Toxins for You and for Me
The research study published yesterday in the highly respected British medical journal, The Lancet, reported that one in six children in the industrialized world now has a developmental disability expressed as learning difficulties, sensory deficits and delays in intellectual development, all derived from developing nervous system deficits caused by environment exposure to toxins.Evidence has been accumulating that link the use of industrial chemicals to a vast array of neurologocal disorders, and the report, issued by a team from the Harvard School of Public Health, with co-authors Drs. Philippe Grandjean and Philip J. Landrigan, (a professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine), finds it deplorable that chemicals are not regulated to protect children. The use of these unregulated chemicals places vulnerable children's developing brains at unacceptable risk.
In a nine-month period of fetal development in uteris, the fetal brain grows into "a complex organ consisting of billions of precisely located, highly inter-connected and specialized cells" the report states. Growth takes place within "a tigtly-controlled time frame, during which each stage of development must be attained on schedule and within a correct sequence, creating "windows of unique susceptibility to toxic interference" which can result in deleteriously permanent consequences.We decry the dreadful health-imperilling conditions in which Third-World children live, yet remain steadfastly ignorant of the dangers of what our vaunted lifestyles are exposing our own children to. While the scourge of malaria runs rampant through under-privileged countries throughout the world and children who survive malaria and other deadly tropical diseases are faced with HIV and AIDS-deprived childhoods, we expose our own children to the deadly effects of noxious chemical agents.
"Even if substantial documentation on their toxicity is available, most chemicals are not regulated to protect the developing brain," says Dr. Grandjean.
The report concludes, "the combined evidence suggests that neurological disorders caused by industrial chemicals has created a silent pandemic in modern society.
As evidence of the scale of the problem, they note that virtually everyone born in industrialized countries between 1960 and 1980 was exposed to lead used as an additive. That exposure may have reduced IQ scores above 130 (considered superior intelligence) by more than half and increased the number of scores less than 70. Lead was banned only afer there was proof it could shorten attention spans and slow motor co-ordination.
These toxins have long been suspected of causing irreparable harm to the environment, and to all living creatures within it. Now we learn that they are guaranteed to foreshorten life, squander children's physical and intellectual potential, severely curtail their quality of life. All this while we claim to be on guard for their well-being. Yet we embrace the inexorable pursuit of "advances" in the production of consumer goods using untested and questionable chemicals, and we support the enhancement of the producers' bottom line.
This is not benign neglect. This constitutes a stubborn disregard for all that should truly matter to us; yet we subscribe willingly to the suborning of core human values. Politicians, advertisers, public relations lobbyists of industry are all implicated, complicit in the never-ending search for brave and expedient new ways to expand profits, increase the nation's GDP and just incidentally, reduce the quality of our lives.
The consuming public falls right into line. We're so anxious to partake of all the good things that a society absorbed in appreciation of luxury goods and a truly unsustainable burden upon nature that we don't look behind the facade of cheap and affordable products that in truth cost us dearly. Our unquestioning acquiescence has made us a partner in the scenario of reducing the value of human lives in the long term, while we celebrate possessive gains in the short term.
Ongoing and newly-published research such as the one just published are producing irrefutable data telling us just how dear the cost has become and will continue to be for our children's futures - from the more immediate effects on their health leading to the truncation of their human potential, to the long-term fall-out on our environment. That's a steep price to pay. Why are we so complacent?
We wring our hands in worry as greater numbers of children present with baffling symptoms of compromised potential; we dread hearing constant reportage of cataclysmic climate change, yet we cling to our valued, wasteful, truly ignorant lifestyles. Why?
We have ears but we do not hear. We have eyes but we do not see. We experience love, but clearly insufficiently. We have reason but succumb to irrational greed. Man, the ultimate conundrum.
We're not, obviously, hard-wired for caution and prudence. Yet our imperative in self-preservation is imperilled by our short-sightedness.
posted by Pieface @ Thursday, November 09, 2006
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