Women are taking environmental health into their own hands

[Guest guest]

GREEN Testing For Toxins

Women are taking environmental health into their own hands

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2005/06/08/gree.DTL>

- Dicum, Special to SF Gate

Wednesday, June 8, 2005

Nina Luttinger takes a hair sample from Becky . Because Luttinger

never eats fish, her own mercury level is very low. Photo by

Dicum, special to SFGate.com

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[foto ] Becky gets that vibrant sheen from a brand of hair dye

marketed as " natural " but that actually exposes her to a number of

potentially harmful chemicals. " I'm such a sucker! " she exclaimed when

she found out. Photo by Dicum, special to SFGate.com

Click to View

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[foto] Kim-Stuart ponders a sample of her hair before she sends it

to be tested for the presence of mercury. Because she eats fish

regularly she's at risk for elevated levels, which may in turn affect

her baby, due in July. Photo by Dicum, special to SFGate.com

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Becky is the kind of glamorous woman whose fiery red hair

announces her presence like an exclamation point. But her luxuriant

locks can also be a red flag, a warning of the toxins in her body.

Today, in her sunny Mission District apartment, she's letting her friend

Nina Luttinger snip wantonly at the back of her scalp -- definitely not

the kind of haircut is accustomed to. " Hey, that looks like a

lot! " says as Luttinger places the cuttings in a plastic bag.

Meanwhile, across town in her apartment overlooking Golden Gate Park,

Kim-Stuart, who is pregnant, is also chopping at her tresses. Both

women are sending their hair samples to a lab at the University of North

Carolina, where it will be tested for the presence of mercury. Like many

women, they have special concerns about chemicals in their bodies.

" Women have more body fat than men, so our bodies can store more

toxins, " says Tina Eshaghpour, program officer for the Women's

Foundation of California, a Bay Area organization that gives grants to

nonprofits working on women's issues in the state. The natural changes

women experience as part of their menstrual cycles and during pregnancy

also increase their susceptibility to toxins, she adds. " With each of

these hormonal fluctuations, different toxins keep getting re-released

into our bodies, so we're constantly getting re-exposed even to

chemicals that have persisted for many years or many decades in our

bodies. "

And this exposure is important not just for women themselves but also

for fetuses and breast-feeding children. " A woman's body is the first

environment for everybody, " says Serantis, program manager at

the San Francisco-based Breast Cancer Fund, one of many Bay Area

organizations looking closely at toxins in women's bodies.

Potentially toxic chemicals pervade our environment. They come to us in

our food and in the personal-care products we use. Toxins of special

concern to women include industrial pollutants such as mercury, but also

common ingredients in body-care products that many women use routinely.

In both cases, lax government oversight has left the responsibility for

reducing exposure in women's own hands.

Serantis says that few regulations exist about what can and cannot go in

body care products and that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which

oversees cosmetic safety, rarely enforces its own rules.

" A lot of the ingredients in personal-care products -- soap, shampoo,

hair dyes, nail polish, perfumes, etc. -- are known or probable

carcinogens, reproductive toxins or mutagens, " she continues, listing

substances that government agencies such as the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency have identified as health risks. " It's perfectly legal

for them to be used in products that we put on our bodies every day, day

after day. "

Similarly, most of the mercury coursing through our veins is a legally

permitted pollutant from coal-fired power plants. It is released into

the air when coal is burned, then falls into our waterways, where it is

taken up by the aquatic food chain and concentrated in large, tasty fish

such as swordfish and tuna.

Fish is the primary source of mercury in most peoples' bodies, which is

why Kim-Stuart, who is expecting her first child in July, decided to

have her hair tested. " I do try to avoid environmental toxins, " she

says. " We try to buy natural dish soap and use environmentally friendly

house-cleaning products. We eat organic and grass-fed beef. I've been

avoiding swordfish steaks for the past five or 10 years, but I eat a lot

of other fish. "

The hair-testing program <http://www.greenpeaceusa.org/mercury> is

coordinated by Greenpeace, which is offering volunteers the chance to

have their hair tested at cost. With the help of other groups such as

the Sierra Club, the program will collect 10,000 samples by the end of

the year as a way to draw attention to the Bush administration's

foot-dragging on regulating emissions from coal plants

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/03/30/BAGE2C\

0ITN1.DTL>.

The samples are provided to scientists at the University of North

Carolina, who do the testing and use the data in their studies on

mercury exposure.

" It's a way to point out that the environment is a health issue, too, "

says Casey Harrell, coordinator of Greenpeace's mercury-testing program.

" In many ways it's the next lead -- something that everyone knows is not

good for you, and that shouldn't be in our environment. "

Though Kim-Stuart hadn't been too concerned about mercury, she does

worry about unregulated chemicals in body-care products. " Even before I

was pregnant, I researched products, looking for the safer ones, " she

says. " I've been using more environmental shampoos and lotions and

soaps, trying to use the purest things available, for the last year or

two. "

Becky , who isn't planning on having a baby in the near future but

would like to someday, says she eats whatever she wants without really

thinking about it. She uses a range of body-care products but adds that

she prefers products marketed as " natural. " Even so, could be

unknowingly exposing herself to questionable chemicals.

For example, 's naturally red hair is helped along a bit by

Clairol's Natural Instincts Hair Color, a product the Breast Cancer

Fund's Serantis says is a deception. " Clairol Natural Instincts

has a nice little leaf on the box and a fresh-faced white woman with a

bright white shirt, and she looks crisp and clean and healthy and

natural, " she adds. " But it's one of the worst

<http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep/productinfo.php?prod_id=902053>.

There's no regulation on the use of the word healthy, on the use of the

word natural or anything to that effect. People have to do a lot of

their own research, because there's a marketing scheme to make things

seem safer than they really are. "

The box of Clairol Natural Instincts Serantis showed me listed

ingredients such as the cancer-causing chemicals

4-amino-2-hydroxytoluene, p-aminophenol and p-phenylenediamine, as well

as a number of other questionable substances.

" I'm such a sucker! " exclaims when I tell her about the

ingredients. " I just used it last night! "

Recent research

<http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/05/27/MNGNECVGQT1.DTL & sn=004 & \

sc=661>

has shown that phthalates

<http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/phthalates/phthalates.htm\

>,

chemicals routinely used in body-care products, could harm developing

fetuses and young children. (The effects on adult bodies are less clear

but may include male-fertility problems.) Beyond simple questions of

poisoning -- the sort of tests the cosmetic industry usually looks at --

exposure to small amounts of chemicals such as phthalates at just the

right moment in development can lead to consequences decades later.

Researchers point to the experience with DES

<http://www.cdc.gov/DES/consumers/about/index.html>, a synthetic

estrogen prescribed to millions of pregnant women before it was banned

in 1971. Horrifyingly, it turns out that the grown daughters of mothers

prescribed DES are up to 40 times more likely to develop certain

cancers, and often have complications in their own pregnancies. There is

even evidence <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4605847.stm> that a

third-generation effect may exist.

Though many consumers have long had a visceral aversion to ingredients

they can't pronounce (say " THA-lates " ), it is only recently that this

kind of conventional wisdom has coalesced into a political movement.

Last year, the European Union passed legislation requiring manufacturers

to reformulate body-care products without potentially harmful chemicals.

An effort to pass similar regulations in California stalled after

vigorous lobbying by cosmetic companies. A new bill, sponsored by state

Sen. Carole Migden, would require cosmetic companies to report the

presence of chemicals such as phthalates that are known to cause cancer

(they are often hidden under the rubric of fragrance).

Into the breach have stepped advocacy groups. The Washington, D.C.-based

Environmental Working Group has created an online database

<http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep/browse_products.php> that rates the

ingredients of various personal-care products. Similarly, the Breast

Cancer Fund's Campaign for Safe Cosmetics

<http://www.safecosmetics.org/companies/compact_with_america.cfm> asks

companies to pledge to adhere to the European Union rules in their

worldwide operations.

Some companies have been working to address these issues as well. Aveda,

for example, is working with Greenpeace's mercury-testing program; its

training salons have proved the perfect place to collect hair samples.

The company has also removed phthalates from all of its products,

including packaging, says Tkach, Aveda's executive director of

environmental sustainability. " We're trying to be a different kind of

company, " she says. " We have to really think ahead. "

Still, inertia in the sector is difficult to overcome. Even some of

Aveda's products score poorly in the Environmental Working Group's

database, and the company has yet to sign on to the safe-cosmetics

pledge. (Tkach says Aveda's parent company -- Estée Lauder, one of the

companies lobbying against the Migden bill -- won't let the company sign

the pledge.)

But you don't have to resort to dreadlocks and the makeup-free hippie

look to avoid questionable chemicals in cosmetics. Better choices

include companies such as Avalon, Aubrey Organics and more than a

hundred others <http://www.safecosmetics.org/companies/signers.cfm> that

have signed the Breast Cancer Fund's pledge and are making alternative

cosmetics widely available. And, as more women realize they need to

educate themselves and make their own decisions about the toxins

entering their bodies, these companies are poised to grow.

It took about two weeks for the mercury-testing results to come back

from North Carolina. Becky , who says she was surprised by how much

fish she eats when she filled out the questionnaire associated with the

hair-sample test, scored 0.5 parts per million. That's near the median

for samples in the Greenpeace study so far, and half the level the EPA

considers the safe upper limit for women of child-bearing age. Her

friend Nina Luttinger, who calls herself " 99 percent vegan

<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2005/05/11/gree.DT\

L> "

and never eats fish, scored less than one-tenth of 's level.

But one in five women of child-bearing age tested above the EPA limit,

and Kim-Stuart is one of them. In spite of her careful lifestyle,

Kim-Stuart, who eats fish at least once every week, including a marlin

steak she enjoyed not long before taking the test, scored 1.5 parts per

million -- 50 percent more than the EPA limit. This level may put her

child at risk for developmental problems.

" One in six pregnancies are coming to completion at risk for elevated

levels of mercury, " says Greenpeace's Casey Harrell. " We're talking more

than 600,000 children born a year with elevated risk. That's not to say

that each one of them will be impacted, but for us as a society, it is

detrimental. It costs an estimated $8 billion in lost productivity each

year due to lower IQs.

<http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/members/2005/7743/7743.pdf> "

" I'm not somebody who tends to worry, " says Kim-Stuart. " I feel I've

done as much as I can, reasonably speaking, without being completely

anxiety ridden about the way I live. I've taken a number of precautions,

I've eaten well and my lifestyle is generally pretty healthy, so I'm not

that concerned. " Still, knowing she has scored above the recommended

maximum does make Kim-Stuart more determined to watch what she is

eating. (The half-life of mercury from fish in the human body is two to

three months, which means that reducing consumption can reduce levels

quickly.)

" I guess I eat too much tuna sushi, " she concludes. " It totally sucks,

but I'll eat less going forward. I've downloaded the numbers for each

type of fish from Gotmercury.org <http://gotmercury.org>, and I have it

in my Blackberry so I can reference it easily. "

Both Kim-Stuart and have made the effort to find out about the

chemicals in their lives and have made changes accordingly. They're

reducing their exposure without waiting for companies or the government

to protect them, and taking charge like that is the most important thing

a woman can do to protect herself.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dicum , author of Window Seat:

Reading the Landscape from the Air <http://www.windowseat.info/>, writes

about the natural world from San Francisco. A forester by training,

has worked at the front lines of some of the world's most urgent

environmental crises. For more of his work, see www.dicum.com/list

<http://www.dicum.com/list>

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2005/06/08/gree.DTL

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