"We are in an epidemic of environmentally mediated disease among American children today” says Dr. Leo Trasande, assistant director of the Center for Children's Health at Mount Sinai, NYC. Transande is referring to results from new biomonitering or “body burden tests” which are revealing that children across the US have extraordinarily high levels of PBDE's (or Flame Retardants).

Trasande said children up to six years old are most at risk because their vital organs and immune system are still developing and because they depend more heavily on their environments than adults do. "Pound for pound, they eat more food, they drink more water, they breathe in more air," he said. "And so [children] carry a higher body burden than we do."

So how are these chemicals getting into our children? Mostly through mattresses, cribbing, and textiles, which are still legal to manufacture with PBDE's in the United States (and outlawed in the European Union in 2004).

While we know PBDE's cause cancer in rats in lab tests, there are potentially hundreds of other chemicals affecting our children today. The Environmental Protection Agency does not require chemical manufacturers to conduct human toxicity studies before approving their chemicals for use in the market. A manufacturer simply has to submit paperwork on a chemical, all the data that exists on that chemical to date, and wait 90 days for approval.

While there is no “smoking gun” yet; we are seeing exponential increases in asthma, allergies, and cancer in recent years of which many attribute to the increased chemicals and pollutants in our bodies. So whether your buying blankets or bananas for your children, keep in mind the risks associated with the mountain of chemicals thoughtless manufacturers uses in our every day products.