Novel halogenated flame retardants in Canadian human milk from the MIREC study (2008–2011)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Novel halogenated flame retardants (NHFRs) have been developed to replace those brominated flame retardants that have been restricted due to their persistent, bioaccumulation potential and toxicity and, therefore, it is important to determine whether these replacement products are present at detectable concentrations in Canadians. NHFRs were measured in human milk samples (n = 541) collected from across Canada between 2008 and 2011, which is the first pan-Canadian dataset for these chemicals in human milk. Among the 15 measured NHFRs and eight methoxy-polybrominated diphenyl ethers (MeO-PBDEs), nine NHFRs and two MeO-PBDEs (6-MeO-PBDE 47 and 2-MeO-PBDE 68) were detected at a frequency of more than 9%. Despite benzene, 1,1′-(1,2-ethanediyl)bis [2,3,4,5,6-pentabromo-]/decabromodiphenylethane [DBDPE] being detected less frequently than the other observed NHFRs, its relative contribution to the sum of nine NHFRs was important when it was present. The maximum ΣNHFR concentration in Canadian human milk was 6930 pg g−1 lipid while the maximum ΣMeO-PBDEs was 1600 pg g−1 lipid. While most NHFR concentrations were significantly correlated with each other, no relationships between maternal age, parity or pre-pregnancy BMI were identified with ΣNHFR concentrations in the milk. In contrast, maternal age was significantly correlated with ΣMeO-PBDE concentrations (r = 0.237, p < 0.001). ΣNHFR concentrations were similarly not related to maternal education, although ΣMeO-PBDE concentrations were found to be higher in milk from women who had graduated from trade schools relative to the other education levels considered. NHFR detection frequency and concentrations observed in the Canadian human milk seem to align well with Europe.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".