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Mo. Agency Sees Spike in Mercury Cases
N.J. official: Owners saw mercury warnings
Mercury contamination keeping people from homes
Lawmakers consider plan to
regulate mercury. They note concern over danger element poses to children
USA: September 9, 2002
Wednesday,
October 02, 2002
Study of Californians
Records Elevated Mercury Levels in Fish Consumers
Whose Hands Are Dirty?
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/25/opinion/25HERB. Thimerosal is a preservative that contains mercury and was used for many years as an additive in some routinely administered children's vaccines. Fears developed a few years ago that the additive might have been causing dangerously elevated levels of mercury in infants, resulting in neurological impairment and, in some cases, autism. Studies thus far have neither shown nor ruled out a link between the vaccines and neurological damage in children. But in the summer of 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service urged vaccine manufacturers to stop using thimerosal as quickly as possible. Thus, thimerosal, which was
developed by
Lyn Redwood, a nurse practitioner and the wife of a physician in suburban Atlanta, spoke to me last week about her 8-year-old son, Will. "I have a little boy who was completely normal at birth — walking, talking, smiling, meeting all of his developmental landmarks," she said. "Then, shortly after he turned 1 year old, he lost his ability to speak, to make eye contact. He started regressing and ultimately was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder, which falls into a spectrum of autism disorders." Ms. Redwood contends that three infant vaccines administered to her son when he was 2 months old exposed him to levels of mercury that far exceeded all safety guidelines. At this point we must interrupt our narrative and turn our attention to the federal government's effort to fight terrorism in the United States. Last week the Senate approved legislation to establish a Department of Homeland Security and it will soon be signed into law by the president. Buried in this massive bill, snuck into it in the dark of night by persons unknown (actually, it's fair to say by Republican persons unknown), was a provision that — incredibly — will protect Eli Lilly and a few other big pharmaceutical outfits from lawsuits by parents who believe their children were harmed by thimerosal. Now this has nothing to do with homeland security. Nothing. This is not a provision that will in any way protect us from the ferocious evil of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. So why is it there? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the major drug companies have become a gigantic collective cash machine for politicians, and that the vast majority of that cash goes to Republicans. Or maybe it's related to the fact that Mitch Daniels, the White House budget director, is a former Eli Lilly big shot. Or the very convenient fact that just last June President Bush appointed Eli Lilly's chairman, president and C.E.O., Sidney Taurel, to a coveted seat on the president's Homeland Security Advisory Council. There's a real bad smell here. Eli Lilly will benefit greatly as both class-action and individual lawsuits are derailed. But there are no fingerprints in sight. No one will own up to a legislative deed that is both cynical and shameful. An official spokesman for Eli Lilly, Edward Sagebiel, insists the company knew nothing about it, nothing at all. While the vote for the Homeland Security Department was overwhelming, even some Republicans were upset by the provision to benefit Lilly and the other drug companies. Senator John McCain of Arizona characterized the provision as "among the most inappropriate" in the homeland security legislation. He said: "This language will primarily benefit large brand-name pharmaceutical companies which produce additives to children's vaccines — with substantial benefit to one company in particular. It has no bearing whatsoever on domestic security." The politicians with their hands out and the fat cats with plenty of green to spread around have carried the day. Nothing is too serious to exploit, not even the defense of the homeland during a time of terror. Lyn Redwood put together an advocacy group, called Safe Minds, for parents struggling with the thimerosal issue. They're at a slight disadvantage, wielding a popgun against the nuclear-powered influence of an Eli Lilly.
Harmful effects of mercury debated Studies on toxic fish and links to heart disease contradict ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nov. 27 — Two studies have
yielded contradictory findings about the possible heart dangers of eating
mercury-laden fish. Plenty of research shows that mercury accumulated from fish
can harm the developing brain of a fetus or child, but far less is known about
how the toxic, widespread pollutant affects the heart. TWO STUDIES in Thursday’s New
England Journal of Medicine on the long-term effects of mercury exposure on the
hearts of middle-aged and elderly men had opposite findings. One found no clear
link between mercury levels in the body and the risk of developing heart
disease; the other found men who had suffered a heart attack had higher mercury
levels than similar men who had not.
Besides
nature's own emissions, humans release mercury as well, mostly via the air and
eventually into water where fish absorb particles.
The American Heart
association,
citing new research showing the omega-3 fatty acids in fish reduce the risk of
heart disease, last week reiterated its guidelines that people eat at least two
servings of fish per week, preferably fatty fish. One of the New England Journal
studies indicated that the mercury contamination in fish offsets the benefits of
a key fatty acid, DHA.
Researchers at Harvard School
of Public Health studied 470 men who had had heart surgery or a heart attack,
comparing each with a similar man without heart disease. Dr. Walter C. Willett,
a professor of epidemiology and nutrition, said mercury levels in the men’s
toenails corresponded well with the levels of fish they reported eating, but his
team found no association between mercury exposure and risk of heart disease.
“We can’t exclude the possibility that there’s some moderate risk,” Willett
said. Willett and Guallar said there could be several explanations for their
disparate results, from differences in the fish eaten in America and Europe to
how the patient and comparison groups were picked in each study. Mercury may outweigh health benefits of fish Contaminant can result in dangerous effects Nov. 27 — Wendy Moro wanted a healthy diet, so she began eating lots of fish. But then she started feeling severe fatigue. Eventually Dr. Jane Hightower, a San Francisco internist, diagnosed Moro as having excess mercury in her body. Hightower says she sees the problem in many of her health-conscious patients. “IN THE last 20 years, fish
has been pushed as good nutrition. But no one told us that some of these fish
can have contaminants,” says Hightower. Mercury is a natural element — it’s the
familiar liquid in thermometers. Because it is in coal, air pollution puts it
into the atmosphere and eventually it settles in the ocean where it builds up in
the flesh of fish, especially large fish.
There is no question that high doses of mercury can be extremely toxic, even
fatal. Just how much danger Americans face from the mercury they get by eating
fish remains a subject of debate among scientists. But many are concerned by a
number of potential health effects. “The symptoms that were really frightening
were these symptoms of muscle weakness and muscle pain and numbing.” says Moro.
The Not-So-Crackpot Autism Theory
By ARTHUR ALLEN
Neal Halsey's life
was dedicated to promoting vaccination. In June 1999, the Johns Hopkins
pediatrician and scholar had completed a decade of service on the influential
committees that decide which inoculations will be jabbed into the arms and
thighs and buttocks of eight million American children each year. At the urging
of Halsey and others, the number of vaccines mandated for children under 2 in
the 90's soared to 20, from 8. Kids were healthier for it, according to him.
These simple, safe injections against hepatitis B and germs like haemophilus
bacteria would help thousands grow up free of diseases like meningitis and liver
cancer.
Halsey's view, however, was not shared by a
small but vocal faction of parents who questioned whether all these shots did
more harm than good. While many of the childhood infections that vaccines were
designed to prevent -- among them diphtheria, mumps, chickenpox and polio --
seemed to be either antique or innocuous, serious chronic diseases like asthma,
juvenile diabetes and autism were on the rise. And on the Internet, especially,
a growing number of self-styled health activists blamed vaccines for these
increases.
Like all medical interventions, vaccines
sometimes cause adverse reactions. But unlike pills, vaccines come packaged with
high expectations, which make them particularly vulnerable to public criticism.
Vaccines don't cure people, and they are administered to healthy children, which
gives them few opportunities for good press. When they work, nothing happens.
When vaccinated children become ill, their parents are grief-stricken and often
enraged, even if vaccines aren't proved to be at fault. All of this puts
public-health advocates like Halsey on the defensive. Most attacks on vaccines,
they say, are based on hysteria, bad science and dubious politics.
Halsey, 57, has green eyes, a white beard that
makes him look like a ship's captain and an air of careful authority. As
chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases
from 1995 through June 1999, he often appeared in the media administering calm
reassurance. ''Many of the allegations against vaccines,'' Halsey said in one
interview, ''are based on unproven hypotheses and causal associations with
little evidence.''
And then suddenly in June 1999, during a visit
to the Food and Drug Administration, a squall appeared on the horizon of
Halsey's confidence. Halsey attended a meeting to discuss thimerosal, a
mercury-containing preservative that at the time was being used in several
vaccines -- including the hepatitis B shot that Halsey had fought so hard to
have administered to American babies. By the time the dust kicked up in that
meeting had settled, Halsey would be forced to reckon with the hypothesis that
thimerosal had damaged the brains of immunized infants and may have contributed
to the unexplained explosion in the number of cases of autism being diagnosed in
children. That Halsey was willing even to entertain this possibility enraged some of his fellow vaccinologists, who couldn't fathom how a doctor who had spent so much energy dismantling the arguments of people who attacked vaccines could now be changing sides. But to Halsey's mind, his actions were perfectly consistent: he was simply working from the data. And the numbers deeply troubled him. ''From the beginning, I saw thimerosal as something different,'' he says. ''It was the first strong evidence of a causal association with neurological impairment. I was very concerned.''
The job of adding up the amount of mercury in
vaccines and assessing its risk fell to Robert Ball, an F.D.A. scientist, and
two F.D.A. pediatricians, Leslie Ball, Robert's wife, and R. Douglas Pratt.
Thimerosal, which is 50 percent ethyl mercury by weight, had been used as a
vaccine preservative since the 1930's in the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis shot,
known as D.T.P., and it was later added to some vaccines for hepatitis B and
haemophilus bacteria, which by the early 1990's had become routine immunizations
for infants.
The F.D.A. team's conclusions were
frightening. Vaccines added under Halsey's watch had tripled the dose of mercury
that infants got in their first few months of life. As many as 30 million
American children may have been exposed to mercury in excess of Environmental
Protection Agency guidelines -- levels of mercury that, in theory, could have
killed enough brain cells to scramble thinking or hex behavior.
''My first reaction was simply disbelief,
which was the reaction of almost everybody involved in vaccines,'' Halsey says.
''In most vaccine containers, thimerosal is listed as a mercury derivative, a
hundredth of a percent. And what I believed, and what everybody else believed,
was that it was truly a trace, a biologically insignificant amount. My honest
belief is that if the labels had had the mercury content in micrograms, this
would have been uncovered years ago. But the fact is, no one did the
calculation.''
Making matters worse, the latest science on
mercury damage suggested that even small amounts of organic mercury could do
harm to the fetal brain. Some of the federal safety guidelines on mercury were
relaxed in the 90's, even as the amount of mercury that children received in
vaccines increased. The more Halsey learned about these mercury studies, the
more he worried.
''My first concern was that it would harm the
credibility of the immunization program,'' he says. ''But gradually it came home
to me that maybe there was some real risk to the children.'' Mercury was turning
out to be like lead, which had been studied extensively in the homes of the
Baltimore poor during Halsey's tenure at Hopkins. ''As they got more
sophisticated at testing for lead, the safe level marched down and down, and
they continued to find subtle neurological impairment,'' Halsey says. ''And
that's almost exactly what happened with mercury.''
Halsey was beginning to think that it would be
prudent to limit thimerosal-containing vaccines and urge pediatricians to use
thimerosal-free shots when possible. But his decision inflamed some of his
peers. After all, although the thimerosal data was worrisome to Halsey, the
available science offered no clear proof that the preservative posed a genuine
danger to children when given in parts per million. Moreover, it wasn't clear
that there were enough thimerosal-free vaccines available for diseases like
pertussis and hepatitis B. Should an unproven fear justify the cessation of a
procedure that protected children from proven dangers?
Halsey looked into the matter further and
found only complexity. In the medical literature, most cases of acute mercury
poisoning result from doses hundreds or thousands of times higher than what
infants received with thimerosal-laden vaccines. And although the thimerosal
levels in vaccines exceeded the E.P.A.'s guidelines for methyl mercury,
thimerosal contained ethyl mercury, a compound that behaves somewhat differently
in the body. The E.P.A. based its guidelines on a series of studies of 917
children born in 1987 in the Faeroe Islands, a windswept North Atlantic
archipelago, to women who ate methyl-mercury-tainted whale meat. The Faeroes
children, whose umbilical cord blood averaged four times the E.P.A.'s daily
''safe'' dose -- which was 0.1 micrograms per kilo -- exhibited small but
measurable neurological deficits seven years later. They had slower reaction
times and diminished attention spans and their word choice and memorization were
less keen than those of their classmates who had been exposed to less mercury,
according to Philippe Grandjean, a Danish researcher who leads the continuing
Faeroes study and teaches at Boston University.
During most of the 90's, many American
6-month-olds received a total of 187.5 micrograms of ethyl mercury through
vaccination. While the Faeroes children were exposed to mercury as developing
fetuses, and therefore were more vulnerable than the vaccinated American
infants, the American babies included about 60,000 each year who had already
been exposed to high mercury levels because their mothers had eaten a lot of
contaminated fish. What's more, hundreds of thousands of Rh-negative pregnant
women and their unborn Rh-positive babies received additional thimerosal each
year through injections designed to keep the mothers' immune systems from
attacking the fetuses.
The Faeroes studies, though they dealt with
methyl mercury, unnerved Halsey. Other researchers were troubled, too. George
Lucier, a toxicologist who led a 1998 White House review of mercury's dangers,
went so far as to say it was ''very likely'' that thimerosal had damaged some
children. There was precious little data to back up that precise suspicion --
and little to dismiss it -- because of the lack of toxicology research on ethyl
mercury.
On July 7, 1999, at Halsey's urging, the
American Academy of Pediatrics and the Public Health Service released a
statement urging vaccine manufacturers to remove thimerosal as quickly as
possible and advising pediatricians to postpone giving most newborns the birth
dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. The decision, which helped to create vaccine
shortages and led some babies to become infected with hepatitis B, outraged some
senior vaccine experts. Walter Orenstein, director of the National Immunization
Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, would charge that the
rush to remove thimerosal-containing vaccines was ''precipitous.'' Stanley
Plotkin, a renowned vaccine developer, said that it was fruitless to try to
soothe vaccination critics. ''If antivaccinationists did not have mercury, they
would have another issue,'' he said at one meeting. ''One cannot prevent them
from making hay regardless of whether the sun is shining or not.''
In Halsey's view, however, thimerosal wasn't
simply a bone for rabid vaccine opponents to gnaw on. In the middle of that
hectic summer he took a vacation in Maine. Canoeing on a lake, he came across
posters that advised fishermen to ''protect your children -- release your
catch.'' Halsey took that message to heart. If the government was warning people
against eating fish with mercury, he asked his colleagues, ''does it make sense
to allow it to be injected into infants?'' Although other vaccinologists
criticized Halsey, many of his colleagues rallied around him. ''Neal put kids
ahead of the vaccination program, which was gutsy,'' says Lynn Goldman, a former
E.P.A. official who has been on the Hopkins faculty since 1999 and worked with
Halsey on thimerosal. ''It would have been easier for him to line up on the
other side.''
Few scientists believe that the spike in
autism could have been caused solely by the thimerosal in vaccines, but in
October 2001, a vaccine-safety committee at the starchy Institute of Medicine
confirmed that it was ''biologically plausible'' -- though by no means proved --
that thimerosal could be related to neurodevelopmental delays in some children.
The committee recommended that thimerosal be removed from vaccines and called
for extensive research to determine any damage it had caused.
Halsey's fellow researchers were right about
one thing. Antivaccine advocates immediately seized upon the thimerosal theory,
and Halsey became something of an unwilling hero to the vaccine-safety advocates
with whom he had so often sparred. In fact, thousands of parents with autistic
children have responded to the Institute of Medicine report by filing lawsuits.
Michael Williams, who has won millions in toxic tort settlements from
pharmaceutical companies, was among the first lawyers to sue vaccine
manufacturers, on behalf of William Mead, a 4-year-old Portland, Ore., boy with
autism. Williams also filed a separate class-action lawsuit with William's
healthy older sister, Eleanor, as lead plaintiff, demanding that vaccine makers
also pay for studies to determine thimerosal's effects on millions of children
who might have lower I.Q.'s or other less obvious signs of mercury poisoning.
Past studies have shown that mercury's effects vary tremendously from person to
person, presumably because of genetic differences in the body's capacity to
protect delicate organs from it.
'In order to win the Eleanor lawsuit you need
to establish liability, but I don't think that is going to be that hard,''
Williams said in a recent chat in his Portland office. ''Organic mercury is a
very serious neurotoxin.'' Williams embodies the vaccine establishment's worst
fear about Halsey's course of action -- which is that taking the precautionary
step of eliminating thimerosal would be read as an admission of fault. ''The
agenda was set by the lawyers and the antivaccine activists,'' a source close to
a number of manufacturers complained to me. ''The scientists responded to it
scientifically, and that put them behind the eight ball right away. You had Neal
Halsey running around saying: 'We've got to do something! We've got to show
we're concerned!'''
Paul Offit, a vaccinologist at the Children's
Hospital of Philadelphia, takes it a step further. ''In some instances I think
full disclosure can be harmful,'' he says. ''Is it safe to say there is zero
risk with thimerosal, when it is remotely possible that one child would get
sick? Well, since we say that mercury is a neurotoxin, we have to do everything
we can to get rid of it. But I would argue that removing thimerosal didn't make
vaccines safer -- it only made them perceptibly safer.''
For Halsey, thimerosal injury is a possibility
that must be addressed -- but by science, not by the courts. The scientific
agenda, however, is already deeply politicized. From the start, the C.D.C.'s
efforts to examine the possibility of thimerosal damage became snarled in
acrimony. Critics of the vaccination system don't trust the C.D.C., which
monitors evidence of adverse reactions to vaccines through the Vaccine Safety
Datalink, a computerized set of 7.5 million medical records. Safe Minds, an
advocacy group of parents who believe that their autistic children were damaged
by thimerosal, has used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain documents
showing that as early as December 1999 the C.D.C. had reason to believe that
thimerosal caused developmental delays in some children. It was far from
conclusive evidence, but vaccine critics charged that the C.D.C. tried to play
it down. One of those critics was Dan Burton, a Republican congressman from
Indiana, who says he firmly believes that his grandson's autism is a result of
vaccines. ''I'm so ticked off about my grandson, and to think that the
public-health people have been circling the wagons to cover up the facts!''
Burton fumed at a June hearing. ''Why, it just makes me want to vomit!''
What comes through in an examination of the
documents uncovered by Safe Minds is less a coverup than an impression of
scientists anxiously watching over their shoulders as they work. One document,
for example, records comments made by Robert Brent, a Philadelphia pediatrician
who served as a consultant for the thimerosal study. ''The medical-legal
findings in this study, causal or not, are horrendous,'' Brent said. ''If an
allegation was made that a child's neurobehavioral findings were caused by
thimerosal-containing vaccines, you could readily find a junk scientist who
would support the claim with a reasonable degree of certainty. But you will not
find a scientist with any integrity who would say the reverse with the data that
is available. . . . So we are in a bad position from the standpoint of defending
any lawsuits if they were initiated.'' More research is in the works. The C.D.C. is setting up a study of neurodevelopmental effects based in part on the Faeroe Islands model. The N.I.H. is financing studies of thimerosal metabolism in animals and children. (An early University of Rochester study was reassuring: it indicated that children eliminate thimerosal much more quickly than expected.) Clearly, a lot is riding on this research, and pressure is being brought to bear on both sides. Can the vaccine authorities accept a positive answer? Can the vaccine opponents accept a negative one? ''No one wants to think that harm might have been done,'' Halsey says. ''I don't want to think harm might have been done.''
During much of the 20th-century, children
suffered from an ailment called pink disease, which caused peeling skin on the
extremities as well as regressive behavior. In 1948, a keen-eyed Cincinnati
pediatrician named Josef Warkany noticed a common risk factor in these children:
they had all been given teething powders containing calomel, a mercury
derivative. Only about 1 in 500 children whose parents gave them calomel got
pink disease -- suggesting that a constitutional vulnerability to mercury was
part of the clinical picture. Soon after the powders were taken off the market,
pink disease disappeared.
Autism is a global phenomenon that was first
reported in America in 1943, long before the potential dangers of thimerosal
vaccines were raised. Removing the preservative won't -- even in the best case
-- eliminate the illness. But scientists estimate that the current rate of
autism in its various forms might be as high as 1 in 500. If the autism trend
begins to recede now that thimerosal has been removed, it could certainly
suggest a cause. If it does decline, we might have Neal Halsey to thank. If it
doesn't, his colleagues in the vaccine establishment may blame him for stoking
an irrational protest from the public. Halsey, who still heads the Hopkins Institute for Vaccine Safety, which he was a founder of in 1997, is on the fence. ''I don't believe the evidence is convincing now that there has definitely been harm done by thimerosal,'' he says, absently stroking his balding head. But to keep the vaccine program on a steady keel, Halsey says, the public-health authorities simply must follow through with the studies and face the consequences without flinching. If there is damage, he says, ''there should be some kind of compensation, though I don't know how.'' He pauses, and sighs. ''I empathize with families of children with these disorders. How are you going to put dollar values on that?''
Does this study seem unethical to anyone else? If there was chance that this
study could damage these babies, what does that say about the people doing it?
Who in the world would take this kind of chance with their child knowingly?
Autism - Etiology:
Evidence conflicts on mercury, heart disease
link
http://www.elsevier.com/cdweb/views/article.htt?jnl=0300
Most vaccines free of 'toxic' preservative
ToxicologyVolume 185, Issue 1-2, pp. 23 - 33, 14 March, 2003 Placental
transfer of mercury in pregnant rats which
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Thimerosol in
Vaccines, May 2002 |
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Parents say Vaccine
Preservative Causes Autism Thanks to aggressive vaccine campaigns over the years we've seen a significant decrease in infectious, even deadly diseases like polio and smallpox. However, some parents believe a preservative in those vaccines is causing another problem -- autism. Now those parents are taking the issue to court. Four year old Alex Maher has come a long way since he was diagnosed with autism about three years ago. 'When he was 20-months old I noticed that he wasn't talking and things that he had said in the past had more or less faded.' Alex's mother, Becky says he has had to work on verbal, social and learning skills. Becky Maher belives Alex's autism was caused by the mercury-based preservative Thimerosol, found in children's vaccines. 'If you were to look at the symptoms of someone with mercury poisoning and the characteristics of an autistic child, they're practically identical.' So how can Becky explain why one of her children has autism and her older child does not? The literature she has read indicates that some children might be more susceptible or predisposed than others.Since the 1930's, vaccines like DTaP (Diptheria, Tetanus, Pertussis), MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella), and Hepatitis B contained thimerosol. Pediatrician Dr. Stephanie Dewar says, 'It's in there to prevent the growth of bacteria in those vaccines to keep kids safe.' Dr. Dewar says there is no direct scientific link between mercury and autism. However, three years ago, the Food and Drug Administration was called to review thimerosol and it's link to 'neurodevelopmental effects,' as stated in a 1997 report. Dr. Dewar says, 'Neurodevelopmental effects could mean anywhere from vision or hearing problems. Problems with walking, talking, sensation.'Just this year, the FDA officially banned thimerosol from vaccines. Now, the Mahers' are among 100 families from the area taking part in a class action lawsuit. Attorney Dave Betras is representing Northeastern Ohio's faction of the suit. 'The question becomes does the thimerosol fall within the national vaccine recovery act or is this something to go after the drug manufacturers directly?' Betras says the suit is
pending, until a link between thimerosol and autism is found.
'There's a lot of people in the country that are firmly convinced of it. Now
the question is can we prove that in a court of law is something we're still
gonna have to wait and see.' So it's a waiting game and while no
compensation can reverse autism, families like the Mahers' say at least
their voices will be heard. An important note ..if
your children are getting vaccines now, they no longer contain thimerosal.
So children's vaccines are safer now, more than ever before. |
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The Wall Street Journal
Re: The Truth About Thimerosal
December 5, 2002
I'm not sure which is more offensive, the gross mischaracterization of
Thimerosal toxicity you present, or the cavalier dismissal of families pursuing
compensation for their Thimerosal-damaged children as "frivolous".
I see only one fact you got right: Thimerosal was introduced in the 1930's as a
vaccine preservative. You fail to mention that autism was never described in
medical literature until roughly a decade after Thimerosal use in vaccines
began. Nor do you mention that all symptoms of autism are identical to symptoms
of heavy metal toxicity. Also missing is the fact that the rise in autism
diagnoses is in lockstep
with the rise in the number of thimerosal (49.6% ethyl mercury by weight)
vaccines added to the immunization schedule over the decades.
Thimerosal in vaccines did not "theoretically, slightly" exceed EPA mercury
guidelines. The EPA's safe mercury exposure level for adults (no guidelines
have ever been established for infants and toddlers) is
.1 mcg per kg body weight. I invite you to take a look at the amounts of
mercury my two non-theoretical, greatly over-exposed autistic children received
by adhering to the vaccine schedule. My son, at two months of age and weighing
14 lbs., was injected with an amount of mercury the EPA would consider safe for
a 1,100 lb. adult. Theoretical? Slight?
As for all those years of detailed research into the safety of vaccines you
refer to-could you please share them with me? I've been dredging through Pub
Med and the local medical library for years and those
Thimerosal safety studies have somehow eluded me. I've come across a few things
I'd be happy to share with you in return.
For example, here's just a small portion of the NIH's frightening Material
Safety Data Sheet for Thimerosal:
"Symtoms...Exposure may be fatal..fine tremors, loss of side
vision, speech, writing and gait, inability to stand or carry out voluntary
movements, irritability and bad temper leading to mania, stupor, coma, mental
retardation in children, anxiety, mental depression, insomnia, hallucinations,
and central nervous system effects".
In the case of skin contact, the NIH recommends the following:
"IMMEDIATELY flood affected skin with water while removing and
isolating all contaminated clothing." In hindsight, I wish I'd never allowed my
children within a 50-mile radius of Thimerosal. Yet it was directly injected
repeatedly into their tiny bodies where it did, in fact, wreak havoc. The
Thimerosal rider deserves the scandal surrounding it as does Thimerosal itself
and those who produced it.
Sincerely,
Rita Cave Shreffler
MO
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by Janet Raloff
In the spring of 2000, one of Jane M. Hightower's patients had been concerned
about hair loss, so the internist referred the woman to a specialist in her
building. That dermatologist probed the woman's medical history but could find
no explanation. That is, until she suddenly recalled a radio broadcast about
mercury poisoning in people who had been eating lots of fish from tainted lakes.
Their symptoms included hair loss.
Although the individual pieces of sushi are small, a meal of such bite-size
seafood morsels could deliver a substantial dose of mercury, depending on the
fish species selected and the waters from which they were pulled.
So, the dermatologist asked her patient if she ate much fish. Indeed, the woman
said, she loved it. The doctor quickly arranged for the woman to get a blood
test and then faxed the results back to Hightower. After reviewing the findings,
which suggested the patient's mercury concentrations were in fact somewhat
elevated, Hightower put the document atop the papers in her in-box.
Which is where it was still sitting, when a patient came in complaining, "My
house is poisoning me!"
Hightower listened as the woman described how she sometimes felt so enervated
that she could barely summon the will to get out of bed. Other times,
especially while traveling abroad for months on end, the woman felt fine.
Oh yes, one other thing: The patient's thinning hair had become such a problem
that the woman turned to Rogaine. She told Hightower she had been using this
antibalding drug for 2 years.
Glancing at the in-box and her other patient's mercury data, Hightower asked
whether her new patient ate much fish. "And she said, 'Yes, as a matter of
fact-nine times a week,'" Hightower recalls.
This "serendipitous" pairing of cases launched the doctor on a quest to
understand whether a taste for fish might be poisoning any of her other
patients.
For the next year, Hightower formally surveyed the fish-consumption patterns of
every person who came through her practice. Among those 720 people, 123 appeared
to be eating fairly high concentrations of fish.
She then convinced 113 of these fish eaters-several of whom also showed symptoms
indicative of possible mercury poisoning-to get tested for the metal. All but
seven had blood drawn for testing. The remainder, including several children,
submitted only their hair for testing.
Most of tested individuals exhibited elevated mercury concentrations despite
having little or no known exposure to mercury besides eating fish, report
Hightower and Dan Moore of the California Pacific Medical
Center, also in San Francisco, in an upcoming issue of Environmental Health
Perspectives. Among the patients who had blood tests, 89 percent had blood
concentrations exceeding 5 micrograms per liter ( m g/L). Indeed, 16 percent had
blood concentrations over 20 mg/L of blood-and 4 individuals surpassed 50 mg/L.
Because fetal exposure to mercury can later play out as IQ deficits, the
National Academy of Sciences in 2000 recommended that women of childbearing age
should try to keep mercury concentrations in their
blood to less than 5 mg/L(or hair concentrations to below 1 mg/L). They didn't
address other parts of the population.
Hightower advised all her patients with blood or hair values well above those
cutoffs to pare fish from their diets over the next few months. And though
follow-up blood tests showed that their bodies indeed began shedding mercury,
the drop was slow. In some cases, even 21 weeks later, the patients' mercury
concentrations remained elevated well above the NAS guideline figures.
Among adults, most symptoms abated as their blood concentrations dropped. Alas,
Hightower says, that didn't spare one child, who initially was screened with
nearly 15 times the NAS recommended ceiling concentrations for mercury.
Hightower notes that this boy had experienced a documented "mental decline"
during the 4 years he had regularly been eating not only canned tuna but also
fresh tuna and salmon steaks. Though his parents eventually purged fish from his
diet, the boy retains a significant neurological impairment, Hightower says.
Since her initial study ended, she has continued to evaluate fish consumption in
her patients. Another 60 or so of them turned out to be at risk for subtle
mercury poisoning. Perhaps most troubling, Hightower told Science News Online,
was that her patients-much like herself-had viewed fish as a healthy food. Study
after study had extolled the heart benefits of fish-rich diets. She asked: How
could her patients have been so seriously misled? Why weren't they aware that
this food can also serve as the vehicle for a potent poison?
In a Nov. 20 letter to President George Bush, she asked for actions to help
consumers avoid unnecessary exposure. For instance, she requested that the
government continue testing fish for mercury tainting and that the results-and
any necessary fish advisories about mercury-"be readily available where fish are
sold."
But they ate pricey fish. . .
That fish can serve as a dietary vehicle for bringing mercury to the dinner
table is hardly new. Mercury is the most commonly cited basis for state warnings
that locally caught fish might be dangerous to consumers' health.
American lobster is among the shellfish species that tends to carry mercury,
typically about 0.3 parts per million, according to FDA data. Though roughly
comparable to the mercury tainting of tuna steaks, it carries only about a third
as much as swordfish or shark. By contrast, its mercury load is generally about
twice the concentration typical of crab or canned tuna.
However, Hightower says, those advisories generally addressed only freshwater
species caught by noncommercial anglers from especially tainted waters. Her
patients were eating primarily marine fish. Moreover, these bankers, scientists,
physicians, business executives, investment brokers, and Internet entrepreneurs
weren't hauling in their own catch of the day. They either ordered it from the
counter of a local food retailer or from the menus of white-tablecloth
restaurants.
A message that federal health officials have failed to effectively communicate
to the public, she says, is that many large, predatory, and long-lived oceanic
species also accumulate plenty of heavy metals, including mercury. Many of
Hightower's patients noted that they had been selecting precisely these large,
predatory marine species because they tasted least fishy and their bones were
easy to remove.
Overall, elevated mercury readings among her patients tended to correlate most
strongly with any consumption of swordfish. However, many with high mercury
scores also ate plenty of tuna-especially steaks-and salmon.
The heart of the matter
In her readings on health effects of mercury, Hightower ran across a 1999
Italian study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. It described
finding highly elevated concentrations of mercury in heart-but not other
muscle-of patients who had died from heart failure related to a condition known
as idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy. Because none of the patients had known
elevated exposures to mercury, the data hinted that heart muscle might
selectively accumulate the metal, leading to its selective poisoning.
On November 28, the New England Journal of Medicine published two
epidemiological studies offering further support for a heart sensitivity to
methylmercury-the organic form of the metal found in fish.
In one international study probing cardiovascular risks, Eliseo Guallar of the
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions and his colleagues correlated risk of first
heart attack with toenail concentrations of mercury and concentrations of a fish
oil (docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA) in body fat. Their data came from 684 men who
had had a heart attack and another 724 who hadn't.
In this study, increasing concentrations of mercury in toenails-which serve as a
relatively long-term record of exposure-were "directly associated" with
increasing risk of heart attack, the study found, whereas DHA concentrations in
body fat appeared protective against heart attack. Guallar and his colleagues
say that their data suggest that mercury tainting of fish diminishes the
cardioprotective effect normally associated with heavy consumption of DHA and
oily fish.
The authors noted that they had not collected information on the sources of
mercury or DHA among their participants-nor data on fish intake. However, they
noted, the substantial DHA concentrations measured in some subpopulations of the
participants would suggest their mercury likely derived from consumption of
marine fish.
To date, health advisories against eating mercury-tainted fish have tended to
focus on pregnant women and children, with a goal of protecting the neurological
development in youngsters, Guallar's group
observes. "Our results raise the possibility that this advice should be extended
to the general adult population," the researchers say. They recommend that
people should not eschew fish, just judiciously choose species that are not
likely to be heavily contaminated.
According to a table of data that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration compiled
nearly 2 years ago, tilefish, swordfish, shark, and king mackerel lead the list
with mean mercury concentrations of between 0.7 and 1.4 parts per million (ppm).
Although the agency had fewer samples from a number of other popular marine
species, among them red snapper, moonfish, orange roughy, marine bass, and
marlin also tended to be fairly heavily tainted, typically averaging 0.4 to 0.6
ppm.
FDA reported somewhat lower-but still far from negligible-mercury tainting in
grouper, tuna, halibut, pollock, cod, whitefish, and herring. All were down in
the 0.2 to 0.15 ppm range. Canned tuna had less contamination than fresh or
frozen. Some shellfish also fall in that category, with lobster containing more
mercury than crab.
Seafood with the least mercury contamination includes tilapia, salmon, shrimp,
oysters, clams, sole, and flounder.
Bon appetit!
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Continuing Use of Mercury in Vaccines
Questioned
Consumer Groups Call On Drug Makers, Congress and the White House to Stop
Thimerosal Use-Especially in Infants and Pregnant Women
WASHINGTON, DC, Jan. 8 -/E-Wire/-- Parents and advocates are meeting today on
Capital Hill to ask the Nation's leaders and pharmaceutical companies to stop
using the mercury preservative thimerosal in all
vaccines, to inform Americans about vaccines with mercury, and to recall
existing thimerosal stocks from health care facilities. Mercury is a known
neurotoxin and has been linked to brain disorders including autism, Alzheimer's
and other chronic neurological dysfunction.
"Why are vaccine makers still using thimerosal and unnecessarily exposing
infants, pregnant women an unsuspecting Americans-including members of
Congress-to mercury?" asked Michael Bender, Director, Mercury Policy Project.
"Vaccines are supposed to help prevent health problems and not create them.
Continued use of mercury in medical products for any human use, where avoidable,
is simply irresponsible and not worth the risk."
US health and governmental officials seem to agree. In 1982, a Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) expert panel recommended that mercury be eliminated from
over-the-counter health products. In 1999, the FDA and the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP) urged manufacturers to remove thimerosal from childhood
vaccines. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine recommended that children and
pregnant women avoid thimerosal whenever possible.
While today, most but not all infant vaccines are mercury-free, the preservative
is still added to formulations for influenza (flu vaccines),diphtheria-tetanus,
tetanus, hepatitis B, pneumococcal and rabies. This year the Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) recommended for the first time that healthy children
receive influenza vaccine. No influenza vaccines are available that are
completely mercury-free, although two brands only contain trace amounts.
"During the past decade children were given many more vaccines containing
mercury, and the rate of autism skyrocketed. Mercury can cause the same symptoms
and abnormalities we see in autism. Like lead exposures, there is no "safe"
level for mercury," said Sallie Bernard, Director, SAFE MINDS. "The removal of
thimerosal from OTC products and most childhood vaccines shows this preservative
is an absolutely unnecessary ingredient. We urge that US policies be changed and
that vaccines manufacturers completely and unequivocally refrain from using this
deadly toxin without delay."
The US health science panel that extensively reviewed thimerosal was unable to
"either accept or reject a causal relationship" between autism and thimerosal,
and stated that additional studies were needed. According to the Institute of
Medicine's 2001 Immunization Safety Review Committee, "While the available
scientific data do not establish that these neurodevelopmental disorders are
caused by thimerosal, at the same time, they do not establish that these
neurodevelopmental disorders are not caused by thimerosal. The hypothesis that
exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines could be associated with
neuordevelopmental disorders was biologically plausible."
"Vaccine manufacturers have now been given protection from financial
liability for mercury-related vaccine injuries in the Homeland Security Act so
they don't have to worry about the harm it's caused to the brains of children
and adults," said Barbara Loe Fisher, Co-founder & President, National Vaccine
Information Center. "They may be off the hook financially but they are not off
the hook morally. They should do the right thing and make all vaccines
mercury-free.
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For Immediate Release
Continuing Use of Mercury in Vaccines Questioned
Consumer Groups Call On Drug Makers, Congress and the White House to Stop
Thimerosal Use-Especially in Infants and Pregnant Women
Washington, DC - January 8, 2003 - Parents and advocates are meeting today on
Capitol Hill to ask the Nation's leaders and pharmaceutical companies to stop
using the mercury preservative thimerosal in all vaccines, to inform Americans
about vaccines with mercury, and to recall existing thimerosal stocks from
health care facilities. Mercury is a known neurotoxin and has been linked to
brain disorders including autism, Alzheimer's and other chronic neurological
dysfunction.
"Why are vaccine makers still using thimerosal and unnecessarily exposing
infants, pregnant women and unsuspecting Americans-including members of
Congress-to mercury?," asked Michael Bender, Director, Mercury Policy Project.
"Vaccines are supposed to help prevent health problems and not create them.
Continued use of mercury in medical products for any human use, where avoidable,
is simply irresponsible and not worth the risk."
US health and governmental officials seem to agree. In 1982, a Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) expert panel recommended that mercury be eliminated from
over-the-counter health products. In 1999, the FDA and the American Academy of
Pediatrics (AAP) urged manufacturers to remove thimerosal from childhood
vaccines. In 2001, the Institute of Medicine recommended that children and
pregnant women avoid thimerosal whenever possible.
While today, most, but not all, infant vaccines are mercury-free. The
preservative is still added to formulations for influenza (flu vaccines),
diphtheria-tetanus, tetanus, hepatitis B, pneumococcal and rabies. This year
the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended for the first time that
healthy children receive influenza vaccine. No influenza vaccines are available
that are completely mercury-free, although two brands only contain trace
amounts.
"During the past decade children were given many more vaccines containing
mercury, and the rate of autism skyrocketed. Mercury can cause the same symptoms
and abnormalities we see in autism. Like lead exposures, there is no "safe"
level for mercury," said Sallie Bernard, Director, SAFE MINDS. "The removal of
thimerosal from OTC products and most childhood vaccines shows this preservative
is an absolutely unnecessary ingredient. We urge that US policies be changed and
that vaccines manufacturers completely and unequivocally refrain from using this
deadly toxin without delay."
The US health science panel that extensively reviewed thimerosal was unable to
"either accept or reject a causal relationship" between autism and thimerosal,
and stated that additional studies were needed. According to the Institute of
Medicine's 2001 Immunization Safety Review Committee, "While the available
scientific data do not establish that these neurodevelopmental disorders are
caused by thimerosal, at the same time, they do not establish that these
neurodevelopmental disorders are not caused by thimerosal. The hypothesis that
exposure to thimerosal-containing vaccines could be associated with
neuordevelopmental disorders was biologically plausible."
"Vaccine manufacturers have now been given protection from financial liability
for mercury-related vaccine injuries in the Homeland Security Act so they don't
have to worry about the harm it's caused to the brains of children and adults,"
said Barbara Loe Fisher, Co-founder & President, National Vaccine Information
Center. "They may be off the hook financially but they are not off the hook
morally. They should do the right thing and make all vaccines mercury-free.
To view the Center for Disease Controls list of influenza vaccines
containing mercury, see:
http://www.909shot.com/Issues/mercury.htm.
To view the manufacturers list of vaccines still containing mercury, see:
http://www.vaccinesafety.edu/thi-table.htm.
More information is available at -
aap.org/advocacy/archives/julvacc.htm
http://www.iom.edu/IOM/IOMHome.nsf/Pages/thimerosal+report
www.safeminds.org
www.mercurypolicy.org
www.909SHOT.com
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Poison at the end of the rainbow:
In a shantytown in Ecuador, mercury poisoning plagues children of miners
By William J. Cromie
Gazette Staff
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/01.30/01-mercury.html
All photos courtesy of S. Allen Counter
It sounds like an "Alice in Wonderland" tale. Children intoxicated by mercury
shake and grab themselves like Mad Hatters in a mountain settlement known as the
place that no one can find.
But, sadly, it's a true story. Mercury vapors from gold mining are causing brain
damage in the children of Nambija, an Indian word that means "the place that no
one can find." It's a shantytown in southern Ecuador that represents a piece of
a large and growing health problem.
"What's happening in Nambija is a local example of what's happening to children
of gold miners in indigenous communities all over the Andean and Amazon regions
of South America," says S. Allen Counter, an associate professor of neurology at
the Harvard Medical School. A humanitarian and an explorer as well as a doctor,
Counter describes the problem in the January issue of the Journal of
Occupational and Environmental Medicine. "We have laboratory evidence of what
mercury poisoning does to gold miners," he says, "but this is the first time we
have been able to show from tests in the field what is happening to their
children and wives."
The evidence he and his colleagues have found in the blood and brains of
children in Ecuador also bears on growing concerns in the United States. Some
hospitals and doctors' offices are replacing blood pressure gauges that contain
mercury, and at least one state, Connecticut, is phasing in a ban on mercury
thermometers.
Counter is also concerned about other uses of mercury in the United States and
Africa. Some immigrants to the United States from Caribbean countries, such as
Haiti, scatter mercury powder around their homes as part of religious rituals.
Unusually high levels of mercury in the urine of people living around Lake
Victoria in East Africa have been traced to skin lighteners that contain the
element. A small group of doctors in the United States worries that mercury,
used as a preservative in children's vaccines, may underlie the alarming
increase in cases of autism in this country. Gold poaching
In Nambija, and many other gold camps, men break up gold-containing rock with
dynamite, then carry the fragments in sacks to processing areas. On the way,
they surreptitiously drop off some of the ore for their wives to pick up. The
women mix the ore with quicksilver, or liquid mercury. Gold flecks combine with
the mercury and the amalgam can be easily separated from worthless soil and
rock.
It's a common sight to see Indian women, with children on their backs, or
together in a small hut, heating the silver-colored, gold-flecked amalgam balls
in metal pots. The heat vaporizes the mercury, leaving a pot of pure gold worth
about $100 to impoverished families. The process also leaves mercury vapors that
are inhaled by the children.
Some of the women are aware enough about the danger to cover their mouths with
shirts or cloths, but that's ineffective. It doesn't stop poisonous vapors from
passing into the lungs and from there into blood vessels. This blood carries
mercury to the brain, and can affect the brains of fetuses in the womb.
After overcoming the reluctance of children to get stuck by needles, Counter's
group took samples of their blood. When these samples where analyzed in a U.S.
laboratory, it was found that the Andean children had extravagantly high levels
of mercury.
In this country, 0.3 micrograms of mercury per liter of blood is average for the
general population, 10 micrograms is the level at which dental technicians,
dentists, and others who handle mercury (for tooth fillings) begin to worry.
Indian children in Nambija reach 26, 59, even 89 micrograms. Some of their
mercury intoxication may also come from eating fish from local rivers
contaminated by mercury spills from the mines.
Anomalies appear in the way information is processed by the brains of these
children. Nerve signals generated by outside sounds and sights move more slowly
than normal and sometimes disappear completely. Outward physical signs include
involuntary shaking, grabbing their heads and upper bodies, and hyperactivity.
Counter compares their activities to those of the Mad Hatter in "Alice in
Wonderland," a character based on hat makers in England who used mercury to give
their products shape.
Masking the problem
Counter is the Indiana Jones of neurology. He has studied acupuncture in China,
deafness in the Inuits of the Arctic, and poisoning among Indians in Ecuador who
use lead from old batteries to glaze roof tiles. Crossing swift rivers and
hiking uphill to Nambija, 6,000 feet into the mountains, is routine for him.
Gold bandits, armed soldiers, 12-year-old boys with automatic rifles, and
dynamite explosions in mining caves do not deter him, nor does the stance of
mining companies toward his "interfering" in their business. In addition to
everything else he does, Counter directs the Harvard Foundation for
Intercultural Studies, an institution dedicated to fostering greater
understanding and interaction between different cultures and races. So he is
used to people telling him to mind his own business.
At first, the women of Nambija denied that they were poaching and cooking gold
ore. It is, after all, illegal. But the practice is too widespread to hide. With
the help of Fernando Ortega, from the Universidad de San Francisco de Quito in
Ecuador, Counter explained how mercury was poisoning them. He distributed
medicine, nutritional supplements, and respirator masks to the women and
children, purchased with funds he raised from Harvard alumni and other
contributors. He has informed the government of Ecuador about the situation, and
insists that the gold can be separated from soil and rock particles without
mercury.
Counter intends to bring some of the most severely affected victims to
Children's Hospital in Boston. Michael Shannon, a Harvard Medical School
pediatrician, and Leo Buchanan of Harvard University Health Services have
volunteered to treat the children as they have those in Ecuador. Since the Sept.
11, 2001, terrorist attacks, however, visas for foreigners have been much harder
to obtain.
In addition to helping such children, Counter thinks the United States should
take a closer look at the use of mercury in religious rituals. In some
inner-city enclaves, people who have come here from various Caribbean nations
burn mercury powders that create vapors similar to those that come from burning
amalgam in Nambija. Counter would like to see an education program for these
people like the one he created for the gold mining families.
He also brings experts together to discuss other possible sources of mercury
poisoning. In one such meeting they talked about the fact that many vaccines
used to immunize children against diseases like whooping cough contain a
mercury-based preservative. Most vaccine makers no longer use the preservative,
and there is no proof that it is tied to recently documented increases in
autism. Nevertheless, lawsuits have been filed against drug companies by the
parents of autistic children.
"We should do further research to determine if a connection does exist," Counter
comments.
The principal of the school in Nambija was so pleased with Counter's efforts
that he offered him a piece of rock laced with gold. Counter looked up at the
excavations that have gouged and despoiled the mountain from which the gold
came, and thought of a woman whose five children have been poisoned by mercury -
children like his own two young daughters. "No thank you," he said politely.
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Study Finds Lower Level
of Old Toxins but New Trends Are Worrying
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
The broadest study yet of toxic chemicals that Americans absorb in their
bodies showed a continuing decline in the clearest threats, like lead,
pesticides and tobacco residues, but turned up numerous other findings that
federal scientists and other experts called troublesome yesterday.
The study tested blood and urine collected in 1999 and 2000 from more than
2,000 volunteers chosen as a representative slice of the American population.
It determined that almost 8 percent of the roughly 50 million American women
ages 16 to 49 had blood levels of mercury exceeding 5.8 parts per billion, the
precautionary standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Federal health officials said the danger level for mercury was 10 times that
high, a level not found in any of the women in the study. But they said the
finding justified a greater effort to find ways to cut women's exposure to
mercury, which at high levels can cause birth defects and other problems.
Much of the mercury exposure is likely to accumulate through eating fish. It
is the second such study by the federal Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, but in examining 116 chemicals it greatly expands on the first
report, published in 2001, which looked for only 27. Health researchers,
environmental campaigners and industry representatives hailed the report as a
vital tool in trying to discern, or rule out, health effects from chemicals in
the environment. "This allows us to begin connecting the dots," said Dr.
Patricia Butterfield, a researcher and professor of nursing at Montana State
University. "We can begin in the next generation of citizens to understand
these issues and make science-based decisions."
The study, the Second
National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, was posted at
www.cdc.gov/exposurereport yesterday. Because the study measured exposures
by age, sex and ethnic background, it could help public health officials focus
their priorities, officials and experts said. For example, it found that all
other population groups, including children, had blood levels of mercury well
below the government safety limit.
Future surveys will be
published every two years. Among other findings, the new study disclosed that
children had higher levels of residues from secondhand smoke, some pesticides
and plastics than adults, and that Mexican-Americans have three times the
levels of a DDT residue of other Americans.
The children's higher levels of residues could be a result of several factors,
federal scientists said. For one, children eat, drink and breathe three times
as much as adults pound for pound. More work should be done to understand the
DDT levels in Mexican Americans, scientists from the disease control agency
said. The pesticide has long been banned in the United States and since 1997
has been phased out in Mexico. The study did not differentiate between
native-born Americans of Mexican
descent and Mexican immigrants.
The study used new methods able to detect the slightest traces of chemicals in
the blood and urine. Tests were run to check for dozens of constituents or
breakdown products of pesticides and plastics as well as long-lived compounds
that are now largely banned but persist in the environment. Already, federal
officials said, the smaller 2001 survey has borne fruit. They cited a recent
investigation of a cluster of childhood leukemia cases in Fallon, Nev.
Investigators sifted for clues to any link to 132 chemicals, said Dr. James L.
Pirkle, the deputy director for science at the federal laboratories that
conducts the studies. A significant finding was that levels of tungsten, a
toxic metal, were higher locally than in the 2001 general overview of the
population. Now the researchers can try to determine whether tungsten levels
can be linked to the leukemia, he said. The new study echoed the 2001 study's
findings on DDT; tobacco residue, called cotinine; lead; and other toxic
compounds that have been measured for many years. All concentrations have
continued to drop in all age and ethnic groups, according to the new study.
Cotinine is a compound left behind after the body breaks down cigarette smoke
and is used as an indicator of exposure to a host of other cigarette
ingredients that can cause cancer and other diseases. The new study found that
children had more than double the level of cotinine found in nonsmoking
adults. The researchers said this was probably because most efforts to curtail
smoke exposure had occurred in workplaces and public spaces, not the home.
Environmental and chemical industry groups had different reactions to the
report yesterday. Environmental campaigners highlighted the need for more work
to reduce chemical releases into the environment and more research on risks.
Industry groups said the data showed the robustness of humans, whose longevity
and health have been steadily improving even with trace exposures like those
measured in the new research.
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For immediate release:
October 23, 2002