Although PBDEs are used around the world, the largest volumes are used in the Americas: an estimated 33,100 metric tons in 2001 alone (WDOE 2005). The flame retardants, developed 30 years ago, have been used heavily in the production of furniture, textiles, and electronics. Two of the commercial formulations of PBDEs, known as penta and octa, were once widely used in foam and plastic products from upholstered furniture to kitchen appliances. But in 2004, industry voluntarily ended production in the United States in response to new information on high levels in breastmilk. EPA subsequently issued a rule requiring companies to notify the agency before beginning any significant new uses of penta or octa.

Still in production, however, is the deca formulation of PBDEs, long the most widely used, with 50 million pounds going into products each year. Deca is employed primarily in plastics for electronics, such as television and computer housings, as well as in textiles. Its use may increase with the introduction of new, more rigorous standards for fire resistance for upholstered furniture.  

The first hint that the chemicals were building up in the environment came in 1981, when PBDEs were found in Sweden’s River Viskan (Sjödin 2003). Subsequent studies found that environmental levels were rising at an alarming rate across the globe. Between 1981 and 2000, levels in Arctic seals increased tenfold (Ikonomou 2000). From 1988 to 1999, levels in Beluga whales in the St. Lawrence Estuary increased exponentially, doubling every three years or less (Lebeuf 2004). And during roughly the same period (1989 to 1998), levels in San Francisco Bay harbor seals doubled every 1.8 years (She 2002). 

Puget Sound appears to have an especially dire PBDE problem. Recent measurements have found that harbor seals, particularly those that live near Seattle, have elevated levels of PBDEs (Ross 2006). They also found that Puget Sound’s Chinook salmon—the key food source for endangered orca whales—have the highest levels among tested fish, which included herring, sole, rockfish, and lingcod (O’Neill 2006).

Because of their presence in such a wide variety of consumer products, each of us encounters PBDEs daily. Many products made with PBDEs, such as furniture, are used for many years and shed the chemicals over the course of their lifetimes. A number of studies have found PBDEs in house dust as well as indoor air, which is considerably more contaminated with these chemicals than outdoor air (Stapleton 2005, Sjödin 2004, Butt 2004). We’re also likely consuming the flame retardants with every meal: studies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia have found PBDEs in fish, meat, eggs, fruits, vegetables, and infant formula (Schecter 2004, Bocio 2003).  

PBDEs made the headlines in 2003, when an Environmental Working Group study found previously unheard of levels in U.S. women’s breastmilk. Recent studies have estimated that the largest percentage of PBDE exposures in children, particularly infants and toddlers who are not breastfed, comes from house dust (Jones-Otazo 2005). Breastfed infants, however, have the highest exposure of any age group (Health Canada 2004). Scientists have even found PBDEs in umbilical cord blood, revealing that today’s newborns are exposed even before they are born (Health Canada 2004, Mazdai 2003). 

That PBDEs were in breastmilk was news to Allyson Schrier, who had never even heard of the chemicals when she was pregnant with and nursing her two sons. But when her son Aidan was diagnosed as having learning disabilities, she began a quest for environmental chemicals that could interfere with brain development. Allyson was outraged to learn years later that breastmilk was contaminated with toxic flame retardants linked to learning and memory problems. In 2006, she brought her son and three other children to meet with her legislators and ask for a ban on PBDEs. Now, laboratory results have confirmed what she suspected: PBDEs are in her body, at a level of 48.3 ppb.