The new flame retardants emitted from your TVs, other electronic products and children's car seats are just as toxic as the flame retardants they're intended to replace, according to Science Daily.
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The replacement chemicals in question —organophosphate flame retardants — have been associated with lower IQ in children, reproductive problems and other serious health harms.
Flame retardant chemicals are found in everything from furniture and mattresses to electronics and baby toys. These notorious neurotoxin chemicals have been linked to serious health risks like infertility, birth defects, neurodevelopmental delays, hormone disruptions, various forms of cancer and reduced IQ scores and behavioral problems in children.
Flame retardants can even affect fetuses in utero. Exposure to flame retardants during pregnancy are associated with lower intelligence in children. One in 6 children now suffers from neurodevelopmental disorders. Research suggests flame retardants may be to blame.
Children are more markedly affected by flame retardants because they experience greater exposure to chemicals pound-for-pound than adults, and though the blood-brain barrier is fully formed at birth, its function may be immature, which may allow greater chemical exposures to reach their developing brains.
Children also have lower levels of some chemical-binding proteins, which allows more of a chemical to reach their organs, while systems that detoxify and excrete chemicals in adults are not fully developed in the children.
This is why flame retardants are a major challenge for kids born today.
Firefighters are another group who are at a higher risk. While the chemical industry claims such chemicals save lives in fires, firefighters are among their leading opponents. Ironically, the chemicals may make entering a burning home even more dangerous for firefighters than it would be otherwise.
Tests show presence of six different types of flame retardant chemicals in Americans, including PBDEs, chlorinated tris and tris phosphate, the latter of which has never been detected in Americans before.
Flame-retardant chemicals have a murky history. Developed in the 1970s, when 40% of Americans smoked and cigarettes were a major cause of fires, the tobacco industry — under increasing pressure to make fire-safe cigarettes — resisted the push for self-extinguishing cigarettes and instead created a fake front group called the National Association of State Fire Marshals.
A 1975 federal standard required furniture sold in California to withstand a 12-second exposure to a small flame without igniting. The requirement became a national standard, with manufacturers dousing their furniture with the chemicals whether they're going to be sold in California or elsewhere in the States.
Their use has skyrocketed and today 85% of couch foam samples tested contained chemical flame retardants. All U.S. mattresses are required to be highly flame retardant, to the extent that they won't catch on fire if exposed to a blowtorch — many Americans are sleeping with the enemy every night.
In 2015, health and consumer groups asked the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to ban organohalogen flame retardants (OFRs), which have been linked to reduced IQ, cancer, hormone disruption and reproductive system damage, in certain products.
Fortunately, there are some things you can do to protect yourself from dangerous fire retardant chemicals. If you have older furniture in your home but aren't ready to replace it, consider replacing the foam cushions with flame retardant-free foam. If you are purchasing new furniture, avoid the TB117 label. If the label states, "This article meets the flammability requirements of California Bureau of Home Furnishings Technical Bulletin 117 … " it most likely contains flame retardants.
Avoid foam-padded carpeting and baby products with foam. And, if you’re replacing a mattress, look for one that meets the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), which means at least 95 percent of the mattress materials must be certified organic and certain substances, including flame retardants and polyurethane.