TRUMP AND PRUITT'S EPA GUTS RESEARCH ON TOXIC CHEMICALS AND KIDS

I maintain a computer file with hundreds of scientific articles about the effects of toxic substances on children.

Arsenic and lead in drinking water. Pesticides and other Persistent Organic Pollutants in the air we breathe, clothing, furniture, building materials, you name it. Some common drugs taken during pregnancy. Hormones and endocrine disrupting chemicals in food, plastics, toys, just about anything that could go into a child's mouth. Chemicals used in fracking that get into the air and water. Fire retardants, fungicides, and many other classes of chemicals. Not to mention the impact of the cocktail of these chemicals that many people carry in their bodies, in breast milk, in their blood.

 Credit: DES Daughter

These articles detail the impacts of these toxins on developing children still in the womb, on infants, children, teenagers (and adults too). Autism, attention deficits, abnormal brain activity, birth defects, impaired sleep, impaired learning, reduced IQ, disruptions in the reproductive system, infertility, obesity, cancer, breathing problems, kidney and liver damage--all of these and many more impairments and diseases have been linked to various chemicals that find their way into our children's bodies.

Like research on smoking decades ago and on climate change now, much of this research is controversial or marginalized. The suspect chemicals have important uses in agriculture, energy production, medicine, and many other activities, and add billions of dollars to the economy and to the bottom lines of giant corporations. The companies that manufacture and sell these substances are strongly motivated to keep selling them, and are willing to spend huge sums to question, hide or suppress research that threatens their bottom line, carry out or fund research aimed at sowing doubt about such threatening findings; and in many cases demean or threaten researchers who are brave enough to research these links.

Still, this body of research has been used by governments around the world, and by the US, to develop legislation to ban some of the most deadly chemicals, reduce and control the use of many others, and protect the health of children and adults.

In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been one of the major sources of funding for research on the impacts of known or potential toxins, through its National Center for Environmental Research (NCER). The NCER funded millions of dollars of research on the risks to children from potentially dangerous substances. Until now, that is.

Trump's appointee to head the EPA, Scott Pruitt, has decided to kill the NCER, as announced on February 26, 2018. The gutting of the program is couched as an efficiency measure, but is in line with Trump and Pruitt's goals of reducing regulations and risks for corporations, unfortunately at the expense of America's children.

In 1965, comedian Tom Lehrer satirized the extent of pollution that Americans were then being exposed to in the song "Pollution" on his album That Was the Year That Was. The song opens with:

If you visit American cith
You will find it very pretty
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breath the air!

The EPA was created five years later, in December of 1970. Over the years, it did a lot to clean up America's polluted rivers, lakes, industrial sites, cities and skies. However, under Trump and Pruitt, we seem to be turning back the clock to those bad old days, when, as Lehrer concluded:

So go to the city, see the crazy people there
Like lambs to the slaughter
They're drinking the water
And breathing the air

QUICK UPDATE ON POLIO ERADICATION PROGRESS -- WE'RE SO CLOSE

Followers of this blog know that I'm fascinated by the international effort to eradicate polio. Wiping out this paralyzing, often deadly disease will be one of humankind's great accomplishments. The only other human disease that we've been able to eradicate is smallpox--the last spontaneous case was in 1977.

According to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, the effort is incredibly close to success, with just 5 cases reported worldwide this year, to May 24 (vs. 16 this time last year). In the early 1950s, before the Salk and Sabin vaccines were introduced, 15,000 children died or were paralyzed by the poliovirus every year just in the United States, 500,000 worldwide.

It's taken decades of dedicated, sometimes dangerous work by scientists, international organizations, and on-the-ground health providers to reduce that number from 500,000 to 5. The goal now is to shrink it to zero.

It appears that the polio virus now survives in just a few locations--the 5 cases all occurred in Pakistan and Afghanistan, destabilized by war and refugees. In addition, all 5 cases were caused by Wild Polio Virus 1 (WPV1), meaning that the other two strains of wild polio virus, WPV 2 and 3, may already be eradicated.

Wild Polio Virus Type 3

Credit: Manuel Almagro Rivas/CreativeCommons

Massive vaccination programs of at-risk children and adults are continuing, and will need to to continue for some time even after there are no more documented cases.

We're so close . . .

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IN U.S. EXPOSURE TO HORMONE DISRUPTING CHEMICALS COSTS HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS PER YEAR

Following up on my recent post "Ten Percent of US have high concentrations of ten or more toxins in our blood,", here's a new study that calculates the costs to the U.S. economy from the burden of disease that some of those chemicals cause.

Plastic bottles--one of many sources 

of endocrine-disrupting chemicals

Credit: Velka/Shutterstock (public domain)

Writing in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, October 17, researchers at the New York University Medical Center say that even a conservative estimate of the diseases and conditions--including birth defects, autism, attention-deficit disorder, intellectual disability, infertility, obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke--caused by exposure to these toxins puts their cost to the economy at $340 billion. That's 2.3 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Flame retardants alone (found in building insulation, fabrics, furniture and electronics) account for more than $200 billion of those health-related costs.

The researchers say this is the first assessment of the overall costs to the U.S. economy from the buildup of endocrine-disrupting substances in the population.

The major sources of these chemicals include plastic bottles, the lining of metal food cans, detergents, flame retardants, toys, pesticides and cosmetics. These pervasive chemicals build up in our bodies over time. They can impair fetal development in the womb, especially the brain and nervous system, and lead to a variety of diseases in adults.

These chemicals are pervasive and extremely difficult to avoid. To address the problem at the policy level, the authors call for more proactive testing and tighter regulation, starting with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They point out that people living in Europe, where these substances are more strongly regulated, have less exposure, lower levels in the bodies and blood, and reduced risk of disability and disease.

At the personal level, they recommend steps such as not microwaving food in plastic containers or covered by plastic wrap, avoiding containers with the number 3, 6 or 7 on the bottom, which contain phthalates and using fragrance free or "all natural" cosmetics.

You can find more ways to minimize your and your family's exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals here.

This may seem a daunting or even impossible task, given how ubiquitous these chemicals have become. However, new research shows that avoiding common sources of endocrine disrupting chemicals can quickly reduce levels in the body