Do we need toxic chemical flame retardants in plastic consumer products?

by Maryann Donovan, PhD, MPH, Scientific Director, Center for Environmental Oncology of UPCI

History:

In 1976, the biophysical chemist Dr. Arlene Blum, then a researcher at the University of California Berkeley in the laboratory of Dr. Bruce Ames, showed that brominated and chlorinated Tris damaged DNA. In addition, brominated tris was found to leach from pajamas into children’s bodies. In 1977, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) removed Tris from childrens’ sleepwear. Blum and Ames’ work contributed to these chemicals being removed from children’s sleepwear.

About the same time, California enacted a technical standard requiring a mandatory flammability for foam used in residential upholstered furniture. Enacted in October 1975 (the current version is dated March 2000), this standard required that polyurethane foam in upholstered furniture—no matter where it is made—resist a 12 second exposure to an open flame. Some manufacturers followed the California standard for furniture sold in the rest of the country.

Returning to her research on fire retardants in 2006, Blum was surprised to find that the same chlorinated Tris that she had determined to be mutagenic in the 70’s, was being used in polyurethane foam inside furniture sold in California. Currently, open flame standards for pillows, comforters and mattress pads are pending in the state. The U.S. CPSC, following California’s lead, is also moving forward to set national flammability standards for furniture. And most troubling, an international commission that sets standards for consumer electronic products is considering open flame or candle standards for plastic enclosures used in consumer electronics even though there is no fire safety rationale or consideration of health or environmental impacts.

What is the Risk of Fire Death?

It turns out that fire statistics are not very accurate. The US Fire Administration website has launched a campaign to reduce cigarette-related fire deaths. They indicate that every year, about 1,000 people [although estimates range from 560 to 1,000/year] die in smoking-related home fires that occur when smoldering cigarettes or ashes ignite furniture or bedding. Read Press Release. There is no evidence that burning of consumer product plastic housing, like plastic components of computers or telephones, contributes to fire-related deaths. Although 560-1,000 cigarette-related fire deaths are unacceptable, consider that in 2007 the American Cancer Society estimated that nearly 600,000 men and women will die of cancer. In the majority of cases, the environment, including cigarette smoking and exposure to other environmental mutagens and carcinogens, is acknowledged by the National Cancer Institute to play a role. Yet, little effort is underway to examine the role of persistent flame retardants and other toxic chemicals in contributing to cancer risk.

Are Persistent, Toxic Fire Retardants really the answer?

US Fire Administrator Greg Cade notes that, “Most smoking-related home fires happen on beds, furniture, or in trash when smokers do not put cigarettes all the way out, toss hot ashes in the trash or fall asleep while smoking. What’s important to remember is that smoking home fires can easily be prevented. It just takes a few seconds to light up—and a few seconds to make sure that cigarette is really out.”

In addition, there is more good news. After decades of opposition from the cigarette industry, cigarettes that extinguish themselves within minutes are now mandatory in New York State, and laws have been passed requiring them in 21 other states. Self-extinguishing cigarettes are likely to become universal in the United States in the near future, and should greatly reduce the risk of furniture fires—and the need for chemical treatments. Engineering solutions that reduce the time that cigarettes and candles will burn are both effective and less toxic than adding chemical fire retardants to consumer products.

New proposed flammability requirements for bed coverings and electronic enclosures have not been shown to significantly impact fire safety. In addition, increased use of potentially toxic fire retardant chemicals in homes will undoubtedly also increase the amount of those toxic substances in our children and pets. To meet the standard, manufacturers may continue to treat furniture with chemicals, as this approach is both effective and inexpensive.

The brominated fire retardants (BFRs) and chlorinated fire retardants (CFRs), which could be used to meet proposed flammability requirements in electronic enclosures, have been shown to cause a variety of serious health problems in experimental animals including: permanent brain damage, abnormal development of sex organs, and defects in sperm. Many of these chemicals (and their combustion by-products) have also been shown to damage DNA (mutagenic), cause cancer (carcinogenic), and act like the hormone estrogen (endocrine disruptors). Continued and increased use of these chemicals will threaten public health and the environment.

A number of BFRs and CFRs have already been restricted because of their persistence in the environment and/or their toxic health effects. Many of these chemicals accumulate in the environment, moving up the food chain from smaller to larger animals. For example, polycholorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemicals that were previously used as chlorinated flame-retardants, were banned in 1977. But today, more than thirty years later, very high concentrations of these compounds can still be found in our lakes and rivers and in the bodies of many creatures, including dead killer whales washed ashore in British Columbia. In the Arctic regions, the toxic chemicals used in flame retardants on the continent are also threatening polar bears, according to Canada’s National Water Institute. “These toxic chemicals…accumulate in the fatty tissue of animals and become more concentrated in the top predators of food chains as bigger animals eat smaller contaminated ones. Scientists are unsure of exactly what effects these… compounds have in polar bears. But, similar industrial chemicals have been shown to weaken immune systems, alter bone structure, disrupt sex hormones, and possibly cause hermaphroditism in bears. Some scientists also believe that many cubs are contaminated by their mothers’ milk and die.” [2]

Although the chemical industry insists that the chemicals they use are safe, when studied in animals, most chemicals in this family have been found to cause health problems including cancer, sterility, thyroid disorders, endocrine disruption, developmental impairment or birth defects, even at very low doses. Importantly, as is the case for 90% of the chemicals that are widely used in commerce, most available fire retardant chemicals lack adequate studies of their potential toxicity to human health and the environment.

Studies of contaminants found in Americans being conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have confirmed that persistent fat-seeking chemicals, similar to those that are used as fire retardants, eventually end up in people. Studies of the U.S. Geological Survey have found these same materials in US waterways. The United States has much higher levels of fire retardant chemicals in dust, food, and body fluids compared with Europe, where these chemicals are less widely used in consumer products [3]. In fact, a number of studies in the US, including a 2003 study of women from Texas who were breast feeding, have shown that the levels of PBDE, a brominated fire retardant that were measured are 10-100 times higher than the human tissue levels measured in Europe. [4]

Before adopting policies that will introduce hundreds of millions of pounds of fire retardant chemicals and materials into furniture, bedding, and electronic plastics—and exposing children and pregnant women to the associated health risks and our environment to higher levels of toxins—it is important to clearly define the actual magnitude of the fire-death problem, the effectiveness of the possible solutions, and to consider non-chemical alternatives such as self-extinguishing cigarettes, candles that self extinguish, and tighter woven fire-resistant fabrics, as less toxic and effective approaches to risk reduction.

References

1. deBoer J, deBoer K, Boon JP. In The Handbook of Environmental Chemicstr, (vol 3), Part K, New Types of Persistent Halogenated Compounds; Paasivirta J, Ed.; Springer-Verlag: Berlin, 2000; pp 61-95.
2. The National Academies, Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering and Medicine, “The Science Behind Today’s News,” Website
3. Zota AR, Rudel RA, Morello-Frosch RA, Camann DE, Brody JG. 2007. Silent Spring Institute, Newton, MA, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX.

   Abstract 820, Regional variation in levels of indoor polybrominated diphenyl ethers may reflect differences in fire safety regulations for consumer products. 17th Annual Conference of the International Society of Exposure Analysis, Research Triangle Park, NC.

   —California is the only state with a furniture flammability requirement. California dust measurements show much higher levels of fire retardant chemicals than the other states in the U.S.

4. Schecter A, Pavuk M, Papke O, Ryan JJ, Birnbaum L, Rosen R. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in U.S. Mothers’ Mil. Environmental Health Perspectives 111(14):1723-1729, 2003.

Watch the recent CBS Evening News segment about fire retardant chemicals in consumer products and a segment that discusses a possible ban on fire retardants in some states.