Courtney Carignan, a postdoctoral researcher at The Children’s Environmental Health and Disease Prevention Center at Dartmouth, is the lead author of a new study about gymnasts’ exposure to flame-retardant chemicals, reports The Huffington Post.
Carignan, a former gymnast, led the study while she was at Boston University School of Public Health. While flame-retardants are used in products ranging from clothes to couches, gymnasts find themselves in close contact with the chemicals, which are found in the polyurethane foam pit cubes that they tumble or vault into during training sessions, the article explains.
“In the new study, Carignan and her colleagues found four to 6.5 times more flame retardants in the blood of 11 collegiate gymnasts than in the U.S. general population,” writes The Huffington Post.
Read the full story, published 11/16/13 by The Huffington Post.
