Building the Right to Know About Chemical Body Burden and Stopping the Chemical Industry’s Toxic Trespass
by Sharyle Patton, Commonwealth and Gary Cohen, Environmental Health Fund

 

Background

The Community Right to Know about the chemicals in our air, water and land has been instrumental in quantifying the toxic chemical addiction of the American industrial economy.  The law has also been a critical tool in educating and mobilizing community activists to push for reductions in chemical emissions from local facilities and the replacement of certain hazardous chemicals with safer alternatives. But in the fifteen years since the law was passed, there is a way that chemical releases have become “normalized” as a regrettable but acceptable prize of progress.

 

In order to achieve a fundamental detoxification of the American and global economy, it is necessary to take the right to know movement to the next level of education and activism. The main argument in this short paper is that expanding the current right to know legal and advocacy framework to include the right to know about toxic chemical body burdens is the most critical way to use the power of the environmental health and justice movement to stop the chemical industry’s toxic trespass and move a broad set of industrial sectors toward clean production methods.

 

The Chemical Industry’s Dark Secret

Every person alive today , whether  living in industrial centers or remote areas, carries a chemical body burden of over  300 chemicals, most of which did not exist before World War II.  The health effects of some of these chemicals are documented, but many others have undergone little or no testing.  How these chemicals might interact with each other to affect human health is rarely tested and poorly understood.   During pregnancy the chemical body burden of a mother can cross the placental barrier, triggering a cascade of deleterious events in the developing fetus, affecting the neurological, reproductive and immunological systems. Some of these chemicals may then take up residence in the cells of the fetus, such that if we were to test every infant born today, anywhere in the world, we would find a body burden of such industrial toxins as dioxins, PCBs, mercury, phthalates pesticides, and other dangerous substances.  After birth, the baby continues to be exposed to chemicals through their transfer from the mother in breastmilk and through exposures to chemicals in air, water, and  some chemically treated  or produced products.

 

Our body burdens reflect the fact that many toxic substances have the capability to travel far from their source of production or use, covering the globe with a patina of chemicals. In a sense, we all live in the same chemical neighborhood.  At the same time, individual body burdens also reflect the fact that many of us live in fenceline communities or in sacrifice areas where chemicals tend to congregate because of certain environmental factors or concentration of dangerous facilities.  The chemical body burden of each individual can be as unique as his or her fingerprint, documenting a history of exposure.  In the final analysis, our chemical body burden is ultimate proof of chemical trespass.

 

If these chemicals had bio-markers attached to their cell structure, we could understand that our bodies are chemically “branded” with the byproducts of Dow, DuPont, 3M, Occidental Chemical, Baxter International, Abbott Laboratories and host of other companies. Unfortunately, companies are not (yet) required to place biomarkers in their chemical compounds so that government and the public could trace their routes of exposure into our communities, our everyday products and our bodies.

Public Awareness

Public awareness about exposures to contaminants has resulted in changes in behavior and in public policy.  Barry Commoner’s “Operation Baby Teeth”, which analyzed the teeth of children across the US for strontium 90, proved that contamination from above ground nuclear tests was contaminating children.  This data provided momentum for the Partial Test Ban Treaty.  Public awareness about the carcinogenic effects of cigarette smoke led to changes in smoking.  Although there has been little implementation, approximately 60 countries have laws upholding the human right to a healthy and clean environment.

 

Internationally, several United Nations conventions support the human right to freedom from chemical contamination.  In the last year, the United Nations Human Rights Commission has recognized the right to a non-polluted environment as a basic human right.  The Convention on the Rights of a Child protect the child’s right to integrity of person and right to the highest possible standard of mental and physical health. By anyone’s definition of basic human rights, the fact that infants are starting life with a body burden of chemicals represents a gross violation of human rights and a violation of the sacredness of life itself.

 

In the last few years, government agencies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), California EPA and many European governments have begun to document chemical body burdens through the testing of blood, urine, breast milk.  Data from such studies are used to establish average levels of exposure, determine trends in chemical contamination, and to identify chemicals not previously thought to be capable of lodging in human tissue.  Data from such studies have not generally been used for political advocacy.  In general the public is more aware of chemicals found in the fish they consume or the data from toxic release inventories than they know about the chemicals found in their own bodies.  But there is a deep psychological significance in knowing that the tissues of one’s body are being used a chemical storage site.  A predominant response to the recent Moyers’ film, “Trade Secrets,” focused on the body burden test Moyers’ participated in, and many viewers requested information about the availability of such testing for themselves, their families or their communities.   

 

 

This is a crucial time to develop and hone messages on chemicals and body burden that can support environmental health campaigns, policy initiatives and overall work on the chemical industry. The Homeland Foundation’s investment in paid advertisement offers one avenue to test various messages and themes. It is important to build upon this work by testing body burden messages and see what works with male versus female audiences. Information about chemical trespass can be overwhelming and lead to a sense of hopelessness.  Nursing mothers especially may react by ceasing to breast feed their infants, a deeply unfortunate outcome given the enormous physical and psychological benefits of breastfeeding, which may in fact offset damage done in utero to the developing fetus.

 

In general, figuring out the right way to talk about body burden and providing people with avenues for action at the personal, community and policy levels are priorities for the advocacy community. It may be possible that a body burden strategy is the best way to bridge the gap between heavily impacted communities and the rest of the exposed population. This will require not only honed messages and a sophisticated strategy, but skillful means that can link the environmental justice message of “disproportionate impact” with more general concerns about children’s environmental health, cancer, asthma, endometriosis, infertility, Parkinson’s disease, learning disabilities, immune dysfunction and a host of other health outcomes linked to chemical exposures.

 

There are disadvantages to body burden studies.  Such studies are expensive and few laboratories have the ongoing capabilities to carry out testing.  Unless tests are requested for medical treatment or governmental survey, body burden testing is difficult to arrange other than as a medical research project. There is no established right to know about

one’s own toxic chemical profile. The results of testing may not always deliver adequate proof of chemical exposures, especially for short-lived chemicals.  There may be health insurance problems when individual results are known.  Given there is no known way of eliminating chemical body burdens other than breastfeeding, individuals may react with discouragement or fear to information about their personal contamination and counseling may be required. 

 

Body burden testing nevertheless has huge potential to support environmental health and justice campaigns.  Some examples are:

 

1.   BB studies can indicate trends and build constituencies for regulation. Case in point – polybrominated flame retardents are 10 fold higher in the San Francisco Bay Area than in Europe.  Given concern about chemicals in breast milk, the testing of breast milk and/or cord blood could help identify the sources of this flame retardant and support regulation for their elimination.  New research suggests computers off-gas flame redardents. A well crafted study that documented body burden related to high exposure to computers could help support the Clean Computer campaign’s efforts to get manufacturers to phase out these dangerous chemicals in computer manufacturing.

2.   BB studies can indicate the effectiveness of regulations.  Swedish studies indicate decreasing levels of dioxin in breast milk, a result of Swedish chemical policies.  Such information can help develop support for local and national regulations and for international treaties such as the POPs treaty (Stockholm Convention), which includes dioxin as a chemical for global action.

3.   In some cases, BB studies can be conducted to help fenceline communities establish proof of exposure.  Communities may want to test environmental media first and then proceed to BB testing if tests are positive for particular chemicals, to reduce testing costs. In Louisiana and other heavily exposed areas, conducting air sampling “bucket brigades” can document air emissions from a facility, while very targeted body burden testing could identify specific chemicals from a facility that is building up in neighbors’ bodies.

4.   BB tests may be conducted to parallel government agency testing in order to galvanize public support and promote chemical regulation campaigns.  One opportunity to do so may be the CDC plan to test and publish data regarding dioxin/furans and PCBs in late 2002 or early 2003.  CDC’s exposure report in 2001 identified high levels of phthalates in people’s bodies. Some of these phthalates are found in common beauty products. A “Safe Cosmetics” campaign that linked body burdens with demands on manufacturers to eliminate phthalates from their products could be a powerful strategy to “green” the cosmetics industry.

 5.  BB testing may link the concerns of environmental justice communities with those of other communities nationwide. The right to know about chemical BB as proof of chemical trespass may connect parallel environmental campaigns that have not had direct linkages before. Residents in  Lake Charles/Mossville, Louisiana – which has the highest concentration of PVC facilities anywhere in the country – have extremely high dioxin body burdens. People elsewhere in the country also have dioxin levels that are of great concern. Our bonds through chemical poisoning can be a new kind of solidarity with communities and constituencies that are particularly at risk.

 

Conclusion

One of the results of the Nuremburg Trials after World War II was a universal agreement that civilized nations should not engage in chemical experimentation on humans, even in times of war. Yet for the last sixty years, the chemical industry has engaged in a massive chemical experiment on the world’s human population and the entire web of life.

 

No one has ever given their consent for this experiment. Most people don’t even know it is happening. Our challenge is to tell this story in ways that average people can understand it and to provide people with tools to stop this chemical violence. As this information becomes more widespread, the chemical industry and its apologists will try to “normalize” this toxics trespass in the same way that Toxics Release Inventory information has become normalized. Our challenge is to raise this issue up as a deep violation of life and to center our movement as being concerned with fundamental rights.

Send comments on this paper to Sharyle Patton or Gary Cohen