Household Exposure Study (California)

Over the past century, Richmond, California, has been transformed into a highly industrialized urban landscape, with the third largest oil refinery on the West Coast helping to define its silhouette.
baby and couch

The emissions from the city’s many industries and transit lines seep into the homes—and lungs—of residents. Not surprisingly, Richmond now has the highest hospitalization rate for asthma in the county. In contrast, just twenty miles to the west, is Bolinas, a coastal town with a population one-hundredth that of Richmond—and no heavy industry.

Silent Spring Institute joined forces with Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental health and justice organization, and researchers at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley to study the patterns of exposure to chemical pollutants in Richmond and Bolinas. In 2006—with protocols, equipment, and training provided by Silent Spring Institute—staff members from Communities for a Better Environment collected air and dust samples both inside and outside 40 homes in the Liberty/Atchison Village area of Richmond. They also took samples from 10 homes in Bolinas.

The collaborators compared the samples in the two communities in an effort to determine whether residents of Liberty/Atchison Village were at higher risk for exposure to a number of pollutants that have been implicated as hormone disruptors or as potential causes of breast cancer or respiratory disease.

The project’s specific aims were:

  • to link breast cancer advocacy and environmental justice in communities that differ in racial, ethnic, and economic character;
  • to better understand exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals in indoor environments and the relationships between indoor measurements and outdoor sources;
  • to look for signs of impact from nearby industrial facilities and transportation corridors;
  • to report environmental monitoring data to individuals and communities in a way that supports action to protect health;
  • to develop guidelines for other researchers and communities on best practices for reporting results to people who participate in environmental monitoring.

News & Updates

March
2021

New study led by Silent Spring shows how replacing an old couch with a new one free of flame retardants reduces harmful exposures in the home.

November
2014

New study finds people are contaminated with several toxic flame retardants rarely studied in the US, including one that has never before been detected in Americans called TCEP.

November
2012

Study finds most houses had levels of at least one flame retardant that exceeded a federal health guideline.

August
2010

Study confirms indoor uses of consumer products are the primary sources of endocrine disrupting exposures in indoor air, and shows that indoor levels are higher than those outdoors.