Provided by: www.ewg.org

Question #1: How does this study compare to the government's National Exposure Report?
Question #2: Why test for chemicals in people? Risk assessment, public health policy
Question #3: Why did you test just 10 newborns?
Question #4: How do industrial chemicals get in my body?
Question #5: How can I reduce my chemical exposures?

Question #1: How does this study compare to the government's National Exposure Report?

In late July 2005 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plans to release its third in a series of National Exposure Reports, a study that "provides an ongoing assessment of the U.S. population's exposure to chemicals," including many of the industrial chemicals EWG tested in umbilical cord blood.

Our study compares and contrasts with CDC's in the following ways:

• The CDC studies primarily adults, and tests for just a handful of chemicals in children ages one and older. EWG studied children at the moment of birth. By testing umbilical cord blood, our study defines the mixtures of chemicals that pollute a child in the womb, during the time in life of the highest sensitivity to harm from chemical exposures. CDC has not tested newborns in any of its National Exposure Report studies.
• The CDC studies individual chemicals in a multitude of people. Our study examined individual people, in this case newborns, for a multitude of chemicals.
• The CDC's work helps us assess exposure levels for each targeted contamination across the U.S. population. Our study documents instead the complex reality of the mixtures of chemicals in individual people — the human "body burden."
• Although CDC's results from the Third National Exposure Report are not public as of this writing, they have published the list of chemicals that will be included in their report (CDC 2005). Our tests compare to CDC's tests in the following ways:
  • EWG and CDC have tested for 62 chemicals in common (polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans, mercury, organochlorine pesticides, and polychlorinated biphenyls).
  • EWG has tested for 351 chemicals not included in CDC's study (polybrominated dibenzodioxins and dibenzofurans, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, perfluorochemicals, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, polychlorinated biphenyls, and polychlorinated naphthalenes).
  • CDC has tested for 88 chemicals not included in EWG's study (metals, organochlorine pesticides, organophosphate insecticides, pyrethroid pesticides, herbicides, phytoestrogens, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and tobacco smoke).

Both studies reveal disturbing gaps in our system of public health safeguards, which allows uncontrolled exposures to complex mixtures of industrial chemicals beginning even before birth.

Detailed chemical listing: How do our cord blood tests compare to CDC's Third National Exposure Report tests?

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More From Body Burden — The Pollution in Newborns
Executive Summary
Babies are Vulnerable
Human Health Problems on the Rise
Guide to testing.
Adult Blood Test Results.
Why are babies born polluted?
Guest Commentary
Peer Statement