Jessica Werner Zack, San Francisco Chronicle
Link to Article
A great article about my friend Marie and her efforts to create awareness and action on this very important issue. I would encourage all my friends in Chicago, Michigan, New York, and everywhere in between to watch the video presentation. If you are inspired/infuriated and feel moved to take action (as I was), contact EWG to see if Ken or another EWG representative might be in your area so that you can organize and event. This is a really important issue! Watch the presentation and understand the facts because we are the ones who need to take action to protect ourselves, our families and friends and future generations. Feel free to contact me with any questions or for suggestions on how you can take action.
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PCBs. VOCs. Pthalates. Bisphenol A (BPA). The list of industrial chemicals on the minds of consumers is crowded with confusing new acronyms as growing scientific data show a link between chemical exposure and a range of behavioral, reproductive and immunological problems.
Lawmakers in Washington have taken notice, albeit long after the European Union, which banned pthalates in 2000. In August, President Bush signed the Consumer Product Safety Act banning lead and six types of pthalates from baby products. However, in January the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a one-year stay of enforcement of aspects of the law. California then became the first state to approve a similar ban, which went into effect last month.
For parents wanting to make healthy choices for their kids, it can be a struggle, even for the most eco-savvy, to strike the right balance between a kind of paranoid parenting, where dangers are seen lurking in every plastic toy and nonorganic mattress, and blithe acceptance that the benefits of living in our convenience-driven industrial world comes at a cost.
'Stunned by the findings'
Marie McGlashan, an acupuncturist and health-conscious Mill Valley mother of three, says she "stays up on the health issues surrounding pesticides and chemicals, especially when it comes to what to feed my family." So when she joined a group of parents at San Francisco's Katherine Delmar Burke School last fall to hear environmental advocate Ken Cook speak, she didn't expect to be "so stunned by the findings I heard. Seeing his '10 Americans' presentation was a dramatic moment for me."
Cook is the energetic and persuasive co-founder of Environmental Working Group (EWG) in Washington, D.C., a research organization and public health lobbying powerhouse. Cook has been traveling the country since 2005 presenting the findings of EWG's "10 Americans" study, which tested the umbilical cord blood of 10 babies born in U.S. hospitals from a random sample supplied by the Red Cross on the same day in 2004.
287 chemicals found
The research was the most comprehensive testing ever conducted on human umbilical cord blood. It found 287 industrial chemicals in the samples, nearly half of which are known carcinogens. Also detected were dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) and their toxic by-products, and numerous pesticides, including DDT and others, which were banned more than 30 years ago.
"The placenta does not filter out toxins to the degree scientists and doctors once believed," said Cook by phone from Washington, D.C. In reality, a baby in utero "lives in a critical window of vulnerability," according to Cook, with an immature blood-brain barrier that efficiently transfers nutrients - as well as contaminants - to his or her internal organs.
"Learning that industrial pollution begins in the womb hit me so hard," says McGlashan, echoing the reactions of thousands of people who have heard Cook's data-crammed multimedia presentation. "As scary as it is, I knew more people were ready to hear his message and I was inspired right away to do something to help." McGlashan contacted fellow mom-activists Kimberly Pinkson, founder of EcoMom Alliance in San Anselmo, and Debbie Friedman of Mothers of Marin Against the Spray. They invited Cook back to the Bay Area to give an expanded version of his "10 Americans" talk at Cavallo Point in Sausalito on Tuesday.
Like 'Inconvenient Truth'
Cook's "10 Americans" presentation has been described by some as the "Inconvenient Truth" of environmental toxicity issues. "It was very much our goal to affect people the way Gore did about climate change," says Cook. Using more wit and less wonkishness than the former vice president, Cook, bolstered by years of EWG scientists' research, helps people cut through the mass of conflicting information and misinformation on toxic exposure. He stresses that while causation is difficult, if not impossible, to prove, scientific data point toward chemical exposure as a real factor in the dramatic rise of many diseases in the United States.
"I'm not suggesting for one minute that just because you have a carcinogenic chemical in you it's going to cause cancer, or even that if you went out and got tested for a chemical that would necessarily tell you what you should then do for your health," Cook says. "But what we do know about the overlap between genetics and environment is profound.
"We're no longer talking about nature versus nurture. We simply don't mutate and evolve quickly enough to explain things like a 40 percent increase in childhood brain cancer, soaring autism and infertility rates or one in seven women getting breast cancer. One scientist I know says, 'Genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.' "
To skeptics who question the impact of small concentrations of chemicals (measured in parts per billion) that show up in the "10 Americans" cord blood samples, Cook points out that many popular drugs - Paxil, Cialis and Albuterol, among them - have very real therapeutic effects at the same or lower concentrations. "If drugs are tested to make sure they are effective at these low levels, isn't it crazy to assume otherwise for industrial chemicals?"
Call it 'biomonitoring'
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Cook says TSCA's main flaw is its failure to mandate health and safety testing by manufacturers before using a new chemical in consumer products. This is in stark contrast to the more than 100 studies on average that are required before a new pesticide or drug can be marketed. "Something's terribly wrong with a regulatory system that assumes a toxic chemical is innocent until proven guilty. Our safety net is in tatters."
During every "10 Americans" presentation, Cook urges his audience to support the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act, a comprehensive chemical policy reform that will be introduced in Congress by senators Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., Barbara Boxer, D-Cal. and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Cal., this spring. Kid-Safe would reverse the burden of proof from the public to the chemical manufacturers to determine safety. It would require manufacturers to meet the "reasonable certainty of no harm" standard in place for pesticides used in the growing of food.
Leaving the burden to consumers to ensure their safety through guesswork and precautionary measures, Cook says, "is just folly. Even I resent having to go to (EWG's) Web site (which links consumers to "Skin Deep," its cosmetic safety database) to figure out which personal care products I should be worried about and which ones I should buy."
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He promotes making simple lifestyle changes that can minimize chemical exposures: Use cast-iron pans instead of nonstick; filter your water for cooking and drinking; buy organic; avoid products with added fragrance (which is often an indicator of pthalates).
And most of all, he urges people to "realize how much positive change we're capable of. We got lead out of gasoline, we banned PCBs, we got rid of DDT - and we still have cars, we still have an electrical grid and we still have food to eat. Now we need one additional step regarding chemicals and it's pretty simple: If they're in people, we ought to be damn sure they're safe."
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