Seven formulations of pbdes became the first chemicals to be examined after they were appraised under “red flag” safety criteria, which included scientific research, industrial production volumes, environmental and animal contamination levels, and international bans. Remarkably, pbdes raised concerns in every category. Finally, decades after these chemicals were first used in consumer goods, the government formally began investigating how safe they actually are.
Government scientists made their results known when they recommended the government move to restrict the use of two pbde mixtures, largely used in polyurethane foams and rigid plastics in consumer appliances. And they suggested more research be done on the third mixture, known as deca-bde, just as production of deca-bde is being ramped up around the world in response to the bans against penta-bde and octa-bde.
Even so, in the face of a stiff industry lobby, no one is sure when, or if, Environment Minister Stéphane Dion will move to implement the advice of his own scientists and ban the penta-bde and octa-bde formulations from the market, let alone sharply limit the use of deca-bde.
Axmith and the Canadian Plastics Industry Association along with the Washington, DC-based lobby group Bromine Science and Environment Forum are leading the opposition to any embargo on deca-bde. Both are challenging Ottawa on the grounds that Canadian researchers used faulty methodology in their research.
In Axmith’s view, the seven pbde compounds reviewed by the government should have been examined separately. “In order for Environment Canada and Health Canada to get through screening 23,000 chemicals, they’ve chosen to use the approach of analyzing families of compounds,” she says. “But you can’t put them all in the same basket.” The Bromine Forum goes further, claiming Canadian scientists should never have screened deca-bde for safety,even on a precautionary basis. “They made a mistake,” explains Peter O’Toole, the Forum’s spokesperson, before adding an assertion now under attack by numerous researchers. “Deca-bde,” he says, “has never been found to be persistent in the environment, to bioaccumulate, or to be toxic. So it should never have been reviewed.”
The environment minister’s office won’t comment on the dispute while it is under review. But Don Gutzman and John Pasternak, the Environment Canada scientists who led the pbde review, say because the seven chemical classifications share the same molecular base structure and similar chemical characteristics, it was correct to review them as a family of chemicals.
The extent of industry opposition to the Canadian findings is clearly set out on the Bromine Forum’s website, where the industry claims “brominated flame retardants probably save more lives by preventing and limiting fires, than most other chemical substances.” To counter growing health concerns, the website includes findings by Professor Martin van den Berg from the University of Utrecht’s Institute of Risk Assessment Sciences, claiming deca-bde in human blood does not pose a health risk. They also note that the EU’s Scientific Risk Assessment authorities issued a risk assessment of deca-bde in May 2004 and decided that no restrictions were needed on the use of deca-bde owing to “lack of identified risks.”
The site promotes the Forum’s own science, which not surprisingly concludes that “there is no consumer risk from exposure” to consumer products laden with pbdes, and offers studies by other groups to support that claim.
When pressed for detailed information about studies supporting the Forum’s position, O’Toole admits that they only apply to deca-bde, the one formulation of flame retardant that federal environmental scientists do not yet want to restrict. Nor does the Forum want to deal with the fact that its findings are heavily contested by dozens of more recent studies by academic and government scientists around the world.
The Bromine Forum also rejects some independent research showing the chemicals to be dangerous. Two such studies were conducted by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington, DC-based environmental group, and by Computer TakeBack, a nation-wide campaign dedicated to making computers environmentally friendly.
