Mothers Milk
Environmental Working Group
In the first nationwide tests for chemical fire retardants in the
breast milk of American women, the Environmental Working
Group (EWG) found unexpectedly high levels of these little-known
neurotoxic chemicals in every participant tested.
The average level of brominated-based fire retardants in the milk
of 20 first-time mothers was 75 times the average found in recent
European studies. Milk from two study participants contained
the highest levels of fire retardants ever reported in the United
States, and milk from several of the mothers in EWG’s study
had among the highest levels of these chemicals yet detected
worldwide.
These results confirm recently published findings from University
of Texas researchers, as well as other U.S. studies, that American
babies are exposed to far higher amounts of fire retardants than
babies in Europe, where some of these chemicals have already
been banned. In the United States, only California and Maine
have acted to restrict the use of these chemicals.
Like PCBs, their long-banned chemical relatives, brominated
fire retardants are persistent in the environment and
bioaccumulative, building up in people’s bodies over a lifetime.
Brominated fire retardants impair attention, learning, memory,
and behavior in laboratory animals at surprisingly low levels. The
most sensitive time for toxic effects is during periods of rapid
brain development. Fire retardants in breast milk are one measure
of the chemicals that a mother passes on not only to her nursing
infant, but more importantly, to the unborn fetus, which is most
vulnerable to impacts from neurotoxic chemicals.
Brominated fire retardants are in hundreds of everyday products,
including furniture, computers, TV sets and automobiles. Studies
worldwide have found them to be building up rapidly in people,
animals and the environment, where they persist for decades.
Research on animals shows that fetal exposure to minute doses of
brominated fire retardants at critical points in development can
cause deficits in sensory and motor skills, learning, memory and
hearing. Levels of particularly toxic and bioaccumulative types
of brominated fire retardants, known as polybrominated diphenyl
