Wood floor finish fingered as source of PCBs
The Fabulon finish was widely used on wood floors before 1970, according to a flooring expert.
Nearly 5 years ago, a team of researchers led by Ruthann Rudel of the Silent Spring Institute published a paper documenting the presence of PCBs in nearly one-third of 120 homes they tested in Cape Cod, Mass. (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 47, 4543–4553). New research published by Rudel and colleagues in Environmental Health (DOI 10.1186/1476-069X-7-2) suggests that in at least one of the homes, PCB-containing hardwood floor finish is to blame. Older finishes may be "an overlooked but potentially important source of current PCB exposure in the general population," the authors write.
The researchers initially targeted the homes because of their location in an area where the Massachusetts Bureau of Environmental Health Assessment had documented elevated rates of breast, colorectal, lung, and prostate cancers. When the scientists retested the homes with the highest PCB concentrations 5 years later, they found PCBs in the air at levels well above the U.S. EPA's health-based guidelines. When PCB concentrations in the residents' blood were compared with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's PCB data (PDF: 49 KB), they were found to be higher than those in 95% of the U.S. population. In fact, the PCB concentrations in one resident's blood exceeded the highest level ever reported in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey for a white woman over the age of 59.
Residents of one of the retested homes recalled using the Fabulon hardwood floor finish throughout the 1950s and 1960s, and one flooring expert says that the finish was widely used at that time. The Silent Spring Institute researchers consulted an old reference book to verify that the finish contained PCBs before 1969. A second home also contained hardwood floors that had not been refinished in many years. The floor finish was the residents' only likely source of PCBs other than food, according to the paper.
Rudel and her colleagues conclude that many buildings, including schools, may still harbor PCB-containing floor finishes.
