Better Living through Chemistry

Tomorrow the CDC will release what is only its third National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals. The report will offer the best available data on the "body burden" of chemicals carried by US residents. About 150 chemicals are expected to be documented in this year's report, an increase from 116 in the previous report, released in January 2003, and 27 in the first report, released in March 2001.

In addition to covering more substances, the third report may provide better trend information for a few substances, as well as improved breakouts by categories such as age, sex, and race. Substances monitored in the third report are expected to include 13 metals, 43 pesticides, 12 phthalates, 6 phytoestrogens, 23 polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, 17 dioxins and furans, 34 PCBs, and tobacco smoke.

And I can hardly wait. How about you?

While we're waiting, though, here's something else to read - a truly fine series by Doug Fischer of the Oakland Tribune. The series is called: The Body's Burden: Our Chemical Legacy. It consists of three main articles plus a bunch of other very useful information, including a "body burden quiz" - so you can start getting a handle on your own burden. Fortunately there is also a "what you can do" section - ways to lay that burden down.

The three parts are: What's In You? in which we meet a white, upper-middle-class, well-educated, environmentally conscious Bay Area family, and discover along with them the extent of their chemical burden. The most hair-raising surprise is what their two-year-old is carrying in his little body. The second installment, The Great Experiment, gives more factual information about

... our chemical legacy, picked up from our possessions, passed to our children and sown across the environment. It's the result, scientists say, of 50 years of increasing reliance on synthetic chemicals for every facet of our daily lives.

Only recently have regulators grasped its scope. Health officials have yet to fully comprehend its consequence.

We are all, in a sense, subjects of an experiment, with no way to buy your way out, eat your way out or exercise your way out. We are guinea pigs when it comes to the unknown long-term threat these chemicals pose in our bodies and, in particular, our children.

Part III, The Body Chemical, discusses what is known about the links between all these chemicals and human health problems (precious little at this point), and, for fairness' sake I'm sure, quotes a fellow named Becker, who has a PhD in Toxicology and Pharmacology. Becker used to work for the California EPA. Today he's a senior toxicologist with the American Chemistry Council, representing every major chemical manufacturer in the country. This man is telling us that we have nothing to worry about. Chemical soup - in what he sees as low doses - isn't going to hurt us.

Wait now, WHO does Becker work for?

It is expected that the CDC report will complement the study I reported on a few days ago, about the body burden of newborns. The problem with the "low dose" theory here is the same as it is with the toxins in our food. Each separate chemical may be present in low amounts (or in amazingly high amounts), but low doses of 250 toxins present in one little (or even big) body at one time add up to a lot of poison. And I have to wonder why it's only recently, in 2001, occurred to the CDC to begin paying attention to this.

| +Save/Share | |