Young zebrafish exposed to flame retardants through their mothers swam up to 60 percent slower and had reduced gene expression important for nervous system development. More:
Environmental Health News

Más de 100 millones de personas en todo el mundo están expuestos a niveles peligrosos de sustancias químicas tóxicas. Estos contaminantes incluyen radionucleidos, productos químicos industriales, pesticidas y metales pesados, que pueden provenir de actividades como la minería, la industria, la agricultura y la fabricación de armas. More:
www.informador.com.mx

GRODNO – Destruction of Belarus’ largest pesticides landfill is on track to be complete in September 2013, the project manager Viktor Solovyov said during a press tour of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, BelTA has learned. More:
Belarusian Telegraph Agency

PepsiCo Inc. will remove a controversial chemical that is added to orange Gatorade in response to customer complaints. Outcry over the chemical, known as brominated vegetable oil, or BVO, had been building over the past year. BVO has been patented as a flame retardant, and it has been linked to a number of health hazards. More:
Environmental Health News

Some plastics are worse than others for the marine life that accidentally or intentionally eat them. Unfortunately the most commonly produced plastics also absorb the most chemicals. This according to a new study in early view in Environmental Science & Technology. More:
www.motherjones.com

Fifty years after publication of Silent Spring, it is ever more evident the biologist understood how serious the threats were. Along with sparking a debate about pesticide use, Silent Spring’s publication in the early 1960s has been credited with launching the environmental movement a decade later. More:
www.montrealgazette.com

After years of study, scientists in the U.S. and Europe had reached an alarming conclusion: Flame retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers, or PBDEs, build up in blood and breast milk, interfere with natural hormones, trigger reproductive problems and cause developmental and neurological damage. More:
Chicago Tribune

When a chemical company sets out to design a molecule for a new application, researchers think first about functionality, efficacy, and cost. Typically further down the list of priorities is environmental performance. Consumer awareness, however, is changing that perspective. More: 
Chemical & Engineering News

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is initiating a new effort to examine whether low doses of hormone-mimicking chemicals are harming human health and whether chemical testing should be overhauled. The EPA will evaluate whether current testing is capturing an array of effects linked to hormone mimics, and if the agency should alter its risk assessments. More:
Environmental Health News

The PCBs elimination network: the information exchange platform created for the risk reduction of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)” by Andrea Warmuth and Kei Ohno (Secretariat of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions, UNEP), appears in the January 2013 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Consumers rarely know what chemicals are in the furniture products they buy because they are considered trade secrets. As a likely result, levels of flame-retardant chemicals in California children are among the world's highest, according to 2010 studies. More:
San Francisco Chronicle

Across the former Soviet Union harmful agricultural chemicals were either buried or improperly stored. Now the process of clean-up has begun. More:
The Guardian

In the 1970s, when no one lived here, the local authorities thought that Tegul'det was an ideal spot to bury unwanted pesticide. Time passed and several families settled near the Tegul'det mound. It was an attractive spot, close to the river and not far from the main village. Tegul'det is far from being an isolated case. More:
The Guardian

As the phased-out stain repellent PFOS steadily decreases in people, its replacement is rising rapidly at levels that are doubling every six years, a Swedish study shows. Levels of perfluorobutane sulfonate (PFBS) in the women's blood rose 11 percent per year between 1996 and 2010. Whether there are any potential health effects of these exposures -- which are still far lower than PFOS levels -- is unknown. More:
Environmental Health News

From plastics to flame retardants, the ubiquitous chemicals of our daily lives have raised public health concerns like never before. Inside the Beltway, however, data-crunching scientists are often no match for industry lobbyists and corporate lawyers. More:
Scientific American

Populations of otters, grey seals and sea eagles are slowly recovering in Sweden, which is likely to be thanks in part to a ban on organochlorine chemicals, such as PCBs and DDT, in the 1970s, according to a new study. However, the research shows that negative effects of these chemicals on the reproductive health of female animals persisted for more than 15 years after the ban was introduced. More:
Science for Environment Policy 

Prenatal and childhood exposure to flame retardant compounds are linked to poorer attention, fine motor coordination and IQ in school-aged children, a finding by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health that adds to growing health concerns over a chemical prevalent in U.S. households. More:
ScienceDaily

Couples with high levels of PCBs and similar environmental pollutants take longer to achieve pregnancy in comparison to other couples with lower levels of the pollutants, according to a preliminary study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health and other institutions. More:
NIH News - USA

In a sobering study published in the journal Environmental Health, researchers at UC Davis and UCLA measured food-borne toxin exposure in children and adults by pinpointing foods with high levels of toxic compounds and determining how much of these foods were consumed. The researchers found that family members in the study, and preschool children in particular, are at high risk for exposure to arsenic, dieldrin, DDE (a DDT metabolite), dioxins and acrylamide. More:
UCDavis Health System - California, USA

Legacy contaminants are decreasing more quickly than previously reported in three of the Great Lakes, but have stayed virtually the same in two other lakes, according to new research. “These are very positive results. The lakes are improving and slowly cleaning themselves up,” said Thomas Holsen, co-director of Clarkson University’s Center for the Environment. In all of the lakes, the older contaminants are being replaced by newer ones, mostly flame retardants, that are building up in fish and wildlife. More: 
Environmental Health News