Andrea Martin is one of nine adult volunteers who were tested, by doctors at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, for the presence of more than 200 industrial compounds, pesticides, pollutants and other chemicals in their blood and urine. It is the most extensive such testing ever conducted on a group of people. And the results are shocking.

Study participants learned they had an average of more than 90 of these compounds in their bodies. None of these people face high exposure to toxic chemicals on the job. Yet every person in the study carried 36 synthetic chemicals known to cause cancer in humans or in laboratory studies. What would doctors find in your body?

In addition to carcinogens, the “body burden” of the nine tests subjects also includes dozens of chemicals proven to damage the brain, nervous system and other organs. Still others are known development toxins, linked to abnormalities in children of exposed mothers. Even substances banned decades ago because of health risks still linger in their bodies.

Andrea Martin is a 56-year old mother. A breast cancer survivor, she founded the Breast Cancer Fund (www.Breastcancerfund.org) to study the relationship between toxic chemicals and her disease. Though she suspected scientists would find some evidence of toxic chemicals in her body, she was astounded at the sheer number of chemicals present. “We are walking toxic sites,” she says. Today she is fighting brain cancer.

Andrea is left to wonder about the relationship between her cancers and the environmental contaminants stored in her body. Scientists do not have a definitive answer. No government agency has ever studied the health risked posed by the mixture of chemicals found in Andrea- or anyone else. Chemical companies do not have the answers either. Incredibly, they cannot predict which of their thousands of products will end up in our bodies. Or what their combined effects will be.

Chemical industry lobbyists are already assailing this and other studies by arguing that the level of chemicals in people is too small to cause disease. They actually say that toxic mixture of hundreds of contaminants in people is no concern. If that is the case, let them prove it with sound science before people are exposed.

“Body Burden” research like this study, and a forthcoming report from the federal Centers for Disease Control, raise legitimate health concerns. But chemical companies are pressuring our elected leaders to restrict new research and block common sense safeguards. If they succeed, you and your families, just as those in our test study, will continue to be these companies’ unwilling guinea pigs.