Everyday foods consumed by Canadians — such as salmon, ground beef, cheese and butter — are laced with chemical flame retardants, according to research commissioned by The Globe and Mail and CTV News.
But Samuel Ben Rejeb, associate director of the bureau of chemical safety in the health products and food branch of Health Canada, said the level of PBDEs in the country's food supply has been closely monitored for years and there is no cause for alarm.
Dr. Schecter said that while it is easy to dismiss levels in food as insignificant, the chemicals do accumulate in the body. He said it's also likely PBDEs pose similar risks to human health as their chemical cousins, polychlorinated biphenyls. The use of PCBs was curtailed in the 1970s after they were found to cause birth defects, impair brain and memory functions, and increase the risk of some forms of cancers.