United States. Researchers at the UC San Diego School of Medicine discovered a widely distributed group of marine bacteria that produce compounds nearly identical to toxic man-made flame retardants.
Among the chemicals produced by ocean-dwelling microbes, which have been found in habitats as diverse as seagrass meadows, marine sediments and corals, it is a potent endocrine disruptor that mimics the human body's most active thyroid hormone.
"We find it very surprising and a little alarming that chemical flame retardants are biologically synthesized by bacteria common in the marine environment," said lead author Bradley Moore, Ph.D., a professor at UC San Diego.
