Who's afraid of bromine?

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29376436

by suprgeek • 12 years ago

50 38 12 years ago

I am; they've added it to our enriched flour breads since the 80's and it blocks iodine receptors. Look up iodine deficiency, said to affect 70% of Americans, and this is alarming. The deficiency has been linked to thyroid problems and cancer, especially breast and prostate cancer, as iodine helps regulate hormones. I have NO trust for our "food system" or "safety regulators." It's all about how to make a buck. You can hardly find any food without unnecessary and harmful additives. Soy lecithin - an allergen is everywhere as is whey (dairy - why do I need this in my chicken apple sausage??), maltodextrin (gluten), MSG (migraine central). It's pitiful. Yes; bromine is one of many scary elements we over-use.

barsonme• 12 years ago

Whey is used as an emulsifier in processed meats[1].

Personally the biggest issue I've noticed with these "bad ingredient" trends is that,

1.) Most issues seem to come from overuse (e.g. drinking too much soda), and

2.) They're easy scapegoats for many issues which have arose in the last ~20 or so years.

There's certainly an argument to be made for the recent occurrence of some of these issues being due to increased scrutiny or increased intake of said product.

Anecdotally, I know my father is allergic to wheat and corn. My younger brother is (potentially -- last I heard he's testing it) allergic as well.

I've had no negative side effects, but I do eat much less processed food and grains than they both do/did. But, again, that's very anecdotal and in no way is it a representation of a larger population.

[1] http://www.usdec.org/files/pdfs/6meat.pdf

mlichtenstern9• 12 years ago

In general, there are too many unnecessary additives in our food supply. I went to Boston Market the other night hoping to find a simple meal for my daughter, who has food sensitivities like her dad, and could not find one single dish without allergens. The chicken had maltodextrin (wheat), veggies had soy lecithin...it was a crying shame.

I know how to cook from scratch and cannot understand why there is so much garbage in prepared foods. Simple foods like potato salad and bread in a typical grocery store have ridiculous ingredients.

jandrewrogers• 12 years ago

I am only responding to this to point out that your post is completely inconsistent with elementary chemistry and biomedical science, lest someone else actually take it seriously.

Fact: Bromine is an essential element in mammalian biology. We need to consume it.

Fact: Bromine does not preferentially crowd out iodine. It does tend to concentrate in the same tissues as iodine for the obvious chemistry reason but it does not materially impede iodine absorption. Which has actually been measured in mammals in biomedical studies.

Fact: Some populations, like the Japanese, consume relatively huge quantities of bromine from natural dietary sources while still having (modestly) lower levels of thyroid disease than cultures that consume much less. This is an expected demographic result given the aforementioned biomedical research that would predict this, given that bromine does not crowd out iodine.

If we biologically require both iodine and bromine, which we do, it is pretty reasonable to assume that evolution makes sure the ions get to where they need to go. Human biology is full of superficially conflicting ion requirements: iodine and bromine, sodium and potassium, calcium and magnesium, etc.

As an added bonus, ions like bromine (and iodine) tend to be promptly excreted if you consume more than your body actually requires, so they don't stay in your system long in any case if they are not serving a purpose. There is nothing intrinsically dangerous about bromine.

pyre• 12 years ago

There is nothing intrinsically dangerous about bromine.

... other than coming into contact with pure Bromine... :P

mlichtenstern9• 12 years ago

"Bromine has no necessary function in the body. Substantial exposure to it can cause iodine deficiency, which will ultimately wreak havoc with the thyroid and every tissue in the body."

http://www.bodybio.com/content.aspx?page=bromine-bullies-iod...

userbinator• 12 years ago

MSG (migraine central).

Certain individuals may be more sensitive to glutamates than the majority but there's no evidence to show that they are harmful in the amounts that are regularly consumed - and those in Asia average a far higher daily intake of it than in the West, yet no specific health issues have ever been identified due to this.

(Personally, I find it has a pleasant stimulating effect, like caffeine but milder.)

mlichtenstern9• 12 years ago

I would not say "no evidence." There certainly is...

InfiniteRand• 12 years ago

How could bromine be a bad thing? It has "bro" right in the name!

x0x0• 12 years ago

This article is an industry puff piece. The author writes

   This highlights an unavoidable problem for the chemicals industry - much of 
   what they do is still a learning process, and it often takes many years for 
   the long-term risks inherent in a particular product to emerge. Yet it is 
   also important to get these risks in perspective. So far, there are no known 
   cases of brominated fire retardants actually causing anyone major health 
   problems - they are being banned because of the potential hazard they pose.

Well, yes -- you have to basically be an idiot to take a bioaccumulative lipophilic chemical that, after all, is unnecessary (we can still build flame-retardant materials without them, and somehow pepsi still makes pepsi) and use them without incredibly thorough health testing. We know some of these flame retardants disrupt thyroid hormones and may impair neurodevelopment. The risks outweigh the benefits, and I decline to be in the experiment pool.

tjradcliffe2• 12 years ago

The difficulties with this position are at least two-fold.

First, you claim that the use of bominated fire retardants is "unnecessary" because we can build flame-retardant materials without them, but the problem they are solving is not "building flame retardant materials" but "building flame retardant materials under some very specific constraints of cost, longevity, storage, transport, manufacturability of the product they are used in, etc". People who have never actually manufactured anything are often given to under-estimating the number of constraints on the process and airly wave away the issues faced by the people tasked with doing so (a common name for such people is "senior managers").

How good are the alternative flame retardants? Do they cost more, increasing price pressure and causing people to not replace their old electronics with new for a longer period of time, therefore actually increasing overall population risk? How do you calculate all that?

Second, "the risks outweigh the benefits" leaves unanswered the question "to whom"? The distribution of risks and benefits is not uniform. Replacing one product with another may well shift the risks and benefits, but can you tell me that we won't be having this conversation again a few decades from now, as the unexpected consequences of what you currently believe to be safer (not "safe" but "safer") alternatives become clear?

What is obvious to you is clearly not obvious to others (many of whom also have interests in the matter that might cloud their judgement, although of course the same is true of NGOs, which are in general even less science-based than industry risk-analysts.) This is why in any regulatory question of this kind treating the decision as a no-brainer and your opponents as the root of all evil is likely to be counter-productive. A better approach is to acknowledge a) the legitimacy of their concerns, including their concern about making a profit and b) bring up concrete, specific and detailed ways that the industrial processes in question could be improved. It's easy to think of abstract improvements that won't work.

The debate regarding ozone processing in the pulp and paper industry is a good example of how abstract claims that ozone was a perfect substitute for chlorine if only those evil capitalist industry dunderheads would come to Jesus turned out to be less than entirely true: ozone does have potential and is being used, but in practice turns out so far to be a less-than-complete replacement for chlorine bleaching: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bleaching_of_wood_pulp#Ozone

SonicMoon• 12 years ago

I once had to travel with a vial of bromine. Besides sealing it up pretty tight. I had a plan if I was caught getting on the plane - tell them it was cow's blood, which shouldn't be very terrorizing. If I was caught getting off the plane I'd tell them it was bromine because cow's blood would be disallowed by customs.

Danieru• 12 years ago

Personally the story behind why you need to travel with it sounds interesting, are you allowed to share?

mlichtenstern9• 12 years ago

Also interested to know more.

notastartup2• 12 years ago

Once in my second year chemistry lab, we were doing a final lab exam and there was this stuff in a brown flask labelled bromide. Normally you waft the smell of chemicals as part of the evaluation. I ALMOST wafted bromide until I asked if it was okay and the instructor said DO NOT DO IT. I immediately changed majors.

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

Smart move. I know someone who wasn't as forward-thinking as you and ended up with a massively attenuated sense of smell.

notastartup2• 12 years ago

that's not all...so many incidents. broke beakers a couple of times, accidentally unscrewed someone's wind blowing rubber tube (after you cleaned beakers with buckets of acetone) that started to dance like a headless worm destroying someone's work, my curiosity destroyed someone's yield that took several hours of careful process because I thought it looked so 'cool', dipped my hand in some nasty shit that supposedly carcinogenic and then told to just wash it out with soap, destroyed a dozen thermometer, overheated solution that boiled and caused smoke, broke a piece of glass we were heating that landed on a partner's arm, all for a fucking yield at the end that determined what grade we were going to get on the bell curve.

The lab assistants and instructors were also not very friendly or happy people. Says to ask for help but doesn't like to answer questions or help. We would start our lab sessions after lunch and come out when it was dark, rainy and foggy (typical Vancouver weather) out on to a campus that prided in brutalist architecture straight out of concentration camps.

I still shudder at those years of trying to be a molecular biochemist. Clearly, I was not fit for it in the labs or the lectures.

Then I switched to Economics and couldn't believe how easier school got. So infinitely easier...

fabian2k• 12 years ago

Bromine, bromide and brominated organic compounds are all completely different chemicals. Like chlorine gas (Cl2) and the chloride ion in table salt (NaCl), they behave completely different.

Even with the brominated organic chemicals, each one can behave differently. Very subtle differences in organic molecules can lead to drastically different behaviour. Lumping all those compounds together doesn't make much sense, they have to be evaluated individually (or in closely-related groups).

Htsthbjig• 12 years ago

"The bromine industry has not done a very good job in PR, in educating people that there are chemicals there that save your life and keep you safe."

I feel bad for the BBC because this article is a big pile of PR with jewels like:

"The chemistry blogger Derek Lowe points out that the few people known to have suffered health problems (none of which were quite like those listed by Buzzfeed) were drinking a vast amount of BVO-containing drinks - in the order of two to four litres per day."

So the culprit is in the person for drinking TOO MUCH!! 2 litters per day is a bast amount while also the recommended amount for a person to drink on a day. If you play sports like tennis or soccer or American football you are going to drink two or three times more than this.

Never mind that athletes are the intended segment of drinks like gatorate.

I am watching TV and it starts burning? This is the reason I use Apple aluminum displays, I don't want brominated sh*t near me. Unfortunately this lobby forced mattresses and quilts to use it and now you could detect those traces in the air of any normal bedroom. There are appearing lots of neurological disorders that are strongly linked to those products getting in contact with our body, as they are easily absorbed by our skin as well as our lungs.

The problem with those lobbies is that they don't let us decide. I don't care if my TV weights more or cost more(injection molded plastic is way cheaper), I want a metal frame. Nobody in my family smokes so let me choose foams and feather products that are brome free.

The excuse they use in order to force everybody to use those products is that most people have smokers in their house and they go to bed with the cigarette, so they are asleep while the house burns so they need to protect you.

Turns out that protecting us against ourselves is a great business. It is a pity that a theoretically independent medium like BBC takes part on it:

http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html

6581• 12 years ago

2 litters per day is a bast amount while also the recommended amount for a person to drink on a day.

Who recommends drinking 2 liters of soft drinks per day?

PaulAJ• 12 years ago

To be clear, 2 litres per day is the amount of water you are supposed to consume, including all the water in your food. Obviously anyone working out is going to need more to compensate for sweating.

Anyone drinking 2 or more litres of soft drink per day is going to need a lot of dentistry, for starters.

Zigurd• 12 years ago

It's a "sports drink." There are plenty of normal cases where you could drink 2l of Gatorade plus some water over the course of a day's hiking, skiing, biking, kayaking, etc. I wouldn't But why should I drink some bromiated compound under any conditions?

buddylw• 12 years ago

The main point to take away from this is that very few things can be said to be all bad or all good in chemistry. The dose makes the poison.

andreasvc2• 12 years ago

That is a trite truism which does not illuminate anything. The main problem is that unlike for food, there are no regulations in place requiring chemicals in products to be proven safe for humans. What happens is that decades after a chemical has been introduced, concerns might be raised, and the industry launches a big PR campaign to try to cover up the findings (I believe this very article is an instance of this).

tjradcliffe2• 12 years ago

I would actually say that the main problem is that the sentence "The main problem is that unlike for food, there are no regulations in place requiring chemicals in products to be proven safe for humans" is incoherent.

The very concept of "chemicals in products" that are made out of chemicals and nothing but chemicals makes no sense. Food is either safe, or it is not. Insisting we test "chemicals" rather than "foods" is like insisting we test "cows" rather than "beef".

That is: beef as it is delivered to you in the store contains both industrially manufactured, extremely complex, highly artificial, poorly quality-controlled cows, and a few simple, refined, relatively pure substances. Calling out the latter as "poisonous" (which everything is in some dose under some circumstances) while ignoring that cows, world-wide, kill hundreds of people every year makes no sense.

Or rather: it makes no sense to be concerned that a steak will be deadly because it contains a constituent (cow) that is deadly.

I'm not against testing of foods as they come out of the factory--and I agree that people in industry, like people in government and people in labour unions and people pretty much everywhere are not above lying to make something that is unacceptably dangerous to most people appear acceptably safe--but I am against this kind of focus on constituents that are completely unrelated to the form they are found in foods, be they a pure chemical like bromine or an animal species like cows.

It makes no more sense to be concerned about bromine in foods than it does to be concerned about cows in food. It does make sense to be concerned about food safety, but looking at the components of the constituents tells us nothing about food safety, so as soon as you seen someone wringing their hands about "bromine" rather than the specific bromine compound in the specific quantities used in a specific food product, you know they don't care about food safety.

ens• 12 years ago

x0x0 and Htsthbjig are right, this is an industry puff piece. In a previous job I researched brominated flame retardants and it is well documented that they cause developmental disruptions, cancer, and reproductive toxicity. One of the main dangers is that they are not chemically bonded to the plastic and foam that they are added to, like in your couch cushions. This means they get into dust, which is particularly a hazard for babies crawling on the floor.

The laws are also outdated and not very practical- in California, which has some of the most rigorous regulations on environmental health, the test for a flame retardant cushion is to hold a candle to a piece of foam for 12 seconds.

The Chicago Tribune did a series on the tobacco industry's role in getting brominated flame retardants into furniture, which I recommend reading for some context on the current US regulations: http://media.apps.chicagotribune.com/flames/index.html

Edited to add links to some studies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866688/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3569691/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3349420/

andrey-p• 12 years ago

A fire is a self-perpetuating chemical reaction in which the high temperature encourages fuel to combine with oxygen in the air, further raising the temperature in the process.

Kinda OT but this sentence finally cleared up for me how burning works.

Who's afraid of bromine?

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