Flame retardants damage wildlife, just like DDT

One recent report about the effects of flame retardants prompted a flashback to Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and stories from over 40 years ago about the damage from DDT to peregrine falcons and bald eagles.

DDT, the notorious insecticide, weakened the eggs of raptors and other birds, jeopardizing their survival as a species.

DDT was banned in the U.S. for some uses in 1972. Now scientists have found that commercial grade flame retardants have effects similar to DDT on kestrel eggs.

Captive female kestrels exposed to common flame retardants laid eggs with thinner shells and had less successful reproduction than birds not exposed to flame retardants.

The level of flame retardant in the study’s kestrel eggs is the same concentration currently found in wild birds, including peregrine falcons.

Flame retardants are highly persistent and toxic in the environment, similarities they share with PCBs and DDT, which are two chemicals from a group of only five that have ever been banned for most uses by the U.S. government.

For decades flame retardants have been used in products from TV to computers to couches and mattresses. Flame retardants are present in the air and in household dust.  Data show that flame retardants may harm the developing brain, impair thyroid production, and are linked to diabetes, obesity and cancer. A recent study found that flame retardants in household dust may alter men’s hormone levels. 

Flame retardants store up in fat tissues and increase in concentration as they move up the food chain. That’s why creatures at the top of the food chain - whether falcons, kestrels, bald eagles, killer whales or humans - have a high body burden of the persistent toxic chemicals.

After learning that populations of killer whales are contaminated with toxic flame retardants, Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society launched a campaign to protect killer whales and people by preventing chemicals from entering the environment in the first place. Cousteau said:

“Time is of the essence….we cannot wait to find a cure for dangerous products after they are in the environment and in us.”

Cousteau is right.  Can he persuade Dow Chemicals, one of his show's sponsors, to join the campaign to prevent toxic chemicals from entering the environment?