WWF-UK: Individuals biomonitoring tour
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Chemicals and Health
Individual biomonitoring
Individuals biomonitoring tour
WWF visited 13 locations in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the summer of 2003 and took blood samples from 155 volunteers.
The Key Findings
See the full results for each person tested.
- Every person tested is contaminated by a cocktail of known highly toxic chemicals which
were banned from use in the UK during the 1970s and which continue to pose unknown
health risks. - We found 70 (90 per cent) of the 78 chemicals we looked for in the survey. The highest number of chemicals found in any one person was 49- nearly two thirds (63 per cent) of
the chemicals looked for. - Every person is contaminated by chemicals from each group: organochlorine pesticides,
PCBs and PBDEs (flame retardants). - The highest concentration of any chemical found was the DDT metabolite DDE. The use of DDT was banned in the UK more than 20
years ago. - This is the first survey to identify the widespread contamination of non-occupationally exposed people to the deca-BDE brominated flame retardant product. Worryingly, the highest levels found in our non-occupationally exposed volunteers were very similar to those observed in Sweden of people occupationally exposed to deca-BDE.
- PCB contamination is gradually decreasing from levels found in the UK 10 years ago,
which indicates that strong regulations work.
- Older people have higher levels of PCBs in their blood and women have lower levels of certain PCBs than men and the levels appear to reduce in relation to the number of children they carried and breast-fed. These differences seem to be related to women off-loading some of their chemical burden to their children- an alarming discovery we have looked at in more detail in our 'cord blood' study.
See the full results for each person tested.
