I saw this on Fark and thought it was pretty fucking scary. Evidently some study has come out that shows that the level of a chemical that is used to coat products like furniture, cars and computers to make them fire resistant is showing up in the breast milk of women in the US. Apparently even at low levels these bromine-based fire retardants impair attention, learning, memory, and behavior. The thing that worried me about the study is that its not specifically about the breast milk, but just that this is evidence of how exposed we all are to random chemicals like this, as evidenced by how they build up in our bodies over time. So even though we may pay close attention to what chemicals we put in our bodies with the food we eat (which I really don't, I'll be honest), you can still get all crudded up with chemicals just by living a "normal" life. Great. The really worrisome part of the article, for me anyway, was this:
"The average level of bromine-based fire retardants in the milk of 20 first-time mothers was 75 times the average found in recent European studies."
Yikes 