http://www.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden/es.php
PCBs — Industrial insulators and lubricants. Banned in the U.S. in 1976. Persist for decades in the environment. Accumulate up the food chain, to man. Cause cancer and nervous system problems.
Dioxins — Pollutants, by-products of PVC production, industrial bleaching, and incineration. Cause cancer in man. Persist for decades in the environment. Very toxic to developing endocrine (hormone) system.
Furans — Pollutants, by-products of plastics production, industrial bleaching and incineration. Expected to cause cancer in man. Persist for decades in the environment. Very toxic to developing endocrine (hormone) system.
Metals — Lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium — Cause lowered IQ, developmental delays, behavioral disorders and cancer at doses found in the environment. For lead, most exposures are from lead paint. For mercury, most exposures are from canned tuna. For arsenic, most exposures are from arsenic (CCA) treated lumber and contaminated drinking water. For cadmium, sources of exposure include pigments and bakeware.
Organochlorine insecticides—-DDT, chlordane and other pesticides. Largely banned in the U.S. Persist for decades in the environment. Accumulate up the food chain, to man. Cause cancer and numerous reproductive effects.
Organophosphate insecticide metabolites — Breakdown products of chlorpyrifos, malathion and others. Potent nervous system toxicants. Most common source of exposure is residues in food. Recently banned for indoor uses.
Phthalates — Plasticizers. Cause birth defects of male reproductive organs. Found in a wide range of cosmetic and personal care products. Some phthalates recently banned in Europe.
Volatile and Semi-volatile organic chemicals. — Industrial solvents and gasoline ingredients like xylene and ethyl benzene. Toxic to nervous system, some heavily used SVOCs (benzene) cause cancer.
Biomonitoring - in the experts own words
"Biomonitoring is a tool to help better understand human exposure to environmental chemicals – both natural and man-made. It identifies certain substances in the body at the time of measurement. If gathered from a representative sample of a population – for instance, children or adults in a particular area – biomonitoring can be used to document whether that subgroup as a whole has been exposed to some chemicals."
American Chemistry Council
"This information can be helpful in determining whether chemical exposures are causing illness and if so, what type of medical treatment is needed. In addition, decision makers need information about which toxic substances accumulate in human tissue and at what levels to make decisions on environmental and public health issues that will affect the public. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) currently conducts its biomonitoring program through the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES)."
Physicians for Social Responsibility
"CDC's Environmental Health Laboratory conducts the National Biomonitoring Program (NBP). The Program specializes in biomonitoring, which is the direct measurement of people's exposure to toxic substances in the environment by measuring the substances or their metabolites in human specimens, such as blood or urine. Biomonitoring measurements are the most health-relevant assessments of exposure because they indicate the amount of the chemical that actually gets into people (from all environmental sources (e.g., air, soil, water, dust, food) combined, rather than the amount that may get into them."
US Centers for Disease Control
An ongoing assessment of the U.S. population's exposure to environmental chemicals using biomonitoring. The first National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (First Report) was issued in March 2001. This Second Report, released in January 2003, presents biomonitoring exposure data for 116 environmental chemicals for the noninstitutionalized, civilian U.S. population over the 2-year period 1999-2000.
This is the most comprehensive study ever conducted of multiple chemical contaminants in humans. —Blood and urine from nine people were tested for 210 chemicals that occur in consumer products and industrial pollution. We found an average of 91 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the nine volunteers. January, 2003
Dec. 10, 2003 - Charlotte Brody figured she wasn't completely pure. "I knew that dioxins were in every piece of cheese I'd ever eaten," she says. "I knew that mercury was in tuna fish." So when she volunteered samples of her blood and urine for a recent study of chemical contamination in humans, she didn't expect to be too surprised by the results.
