Are flame retardants contributing to thyroid cancer?

[Deb]

http://dukeforward.dukemedicine.org/way ... id-cancer/

Thyroid cancer incidence in the United States has increased more than 270 percent in the last 20 years. Rates are also increasing around the world. “It’s a pandemic,” Sosa says. Some have argued that rates aren’t really rising that much, but rather that more tumors are being diagnosed because of increased use of imaging, which detects even the smallest of tumors. “That isn’t the whole story, because it’s not just the smallest cancers that are increasing in incidence,” Sosa says. “And the increase is also being seen in developing countries; they’re not doing more CT scans or more MRIs. There must be something else that could explain this.”

An environmental cause makes sense, especially since certain types of chemicals, known as brominated flame retardants, can alter thyroid function. “The chemical structure of one class of flame retardants is very similar to thyroid hormones that circulate in our body,” Stapleton says. “There are a number of different pathways by which these chemicals can interfere with thyroid hormone regulation. And we know that their use, and our exposure to these chemicals, has increased tremendously over the past several decades.”

In preliminary results, the team has found a connection between levels of one particular brominated flame retardant and cases of thyroid cancer. People with higher levels of this chemical in their house dust are five times more likely to have thyroid cancer than others in the study.

[Gabes-Apg]

In my opinion - there are multiple toxins in current day society contributing to health issues.
read an article the other day that wifi intensifies mercury release from dental amalgams
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/wi-fi- ... l-amalgams

and we do not have high enough levels of essential nutrients to detox the toxin overload we are exposed to each day...