Afflicted with toxins?: Tasmanian devils at a conservation park in Taranna. The pair are among a group of animals kept as part of an attempt to prevent healthy devils from succumbing to a deadly, infectious facial cancer and to breed healthy offspring.
Credit: AFP
SYDNEY: Potentially cancer-causing flame retardant chemicals have been found in the bodies of Tasmanian devils – but an expert says there is no link as yet to the deadly facial cancer that has plagued them.
Last year studies confirmed that the disfiguring facial disease was caused by a cancer that likely started in one individual. It has been able to spread because levels of immunity are low in the species – but the origin of the cancer has remained mysterious (See, Tasmanian devil epidemic: cause isolated?, Cosmos Online).
Concentration of flame retardants
On Tuesday the Australian newspaper reported the details of a Tasmanian government study in which fat was taken from 16 of the animals, including some with the facial disease. The results reveal high levels of flame retardant chemicals used in computers and furniture.
The National Measurement Institute found high levels of hexabromobiphenyl ether, known as BB153, and "reasonably high" levels of decabromobiphenyl ether, known as BDE209, the newspaper said.
Activists seeking a ban on the toxins said the finding was significant as it showed "reasonably high" levels of a chemical that industry had previously argued was safe.
"We were quite shocked," said Mariann Lloyd-Smith, co-chair of the International Persistent Organic Pollutants Elimination Network. "Certainly this study will have ramifications."
Although the sample of the recent study was too small for firm conclusions, Lloyd-Smith said the toxins weakened the immune system and might theoretically be a factor in the disease that threatens to wipe out the Tasmanian devil.
Cancer causer?
However, Warwick Brennan, a spokesman for the Save the Tasmanian Devil Project, said the results needed more assessment. "We have got some raw data there. It requires an expert toxicologist to interpret it."
Hamish McCallum, expert on the marsupial carnivore at the University of Tasmania in Hobart, agreed, arguing that the results are less than conclusive.
"If diseased animals turned up with much higher levels of chemical residues in their tissues than un-diseased animals then there may be cause for concern," he said. "[However the] toxicologists have not found this to be the case."
Though the study has found levels of the chemicals that are unusually high in the devils – there is no evidence as yet to suggest those levels are damaging to the animals, said McCallum. "Certainly from the results so far there is nothing I have seen to suggest that the [flame retardant] chemicals could have caused the cancer."
with Agence France-Presse
