Our Polluted Bodies

WHEN MICHAEL LERNER volunteered to give blood and urine samples to medical researchers, he figured they'd only find a few chemicals in his body. After all, Lerner, the president and founder of Commonweal, a health and environmental research institute in Marin County, has lived in Bolinas for 20 years, eaten a healthy diet and avoided exposure to industrial chemicals.

He was wrong. Researchers found his body polluted with 101 industrial toxins and penetrated by elevated levels of arsenic and mercury.

Scientists call such contamination a person's "body burden."

Lerner was one of nine people -- five of whom live and work in the Bay Areas -- who were tested for 210 chemicals commonly found in consumer products and industrial pollution. Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York, the Environmental Working Group of Oakland and Washington, and Commonweal collaborated on this innovative study of the body burden.

At press conferences held in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., last week, researchers revealed these shocking results: On average, each person had 50 or more chemicals linked to cancer in humans and lab animals, considered toxic to the brain and nervous system or known to interfere with the hormone and reproductive systems. (The Environmental Working Group's Web site features biographies and toxic profiles for each person as well as the kind of products that contain such chemicals.)

Read more.

(Thanks, Pete.)