Kids, Chemicals and Illness: Profits over Precaution

[Guest guest]

Kids, Chemicals and Illness:

Profits over Precaution

 

By Arnold Chien

 

--

 

 

Something's wrong with the kids.

 

Childhood asthma incidence has doubled in the past decade. For children under

five it increased by 160 percent between 1980 and 1994.1 Asthma is now the

leading chronic disease in children, affecting 5 million kids in the U.S.2

 

Learning disabilities are increasing dramatically. One child in six is afflicted

by autism, aggression, dyslexia, or attention deficit disorder. In New York,

cases of learning disability rose 55 percent between 1983 and 1996, from 132,000

to 204,000. In California there were 11,995 reported cases of autism in 1998, up

210 percent from 1987.3

 

The rate of genital birth defects in boys has soared. Between 1968 and 1993,

incidence of hypospadia (in which the urethra exits near the base of the penis

instead of the end) doubled in the U.S., and it now affects one in every 125

boys born in the country, an astonishing rate.4

 

Girls are reaching puberty at startlingly young ages. According to a 1997 study,

some 15 percent of white girls were budding breasts and growing pubic hair by

age 8, and about 5 percent by age 7. For African American girls almost half were

developing breasts or pubic hair by age 8.5

 

Childhood cancer rates are rising. According to the National Cancer Institute,

the age-adjusted incidence of cancer in children under 14 increased by almost 21

percent between 1975 and 1998. During this time, bone and joint cancers rose by

almost 66 percent, gliomas by over 38 percent, nervous system tumors by 30

percent, and acute lymphocytic leukemia by over 25 percent.6

 

As Dr. Philip Landrigan of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine puts it, these are

“ominous trends.” What's behind them? In some cases a genetic component is

suspected, but population-level genetic change comes much too slowly to explain

recent trends. In contrast, the number and volume of synthetic chemicals

introduced into the environment and marketplace has exploded over the postwar

decades, and there is suggestive evidence for a range of consequent health

problems.

 

Solvents in paint, gasoline, strippers, and dry cleaning have been associated

with miscarriages, birth defects, and child leukemia and brain cancers.

 

Pthalates, found in cosmetics and many plastic products including toys, have

been correlated with lung, liver, and heart problems, and with premature puberty

in a study of Puerto Rican girls.7 Sulfur dioxide and other air pollutants can

trigger asthma, a possible explanation for the existence of “asthma clusters” in

polluted areas.8 Various pesticides found on food, no-pest strips, lawns, and

other sources, have been linked to leukemia and other cancers.9

Mercury-contaminated fish eaten by pregnant women is a contributing cause of the

more than 60,000 children born every year at elevated risk for learning

disabilities, according to the National Academy of Sciences.10

 

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), ubiquitous worldwide, have been linked to

deficits in intellectual performance, memory, and attention span for kids

exposed before birth, even at what are considered “normal” levels of exposure.11

 

Cadmium released from incineration, energy plants, sewage, and other sources has

been linked to various neurological disorders.12 A component of plastic which

leeches into food from the lining of tin cans, food containers, and baby bottles

has been linked in animal studies to early puberty, reproductive disorders, and

breast cancer risk.13

 

Dioxins emitted by incinerators and numerous industrial processes, and pervasive

in meat and dairy products because like PCBs and other toxins they accumulate in

animal fat, are probable carcinogens that have also been linked to developmental

and learning disabilities.14

 

This past May, an array of doctors, scientists, activists, and public health

professionals presented such testimony to a subcommittee of the Massachusetts

state legislature, in support of a proposed bill. The bill, S-1115, would

establish a commission to comprehensively study and recommend action on

children's health issues.

 

Why a special effort for kids? Because, the subcommittee heard, they are more

vulnerable to toxins, as they breathe, eat, and drink more per pound of body

weight than adults.

 

They encounter contaminants in dust, dirt, and carpets as they crawl and

stumble, and often ingest them when they suck their thumbs or put objects in

their mouths. Nursing children are exposed to contaminants accumulated in breast

tissue, receiving their total lifetime “safe” limit of dioxin in the first six

months of nursing.15

 

Children's immune systems, brains, and reproductive systems are immature and

susceptible to permanent damage, at the same time that they are not fully

capable of detoxifying alien chemicals.16

 

Damage can occur even at low levels of exposure. As the book Our Stolen Future

first comprehensively discussed, timing can be more important than dosage: at

early ages, even small disruptions of the hormone messages that instruct

development can result in lifelong damage.17

 

But current regulations on toxic chemicals are based on research that gauges

effects on a 155-pound adult male, with children regarded simply as “little

adults.”18 In March of 1998, the EPA's Scientific Advisory Panel warned that

current guidelines for developmental neurotoxicity testing did not cover the

full window of children's vulnerability. The regulatory system also has many

other problems. For non-pesticide and non-pharmaceutical chemicals, no

pre-manufacturing toxicity tests are required by the EPA. For pesticides, a

number of tests are required but none for the endocrine system, immune system,

or nervous system. Such omissions partly explain why, of the nearly 3000

high-volume chemicals that are produced at over a million pounds per year, basic

toxicity data is lacking for 75 percent.19 It is almost entirely lacking for

combinatory effects, as testing proceeds on a chemical-by-chemical basis.

 

One might have thought that an advisory commission dedicated to protecting

children would be uncontroversial, particularly since no funding was requested.

But in fact the subcommittee heard considerable opposition. Representatives of

the biotechnology and chemical industries argued that the commission is

unnecessary, expressing satisfaction with the regulatory status quo.

 

The lightning rod for industry opposition was the “Precautionary Principle”

(PP), formulated in the bill as “the responsibility of all persons, agencies and

legal entities in the Commonwealth to take responsible precautionary measures

whenever there is a potential for harm to health or the environment...even when

the nature or magnitude of the harmful effects are not fully understood.” The

wording closely follows the 1998 Wingspread consensus of a panel of scientists,

activists, and government researchers, as well as statements issued from the UN

Earth Summit Conference, the Kyoto protocol, and European environmental

ministers. Essentially it's just “better safe than sorry,” as for example when

the Surgeon General's warning for cigarettes was mandated at a time when

smoking's links to lung cancer were suspected but not yet proven.

 

Reasonable people may disagree on precisely how to state the PP and apply it in

specific cases.

 

As Jean Halloran of the Consumers Union remarks, “In the case of bovine growth

hormone, with zero benefits to consumers, there's no reason to tolerate any

risk, no matter how farfetched or small. With a new cancer drug, we'll tolerate

a lot of risk.

 

With beef hormones, we can imagine two different societies coming to different

judgments, but we can also imagine the beef industry in one of those societies

distorting science to exaggerate or underestimate a risk in order to influence

how society ends up feeling.”20

 

But the industry representatives had no interest in advancing the discussion.

They aimed rather to dismiss the PP entirely, by attacking its least plausible

version. Thus the Massachusetts Chemistry and Technology Alliance testified that

the PP tolerates no risk, and would have ruled out water purification, seat

belts, and polio vaccination—contrary to the bill's actual proposal, that

proponents just must prove an activity to be “the least harmful feasible

alternative.”21 Another tactic was to call the PP “anti-science,” a flaw that

somehow escaped the scientists testifying in favor of the bill. But the charge

does seem to apply to industry groups' influence on the direction of research,

their privatization of scientific results, and their suppression of findings

that they don't like. (For details see Rampton and Stauber, Trust Us We're

Experts, and Fagin and Lavelle, Toxic Deception.) The PP is anyway not just

about science.

 

It's for scientists to discover evidence of safety and harm, evidence which

comes in degrees. But it's for the public to determine what actions to take

given what degrees, and the PP just means acting sooner than later.

 

Under the veneer of its professed concern for public safety and sound science is

industry's fear of what the PP could mean to profits. As Rampton and Stauber

note, the PP “is revolutionary because there are tens of thousands of chemicals

that have already been introduced into common use without careful testing for

long-term health effects.

 

For the biotechnology industry, the principle is dangerous because thousands of

products in development involve genetically modified foods, medical treatments,

and other processes that they believe are safe but whose safety cannot be proven

except in practice.

 

For the automobile, fossil fuel, and mining industries, the [PP] is dangerous

because growing evidence of global warming threatens to impose substantial

changes on the way they do business.” This is why industry spends large sums on

public relations. For example, in December 1994, two months after being advised

by a consulting firm to “mobilize science against the precautionary principle,”

the Chlorine Chemical Council (CCC) increased its budget to $12 million for

lobbying and public relations. Much of it was devoted to challenging an

incriminating EPA report on dioxins and similar compounds.

 

In 1999, industry groups organized two forums devoted to attacking the PP,

including one hosted by the industry-funded Harvard Center for Risk Analysis

(which testified against the proposed child health commission) and whose

sponsors included the CCC, Chemical Manufacturers Association, and Koch

Industries (which recently agreed to pay a record $35 million for hundreds of

oil leaks in six states).22

 

Through these and many other efforts, industry continually influences

policymakers, the media, scientists, and professional associations, and is

effectively present in government itself through a “revolving door”—including

EPA advisory panels, as recently reported by the General Accounting Office.23

 

So the fierce opposition to the Massachusetts bill was to be expected. It was

also successful, at least for the time being. According to John McNabb, State

Legislative Director for Clean Water Action, the bill would have been killed but

for a last-minute intervention by Senator Susan Fargo. After McNabb alerted her,

Fargo persuaded Chairman Robert Koczera and Senator Marc Pacheco to instead

place the bill in “active study,” meaning that there will be another session to

consider it sometime before the end of 2002. (Governor Jane Swift also has the

power to create a child health commission on her own, though as yet there are no

indications she'll do so.)

 

The chemical industry and its allies have not yet won, but their determination

will have to be matched by an ongoing collective response from those who want to

see a decent future for our kids, and everyone else too–not just in

Massachusetts.

_________________

JoAnn Guest

mrsjoguest

DietaryTipsForHBP

http://www.geocities.com/mrsjoguest

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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