The bill, SB 689, proposing this two-year program, was introduced by Sen. Deborah Ortiz (D-Sacramento) and passed a Senate committee before stalling. The bill will be reviewed in January.
The bill has garnered widespread -- although not unanimous -- support.
Like any research involving donated biological samples, unethical or sloppy research could result in the misuse of that information. For example, detection of a particular pollutant that causes cancer, at least theoretically, could be used by health insurers to deny coverage or for other forms of discrimination, says James Hodge, deputy director of the Center for Law and the Public's Health at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. If individuals in a community were found to be carrying high levels of a harmful substance, entire communities could be branded with that information.
"This is a new type of health surveillance involving sensitive health data," Hodge says. "Any time we're testing any individual through any bodily sample, there are privacy concerns at the core."
However, much like the EPA-funded study already underway, a state program would be voluntary. Individual results would be confidential and study subjects would be counseled about the findings -- a way to address fears over privacy invasion and misuse of the data, proponents say.
The $150,000 EPA study was funded in part to demonstrate how researchers can conduct biomonitoring in a particular community without alienating its residents, Hooper says. The major scientific goal of that study is to look for evidence of flame-retardant chemicals in breast milk.
But information gleaned from breast-milk biomonitoring may undermine a different health objective. Several health groups say they fear biomonitoring will frighten women from nursing their infants.
Leaders of La Leche League, an international breast-feeding education organization, view breast-milk biomonitoring with trepidation.
"Yes, we have to clean up the environment, but don't use breast milk as the call to arms. It will get attention but it will have a very negative effect," says Marian Tompson, one of the organization's founders. "I know well-educated women who have been scared away from breast-feeding because they have read about contaminants in breast milk."
