Formaldehyde: Lots of Undeserved Bad Press
The risk of getting cancer from breathing formaldehyde which tends to off-gas from furniture and fabrics indoors is about the same as the risk of cancer from drinking two glasses of beer or two cans of cola every day. (1)
Bruce Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold at the University of California, Berkeley report that wine is actually more carcinogenic than formaldehyde: see Table 1.
Table 1- Ranking of possible carcinogenic hazards*
Possible Hazard Daily Human Exposure Human Dose of
HERP% Rodent Carcinogen
4.7 Wine, 250 ml Ethyl alcohol, 30 ml
4.0 Formaldehyde workers Formaldehyde 6.1 mg
2.8 Beer, 12 oz; 354 ml Ethyl alcohol, 18 ml
1.4 Mobile home air, Formaldehyde, 2.2 mg
14 hr/day
* Bruce N. Ames and Lois Swirsky Gold, “The causes and prevention of cancer,” in Risks, Costs, and Lives Saved, Robert W. Hahn, Editor Ocxford University Press, 1996
Our own bodies create formaldehyde as a normal by-product during amino acid synthesis and overall metabolism, including breaking down antibiotics and other medications. It’s also in drinking water and the air we breathe. Also, 90 percent of the formaldehyde around us is naturally occurring, with 60 percent of that coming from plants or trees, yet it’s still perfectly fine to walk through the woods. (2)
Humans have always been exposed to significant levels of formaldehyde in their diet (10-20 mg/day) because formaldehyde is a natural component of fruits, vegetables, meat and fish. Formaldehyde has also been commercially produced and used safely for over 100 years.
However, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, this ubiquitous substance acquired a new and sinister reputation, due to reports of coughs and other maladies experienced by some people who lived in the trailers that FEMA had purchased as temporary housing for those displaced by the storm. Note from Table 1 that this exposure is less troublesome than a glass of wine or beer.
Yet, using epidemiologically weak association, rather than established causation, the International Agency for Research on Cancer declared inhaled formaldehyde to be a ‘known’ carcinogen in 2006. In 2010, the EPA followed suit, as did NTP in 2011. They did this even though scientists knew that formaldehyde is a natural intermediate in cellular metabolism and is essential in the synthesis of DNA and proteins, the buildings blocks of life. (3)
Large amounts of endogenous formaldehyde are universally tolerated without harm in animals from bacteria to man, because it is very rapidly converted, with a half-life of one and a half minutes to a less toxic substance called formate, an essential co-factor in the one-carbon cycle. Regulatory agencies have ignored this important fact and, by branding formaldehyde as a known human carcinogen by inhalation have made people irrationally afraid of the trivial amounts of formaldehyde that may off-gas from the wood paneling in their homes. (3)
Formaldehyde is a normal metabolic product that is present at all times throughout the body and is rapidly metabolized. More than 50,000 milligrams are produced, used and detoxified by the human body every day. The very short half-life in blood (1.5 minutes) guarantees that levels of formaldehyde in blood never exceed 2-3 parts per million, regardless of exposure. These
normal levels of endogenous formaldehyde are so much higher than potential exogenous exposures in the workplace or at the dinner table that the latter have no detectable impact on normal blood levels. If external exposer to inhaled formaldehyde cannot elevate levels in the blood, then it clearly cannot produce adverse health effects.
Because formaldehyde is a normal product of human metabolism, it occurs normally in exhaled human breath at concentrations of 4-10 parts per billion, which is roughly 1,000 times higher than EPA’s 1 in a million cancer risk level. If the latter were a realistic level of cancer risk, then normal human breath would have to be considered carcinogenic. (3)
References
- D. L. Ray, Environmental Regulations: Costs and Benefits, (Washington, DC, George C. Marshall Institute, 1993)
- Tara Haelle, “No more formaldehyde baby shampoo,” slate.com, March 3, 2014
- Frank Schnell, “Formaldehyde: the carcinogen that wasn’t,” science20.com, May 28, 2020
About the author: Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has written for The American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, Hawaii Reporter and Canada Free Press.
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Charles Higley
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When I taught college biochemistry many years back, I have always pointed out that we make formaldehyde in our normal metabolism. And the conversion of formaldehyde to formate is enzymatic, which explains the short half-life. Formaldehyde is undesirable in our metabolism, so we have developed means for eliminating it rapidly. No surprise that it is a non problem, except in the minds of those who want there to be problems.
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