HUMAN POLLUTION

Feb 10, 2008 - Blood samples from prominent politicians were recently used to support claims that lots of chemicals from the environment are newly polluting our bodies.

Last week federal MPs and Senators were treated to hard scientific evidence that, instead, it's their bodies that are newly polluting the environment.

This reverse case was marshalled by Chris Metcalfe, a Trent University professor who has long been studying organic contaminants in water.

Metcalfe was the lead-off speaker in the annual Bacon & Eggheads breakfast series, which aims to raise the scientific literacy of the politicians and aides on Parliament Hill, federal bureaucrats, Ottawa policy wonks and journalists.

With the audience still masticating, the York professor detailed the drugs, personal-care items and ubiquitous anti-bacterial agents carried by the urine, feces, bathwater and other discharges from our homes and workplaces.

Some highlights:
- perch in Hamilton Harbour contain as much as 700 parts per billion of HHCB, a synthetic musk used to perfume many consumer products. That's roughly the same concentration as PCBs, which are the subject of manufacturing bans and massive cleanups.
- ethylestradiol, the main chemical in female birth-control pills, can feminize male fish in the lab at levels less than one part per trillion. Metcalfe's group has measured levels in municipal waste water as high as to 14 parts per trillion.
- a new class of human-transmitted contaminants, nanomaterials, is being found more and more in the environment, where even a trace disrupts the lower rungs of the chain of life.

"What's being done about all this?" the politicians asked the professor? Lots of regulatory action in Europe, noticeable progress in the U.S., and many studies and consultations in Canada.