Bloomberg Businessweek USA - 02.09.2019

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◼ Bromine $4.40-$5.40 / kg U.S. market5 / ounce

35

Br

Bromine

A

mong the technical and sometimes

arcane-seeming debates at this

year’s meeting of the International

Code Council was one that grew sur-

prisingly emotional: whether building

codes should allow the use of polysty-

rene insulation not treated with flame

retardant in foundations, below a 3.5-

inch concrete slab. At stake was a larger

argument about whether some volatile

elements, including bromine, are safer

for human health if they’re part of

longer chains of molecules. On one side

were some of the chemical industry’s

most powerful companies. On the other

was 74-year-old chemist and activist

Arlene Blum.

Blum is an accomplished

mountaineer—she led the first all-women

expedition to scale the Himalayan mas-

sif Annapurna in 1978—and some-

times describes her professional trials

in those terms. In 1977 she identified a

brominated flame retardant called Tris

as a likely carcinogen, leading to a ban

on Tris-treated kids’ pajamas. That was

a relatively easy climb, at least compared

with persuading international standards

setters in 2008 not to impose regula-

tions that would have put hundreds of

millions of pounds of flame retardants

in the casings of TVs, printers, and other

household electronics. That, Blum, says,

“was harder than Annapurna.”

Most bromine comes from the Dead

Sea, as a byproduct of the production of

potash, an essential ingredient in fertil-

izer. It’s useful for rubberproduction,

oil and gas drilling, and pesticides,

but its main use is in flame retardants.

Albemarle, Lanxess, BASF, and DuPont

all make these retardants or products

that contain them, and that puts them in

opposition to Blum. She “has opposed

the use of chemical flame retardants in

virtually every application and circum-

stance,” a spokesman for DuPont says.

The EPS Industry Alliance, which rep-

resents makers of expanded polystyrene,

calls Blum’s work “alarmist.”

After her research led to the

elimination of Tris from children’s

pajamas, Blum dedicated most of the

next three decades to mountaineer-

ing, raising her daughter, and writing

a memoir. The number and uses of

By Tiffany Kary Arlene Blum has spent decades

persuading the world to rely

less on brominated flame retardants

Photograph by Rachel Bujalski

Woman Against the

Element

Bloomberg Businessweek / SEPTEMBER 2, 2019 THE ELEMENTS