Crazy Chemicals Found In Butter
In yet another installment of the You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me files, fire retardant chemcials were found in nine of ten samples of butter tested in Dallas grocery stores.
You know, people sometimes shake their heads and laugh at me when I get off on a rant about the amount of chemical pollutants in our air, water, and food supply. To them I say, FIRE RETARDANT CHEMICALS, IN FREAKIN’ BUTTER!
The chemicals in question are known as PBDEs or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and are used as a fire retardant in foam, fabric, and plastic. In addition, the researchers in this study also measured levels of HBCDs, another class of fire retardant chemical.
Health Dangers Of PBDEs
Of course, gobbling down chemicals designed to make foam less likely to burst into flames isn’t so fantastic for the human body. Studies suggest that exposure to these PBDEs are linked to fun stuff like decreased thyroid function, decreased sperm count, and disruptions to the endocrine system (that’s your hormones).
We know even less about the effects of the HBCD class of chemicals, but studies on rats suggest neurotoxicity, cancer, and more hormonal disruptions. Hurray!
What’s even worse, both of these chemicals have been positively identified in humans. Specifically, breast milk, blood, and fat (a lots of toxins seem to end up getting lodged in your fat and stuck there).
The Study
So this stuff is out there, in a big way, and is causing people all kinds of problems. From the data in the study, these chemicals seem to be concentrated mostly in eggs and dairy, butter being the big heavy hitter, followed by meat, fish, and then vegetables.
The methods used in this study were fairly straightforward. The researchers went to five different grocery stores on two different occasion, each time buying a sample of 31 different types of food. That gave them ten samples each of 31 varying food choices, which they then tested for the levels of the chemicals mentioned earlier.
What’s really disturbing to me about this research is, that even though PBDEs aren’t being used much any longer (due to health concerns), there are still very high levels of this stuff persisting in the environment. Sure, the levels may be lowering, but the lesson to be learned here is that contaminents, once in the environment, tend to stick around longer than you might like to think.
And, as a bonus, more and more of the HBCD type of chemical is showing up as manufacturers switch over to that class of flame retardant since they can’t use PBDEs. So we seem to be trading off one toxic pollutant for another.
Unfortunately, the paper doesn’t identify brand names, so there’s no way to tell if, say, organic food has lower levels of these contaminents or not. It’s hard to guess. One possible source of the contaminents mentioned by the authors is the wrappers of the various foods, but because these chemicals are floating around all over the place, it’s hard to say.
My best guess is, organic is probably safer, but avoid plastic wraps and foam containers if possible. Some stores will still wrap up meat products in old-school waxed paper. Definitely avoid heating things up in the microwave in plastic or foam containers… sort of like what I advise doing to avoid BPA (another horrible, horrible chemical added to plastic and used in canned food as well).
In the end, though, we are somewhat dependant on the government to regulate and monitor this sort of activity, which means all we as individuals can do is hold our leadership responsible for actually following through with protecting the public.
Other than that, follow the advise I mentioned earlier about avoiding the stuff as much as possible, and keep your exposure to other chemicals as low as possible by sticking to organic whole foods, filtered water, and the like. You may not be able to avoid everything, but the less you’re exposed to, the better. Keep up your intake of detoxifying foods like cruciferous vegetables and supplement with antioxidants to boost your body’s ability to deal with the toxins you can’t avoid.
Stay healthy!
Original article: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action;jsessionid=BAEBDC758FF379DB96950C569B49793C?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.0901345