With its fourth and most ambitious edition of its National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals, released today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) casts the issue of pollution in people in sharp focus.
The CDC has detected 212 contaminants in the blood and urine of thousands of people tested from 1999-2004, the most extensive survey of the American body burden ever published by the federal government.
CDC's testing focuses on adults and children age 6 and older, leaving EWG and other environmental health groups and academic scientists to investigate the extent to which pollutants were invading the womb.
Last week,
EWG released its second cord blood study, reporting detections of up to 232 contaminants in the cord blood of 10 minority infants born between 2007 and 2008. EWG's study was the first to find the plastic ingredient bisphenol A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting chemical, in American cord blood.
EWG's first cord blood study, published in 2005, found up to 287 chemicals in 10 cord blood samples.