Researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have discovered a widely distributed group of marine bacteria that produce compounds nearly identical to toxic man-made fire retardants. Among the chemicals produced by the ocean-dwelling microbes, which have been found in habitats as diverse as sea grasses, marine sediments and corals, is a potent endocrine disruptor that mimics the human body’s most active thyroid hormone. The study is published in the June 29 online issue of Nature Chemical Biology. “We find it very surprising and a tad alarming that flame retardant-like chemicals are biologically synthesized by common bacteria in the marine environment,” said senior author Bradley Moore, PhD, a professor at the UC San Diego Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The toxic compounds are known as polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), a subgroup of brominated flame retardants that are combined into foam, textiles and electronics to raise the temperature at which the products will burn. Certain formulations of PBDEs are no longer used in automobile and home products in the United States, but testing by the Environmental Protection Agency indicates that most Americans and Canadians carry traces of the chemicals. Indeed, levels exceed
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