Body pollution: We're all exposed to chemicals.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

Byline: Bob Downing

AKRON, Ohio _ California resident Davis Baltz has learned that he has low levels of 106 toxic chemicals in his body.

He wasn't completely surprised by the finding, but he was angry.

"It made me mad that that many chemicals were in my body without my consent or my knowledge," he says.

Ken Taggart, who lives in Ohio's Washington County, is worried about one toxic chemical in his body. Ammonium perfluorooctanoate (PFOA), or C-8, has been found in drinking water supplies in his area, and he also was exposed to it during his 32 years working at the DuPont plant across the Ohio River near Parkersburg, W.Va. His body was once so contaminated with C-8 that his company told him not to donate at a blood bank.

"If C-8 were such a good thing, God would have put it in your body when he made you," Taggart said.

It is almost impossible to avoid exposure to toxic chemicals. An estimated 80,000 industrial chemicals are in use today, and most have never been studied or analyzed for their impacts on people or the environment.