PCBs

By Elizabeth Grossman While commercially manufactured polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were banned by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1979 due to concern about their extreme environmental persistence and toxicity – including potential to cause cancer – current EPA regulations allow the presence of limited amounts of PCBs that occur as manufacturing by-products. These by-product PCBs are not created or added to products intentionally but occur as a result of certain manufacturing processes, among them the synthesis of certain pigments that go into dyes, inks and paints. As I…
tags: Following The Mercury Trail, health, environment, ecology, pollution, PCBs, DDT, heavy metals, red tide, human sewage pollution, Stephen Palumbi, TEDTalks, TED Talks, streaming video There's a tight and surprising link between the ocean's health and ours, says marine biologist Stephen Palumbi. He shows how toxins at the bottom of the ocean food chain find their way into our bodies, with a shocking story of toxic contamination from a Japanese fish market. His work points a way forward for saving the oceans' health -- and humanity's. TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks…