Santa’s reindeer have come and gone in their annual Christmas journey over the North, but reindeer — and many other Arctic animals and people — may face health impacts from toxic flame retardants that are banned, but still present, in Canada. More:
Nunatsiaq Online
Arctic Reindeer Poo Acts as Flame Retardant
Characterizing the distribution of selected PBDEs in soil, moss and reindeer dung at Ny-Ålesund of the Arctic (Research article)

Dr. Joseph Braun, assistant professor of epidemiology at Brown University, conducted an observational study that found that some children born in the Cincinnati area downstream from an industrial dumping site have more fat as young children if their mothers had high levels of the chemical perfluorooctanoic acid in their blood during pregnancy. More:
Public Radio International
Prenatal perfluoroalkyl substance exposure and child adiposity at 8 years of age (Research article)

A pineapple pesticide that made its way into milk in Hawaii also made its way into men's brains, and those men were more likely to develop Parkinson's disease, a study finds. It's the latest in a very long series of studies linking various pesticides to Parkinson's, which is caused by the loss of certain brain cells. More:
NBC News
Midlife milk consumption and substantia nigra neuron density at death (Research article)

The varied hormones in our bodies exert their effects by attaching to specific receptors. Once this attachment is established, a hormone initiates a unique, complex chain of events that regulate our body's development and function. Think of each hormone as a member of an orchestra that is performing a demanding, perpetual symphonic work. Hormone disrupters are chemicals that interfere with this delicate process. More:
www.timesfreepress.com

A study of men from the Faroe Islands finds that high DDT and PCB exposure during adolescence and adulthood is associated with abnormal chromosomes in sperm . More:
Environmental Health News
Sperm Aneuploidy in Faroese Men with Lifetime Exposure to Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) and Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCB) Pollutants (Research article)

A pesticide known as "DDT's cousin" is still being used in the United States, despite evidence of its toxic effects. The EPA acknowledged that even though it had not fully addressed all of the ecological and human health risk concerns regarding endosulfan, it had taken a number of mitigation measures to make its use safer. More:
New America Media
Endosulfan Phase-out (US EPA)

Manufacturers use fluorinated compounds in popcorn bags so the paper in the bag doesn’t quickly degrade after contacting the butter in the popcorn. Recently, Denmark's largest retailer unveiled fluorinated-free microwave popcorn. More:
Environmental Health News

PCBs, short for polychlorinated biphenyls, now seem to be a byproduct of certain pigment production. In recent years researchers have found that some paints, clothing, newspapers and magazines contain forms of the chemicals, usually a specific compound called PCB-11. More:
Environmental Health News

What if, instead of choosing between fire safety or health, you could have both? Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) published their discovery of a flame retardant that is nontoxic and won’t accumulate over time in the bodies of people who come in contact with it. More:
Newsweek
Boston Globe
Bioinspired Catecholic Flame Retardant Nanocoating for Flexible Polyurethane Foams (Research article)

Every day thousands of people make decisions that affect the chemical market. Most decisions are about the costs, availability, and performance of products; few involve consideration of human health or the environment. If the consumer market offers an important opportunity for promoting safer chemical production and consumption systems, the amount of chemical information in the market must expand, and the number of products that take health and environment into account must increase. More:
Green Biz

Chemical exposures, along with stress, diet, and exercise, play a complicated role in the timing of pubertal development. More:
Environmental Health Perspectives
Brominated Flame Retardants and Other Persistent Organohalogenated Compounds in Relation to Timing of Puberty in a Longitudinal Study of Girls (Research article)

A United Nations group will soon begin investigating whether to include a toxic chemical, linked to a contamination case involving the RAAF Base in Williamtown, on a global list potentially banning its use. The chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) is a component of firefighting foam which was used at Defence Force and fire service bases around Australia for decades. More:
ABC Net - Australia

A study investigated how concentrations of POPs in breast milk vary worldwide by reviewing studies published between 1995 and 2011. They found that levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and dioxins in breast milk are higher in Europe and North America, whereas pesticides are more prevalent in Africa and Asia. More:
Science for Environment Policy
Spatial and temporal trends of the Stockholm Convention POPs in mothers’ milk — a global review (Research article)

Pesticide use in homes may increase the risk of children developing leukemia or lymphoma, a new report suggests. Researchers combined data from 16 earlier studies that had compared pesticide exposure between children who developed leukemia or lymphoma and those who did not. More:
CNN
Residential Exposure to Pesticide During Childhood and Childhood Cancers: A Meta-Analysis (Research article)

Chemistry is having “an innovation crisis”, according to John Warner, co-author of the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry. “We need to ask if the way we’re training future scientists is fitting the need of society.” “Instead of enacting another law that bans or regulates a chemical or a molecule that has a toxic or environmentally destructive effect, we need to think about how we invent a product that doesn’t have that effect”, he said. More:
The Guardian

A mosquito net that binds insecticides with electrostatic forces could be a significant step towards eradicating tropical diseases like malaria and dengue. The net is claimed to be up to ten times more effective at killing insecticide-resistant mosquitos, and works even when the insects land for just a few seconds. More:
Chemistry World

The “exposome” is defined as “the totality of human environmental exposures from conception onward, complementing the genome”. This research study describes the correlation structure of the exposome during pregnancy to better understand the relationships between families of exposure and to develop analytical tools for exposome data. More:
Environmental Science and Technology (Research article)

A toxic chemical long used to make non-stick or water-repellent coatings may be more dangerous than believed. Perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, was used to make DuPont's popular Teflon coating for decades. DuPont phased out its production after a 2006 settlement with federal regulators, who had linked it to birth defects and cancer in animals. More:
Vice News
Teflon Chemical Unsafe at Smallest Doses (Report)

In essence, General Electric sampled the fish incorrectly, in a way that created wide variations in the amount of tissue tested per fish. That can lead to wide variations in PCB levels. More:
PostStar.com

The study is the first to estimate the transfer of water- and stain-proofing chemicals from mother to baby during breastfeeding and suggests that the mother’s milk—which provides healthy antibodies, vitamins and nutrients— is also a major source of these harmful compounds for the developing children. More:
Environmental Health News
Breastfeeding as an Exposure Pathway for Perfluorinated Alkylates (Research article)
The Madrid Statement on Poly- and Perfluoroalkyl Substances (PFASs)