primary brain tumors, both benign and malignant.”

Cautions for youthful cell phone

Moskowitz agreed.  “You certainly don’t want to be exposing your adolescents, children or babies to unnecessary risks when there are simple things you can do to protect them,” he said.

He advocated encouraging young cell users to send text-messages, because holding a phone 10 inches from the head reduces radiation exposure by a factor of 400.  As well, he said, children and adults alike should not keep their phones in pants pockets or in belt holsters because the devices are emitting radiation whenever they’re switched on.

None of this is the last word on cell phone radiation.  Other studies are in the works, including a nine-year, multi-national research project under the aegis of the World Health Organization and a series of studies backed by the U.S. government’s National Toxicology Program.    Many more academic and government studies are underway.  There’s no guarantee that any of these efforts will provide definitive answers.

So in the meantime, consumers are smart to take sensible, practical precautions, for themselves, and especially for their children.

The Campaign’s tests also found 6 of 10 face paints contaminated with nickel, cobalt or chromium, known skin allergens.

Of course, the timing of this report wasn’t an accident. Three days from now, on Halloween, millions of small trick-or-treaters will roam their neighborhoods with painted faces. Those who wear face paints will be exposed to toxic substances as a result of lax federal safety standards for the cosmetics industry.

Not the trick they and their parents should expect.

The personal care and cosmetics industries have been allowed to load up their products with almost any chemical ingredient they wish without first testing for safety. As a result, every day, people of all ages are slathering on all sorts of stuff laced with hazardous materials.

You can read the entire study here: Pretty Scary: Heavy Metals in Face Paints