Natural chemicals were found in whale blubber by three researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). After removing a beached whale, selecting a large sample of fat and then six months of lab work to remove various materials to get to the chemicals in their pure form, the researchers found what they were looking for. Emma Teuten, Li Xu, and Christopher Reddy found that these chemicals showed a detectable radiocarbon signal, only found in natural sources. That means that the chemicals were not the residual of manmade pollution.
This discovery is significant because environmental activists have been sending scary messages about the dangers of all the chemicals in our clothing, furniture, and pesticides from human-produced sources. Their intimidating statements urge us to stop using certain chemicals because they accumulate in humans, animals, and the food we eat and air we breathe -- but scientists are discovering that the chemicals found in wildlife are of natural origin.
The scare over these chemicals results from the fact that polybrominated diphenyl ethers, PBDEs, are human-produced chemicals found in animal and human tissue. Methoxylated polybrominated diphenyl ethers, MeO-BDEs, are structurally similar and also found in mammals, but they are not the product of human activity. MeO-BDEs are among the most common compounds in the environment, so scientists must now ask whether many more chemical scares are a result of confusing MeO-BDEs with PBDEs.
Not only are natural chemicals found in the foods we eat, but there is no conclusive evidence that chemicals (whether natural or synthetic) are dangerous to humans in minuscule amounts simply because they harm rats in very large amounts (as is explained in ACSH's recently released book, America's War on "Carcinogens"). As a future ACSH report will explain in detail, many health scares are caused by the false assumption that just because our ability to detect chemicals in the body is increasing, we should be increasingly worried for our health. Detection does not equal disease, in humans or in whales.
Michal Raucher is a research intern at the American Council on Science and Health.
