StatsCan to test 5,000 people for toxins

The federal government's first large-scale survey mirrors similar efforts in the United States that have found that virtually the entire population carries a complex burden of pollutants in their tissues.

The blood and urine will be subjected to a battery of expensive tests that will check for 70 metals and chemicals, including DDT, the once widely used insecticide that has been banned for decades.

DDT is still found throughout the environment because it degrades so slowly.

Many of the substances to be monitored have only recently emerged as potential health threats, and are a worry because the chemicals appear to be leaking out of common consumer products and getting into people.

Bisphenol A, for instance, is a compound that mimics the female sex hormone estrogen and is the main component of polycarbonate, used to make hard-plastic water bottles and dental sealants.

Phthalates are a ubiquitous plastic softener found in many cosmetics and which contribute to the distinctive smell of new cars.

Phthalates concern researchers because they appear able to interfere with the normal functioning of male hormones.

The tests will also look at brominated flame retardants, a widely used family of chemicals that reduce the fire hazard of mattresses and computers, but have been linked in animal experiments to problems resembling attention-deficit disorders in children.

It is unknown whether current exposures to these substances or their interactions in people's bodies is harmful, although animal experimentation has found that during early life and fetal development even trace exposures to some of the substances can skew development in ways that increase the chances of cancers and other health problems later in life.

The U.S. has been issuing results of large-scale testing for contaminants, a process known as biomonitoring, since 2001.

The testing has discovered that the public carries a bewildering cocktail of chemicals from day-to-day exposures to substances originating in consumer products, polluting industries and residues on food. However, the U.S. work has also shown that efforts to ban harmful substances, like the end of the sale of leaded gasoline, have been quickly reflected in reduced levels of the brain-damaging heavy metal in children.

China Pollution in Washington

I cut the following from a long article about the impact of the cashmere sweater boom in the US on the Chinese environment and how it makes Washington air more toxic…

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A wave of new research is detailing how China's dust and dirty air hurtle across the Pacific, fouling the sky, thickening the haze and altering the climate in the U.S.

What scientists call trans-Pacific transport is an airborne highway of dust and pollutants. Indeed, just as China's air comes to the U.S., North American pollution traverses the Atlantic. But China's air poses particular hazards because it is some of the world's filthiest. Roughly 300,000 people die each year in China of diseases linked to air pollution, according to a Chinese research institute.

The main culprit is coal. About 70 percent of China's soaring energy needs are met by coal-fired power plants. Many private homes also burn coal, combining to give China some of the world's highest emissions of sulfur dioxide, soot and other pollutants.

The goats play an important role as well. Dust from the animal-ravaged grasslands of Alashan is snatched by wind and sent east, where smokestacks frost it in a layer of pollution. Together the noxious brew reaches the U.S. within five days, where it can combine with local pollution to exceed the limits of healthy air, said Rudolf Husar, an atmospheric chemist at Washington University in St. Louis.

Of most concern are ultra-tiny particles that lodge deep in the lungs, contributing to respiratory damage, heart disease and cancer. One storm that began in China and Mongolia in spring 1998 caused a spike in air pollution that prompted health officials in Washington, Idaho, Oregon and British Columbia to issue warnings to the public.

That storm was strong enough to drape a brown cloud over the West Coast. Most of the time, China's dirty dust is invisible to everyone except the growing ranks of researchers troubled by it.

From atop Mt. Tamalpais and other sites on the West Coast, researchers are discovering that polluted air from Asia hits the U.S. far more regularly than was believed even two years ago.

"As pollution levels in Asia continue to rise, I believe that we will observe more Asian pollution in the U.S. in the future," said Cliff, an atmospheric scientist at the University of California, Davis.

Asian dust already accounted for 40 percent of the worst dust days in the Western U.S. in 2001, according to a study by researchers at NASA and Harvard. Despite efforts to reduce emissions, a top Chinese environmental official warned last year that air pollution could quadruple within 15 years because of the rapid rise in private cars and energy use in China. More Chinese pollution will make it harder and more expensive for cities like Los Angeles to meet strict federal air standards.

Chinese environmental authorities recognize the damage contributed by overgrazing and are struggling to stem it. They have stitched massive checkered straw mats into the surface of the desert, dropped seeds from planes and planted millions of trees nationwide. Nothing has solved the problem.

The price we pay for China's boom. The improbable connection between cheap sweaters, Asia's prairies and America's air captures how the most ordinary shifts in the global economy are triggering extraordinary change. Chicago Tribune, Illinois.

Child Labor

Dangerous jobs for India's army of child workers

By Palash Kumar | December 13, 2006

FIROZABAD, India (Reuters) - In the corner of a dark room filled with the stench of kerosene, Prabhu Dayal crouches over a fire, his nimble fingers forming glass bangles in the flames. Prabhu is only 8-years-old, but his life is already one of endless toil, making colorful, glass bangles popular among women across India. "Sometimes I get sores on my fingers but it's okay," Prabhu said, without looking away from the flame for a moment. "When the flame is blue, it's okay. When it turns yellow, then foul gas comes out," he explained. "It's not that difficult. Just hold the two ends (of the bangle) like this and join them with the fire," he added, deftly showing his skill.

Despite a government ban on child labor, Prabhu is one of tens of thousands of children in India who work in horrific conditions in often dangerous industries to support their poor families. Across the country, children stuff explosives into fireworks to be lit during religious festivals and extravagant wedding celebrations, or weave carpets, sew textiles and make everything from footballs to cricket bats to sulphur-tipped matchsticks. Around the town of Firozabad, about 230 km (140 miles) southeast of New Delhi and the hub of India's glassware industry, 50,000 child workers endure lives similar to Prabhu's laboring away in dozens of factories, rights groups estimate.

Under India's Child Labor Act of 1986, children under 14 are banned from working in industries deemed "hazardous" such as fireworks, matchstick-making, auto workshops or carpet weaving. The ban was extended in October to cover those employed at roadside food stalls, homes and hotels. But the rules are widely flouted, and prosecutions, when they happen at all, get bogged down in courts for lengthy periods.

In 1996, a government survey found that 22,000 children worked in factories around Firozabad. Charges were brought against plant owners, many of whom are still involved in legal battles. The factories stopped employing children directly, but began outsourcing their work to "household units," workshops like the tiny, dark room where Prabhu works eight to ten hours a day. A restless boy with sparkling eyes, Prabhu earns about 10 rupees (22 cents) for joining around 1,200 bangles a day. Child rights activists like Ramesh Singh Chandel of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan say hundreds, if not thousands, of these children become afflicted with lung disease from their exposure to chemicals. Most refuse to be examined for fear of losing their only source of income. "Once we held a free health check up camp here," said Chandel, a human rights worker based in the area. "Not one person came. Nearly everyone here suffers from some form of asthma." The day begins at 3 a.m. for Prabhu, his two brothers and their father. At 8 a.m., Prabhu goes to school but he returns to the dingy workshop at around noon and works until 5 p.m. The finished bangles are then heaped on carts and bicycles, which are dragged back to the factories in Firozabad. "After that we play," Prabhu said.

Middle-aged Ramrati lives in a one-room mud hut where she cooks in an earthen oven. She has three sons, aged between 5 and 13. All of them work in the bangle industry. A daughter, who also grew up making glass bangles, died of tuberculosis a few years ago at the age of 16 "The bangles killed her," she said. "She used to cough a lot and turned weak. I got her married thinking her health would improve but she died in a few months." "What option do they have?" asked Vishwa Vimohan Kulshreshtha, who runs a UNICEF program here to wean the children away from work. "Where will they go? What will they do? The government has only banned child labor but it has not created any jobs." "Until the parents get some other work, they will continue to use their children to increase their income. It's a question of livelihood," he said.

Bal Krishan Gupta is the owner of Om Glassworks, one of the biggest factories in the region. Inside his sprawling residence is a cricket field, a fish pond and ducks playing on the lawns. Gupta, who came to Firozabad in 1946, says his factories no longer make bangles, but he knows that children in the region are making them in hazardous conditions. "But who is responsible for this? Is it not the father of the child who is making the child work?" he asked.