This article is taken from a Greenpeace publication:

The chemical industry has undergone spectacular growth in the last century.

There are now more than 100,000 different chemicals available on the market. Chemicals are incorporated into countless consumer products, some of which undoubtedly benefit our standard of living. But they also provide a source of daily exposure to a cocktail of hazardous chemicals. Hazardous chemicals can be found everywhere. They are released into the environment at several points in their life cycle and travel in the air and in water to even remote areas like the Alps and the Arctic.

Some of the most hazardous chemicals do not break down easily and can accumulate throughout the food chain. Food has long been thought to be the primary route of exposure for most persistent and bioaccumulative chemicals.

However in recent years greater attention has been given to the potential exposure directly through the use of products containing hazardous ingredients and indirectly through their contamination of the indoor environment. Greenpeace has analysed a range of everyday consumer products for the presence of a number of (potentially) hazardous chemicals and looked for these chemicals in house dust and rainwater.

The results add weight to the suspicion that these chemicals can ‘leak’ from products. Follow-up investigations by Greenpeace Netherlands and others have sought to research the extent to which these chemicals actually end up in our bodies, by collecting and analysing blood samples from human volunteers.

The results of recent blood research projects by Greenpeace and WWF confirm that we all have hazardous chemicals in our blood including chemicals that are contained in normal consumer products. Of particular concern is the impact of exposure to these substances on (unborn) children. The unprotected foetus is extremely vulnerable to hazardous chemicals. Mothers can unwittingly pass on these substances to their child during pregnancy and through breastfeeding (which should not deter mothers from breast feeding as the benefits of breast feeding are still widely acknowledged).

Phthalates, one of the most omnipresent groups of chemicals and used mainly as softeners in Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), as well as in cosmetics and perfumes, were found in many of the maternal and cord blood samples. DEHP, the most commonly used plasticizer, was detected in 29 maternal and 24 cord blood samples. Some phthalates can be particularly damaging to the male reproductive tract, and are toxic to reproduction.


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