A new study has revealed that women who have higher levels of flame retardants known as PBDEs in their blood might just be harming their fertility. PBDEs are found mainly in some common household items.

As per the research, women who were more exposed to the aforementioned class of flame retardants, and had higher levels of them in their bloodstream, took longer to conceive as compared to those who had lower PBDEs in them.

"For every tenfold increase in PBDEs in the blood, we saw a 30% to 50% decrease in the odds of becoming pregnant in any given month", said study researcher Kim Harley.

A spokesperson for the industry, however, has defended the sector by stressing that the findings of the new study are limited to a particular type of PBDE, which is no longer used.

For the sake of research, Dr. Harley and colleagues questioned as many as 223 pregnant women from the Northern California area, on how much time it took for them to conceive, and they then proceeded to measure the level of PBDEs in the blood samples collected from them. Data this collected helped researchers reach the conclusion of the study.

Details have been published in the January 26 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives.