Flame Retardants’ Risk for Kids

Re “Cause for Alarm Over Chemicals,” April 20: By her own admission, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Whitman doesn’t “know enough yet” to take action on PBDEs (polybrominated diphenyl ethers). Thanks to your eye-opening and disturbing article, I do. What would help me is a bit more information.

For one, I believe flame retardants are required in baby sleepwear. I know you don’t want to alarm the public and cause an unreasonable panic, but I believe most parents would opt for a good smoke detector over lower IQs for their children. Why wrap them in a toxic snuggy if you know better? Please give us information we can use while the government decides whose side it is on -- the people’s or businesses’.

Dorothy Walker

Calabasas

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Your article is a familiar refrain since Rachel Carson’s publication of “Silent Spring” 40 years ago. Pesticides, organic pollutants, PVCs used in medical devices and now the flame-retardant PBDEs are found in human fluids, including breast milk, in alarming levels. The EPA says it’s concerned but does nothing to intervene because it would be anti-business. Levels of such toxic substances are dropping in European countries and Japan because public health is taken seriously there.

Legislative efforts to ban chemicals that endanger our current and future generations of children need to be actively supported, given the shameful history of the EPA to date. California needs to institute breast milk surveillance programs to identify high-risk regions in the state, expand its own toxic substances remediation programs and support continued environmental research as an urgent priority.

As the recent scientific news on lead and children showed, there are no “safe” levels that should be tolerated. When will we ever learn?

Arthur Strauss MD

Director, Neonatal

Intensive Care Unit

Miller Children’s Hospital

Long Beach