Taking On Big Chemical

According to an alarming new report led by Boston College researchers, an act as simple as drinking water could lead to serious health problems for children—including birth defects, brain disease, and cancer—thanks to the unchecked production of chemicals that have become ubiquitous in the environment. “Chemicals should no longer be presumed harmless until proven otherwise,” the researchers wrote in their report, which was recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine and which calls for bold global action, including new precautionary laws and regulations. The measures they’re calling for would, among other things, require chemical manufacturers to establish through independent testing that chemicals are not toxic to humans before they enter the marketplace. As it stands, the chemical industry “endangers the world’s children and threatens humanity’s capacity for reproduction,” the authors warned in the report. “Inaction is no longer an option.”

Synthetic chemicals are derived from fossil fuels and used in everything from plastic bottles to plant fertilizer, and traces of them have been discovered in the farthest reaches of the planet, from the Himalayan glaciers to the Mariana Trench. They also wind up in the human body through the food we eat, the air we breathe, and absorption through the skin. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimates that the average American’s bloodstream contains at least two hundred manufactured chemicals. The potential for toxicity is particularly concerning when it comes to children, according to the new NEJM report’s lead author, Boston College epidemiologist and pediatrician Philip Landrigan, who has spent a career researching the links between synthetic substances and disease. “Children drink seven times as much water per pound of body weight as you or I and breathe four times as much air. If there are any toxic materials, they’re going to get more.” Landrigan said that when he started out as a pediatrician in the 1970s, the number of manufactured chemicals hovered around 60,000. Today, it has risen to 325,000, and is expected to triple by 2050.

The rapid proliferation of these chemicals coincides with an alarming rise in noncommunicable diseases, which are the leading causes of illness and death among children today. According to the report, childhood cancer has increased 35 percent since 1950, while pediatric asthma has tripled in prevalence, and neurodevelopmental disorders now affect one out of every six children. Studies continue to highlight links between exposure to synthetic chemicals and chronic illness, and Landrigan believes the problem could be much worse than is understood because nearly 80 percent of manufactured chemicals have never been tested for toxicity. “We know that there are chemicals out there that are harming people whose harms we have not yet discovered,” he said.

This isn’t the first time Landrigan has taken on powerful industries in the name of public health. In the late ’70s, his research was a major factor in the EPA’s decision to remove lead from paint and gasoline, and a decade later, he exposed the impact of chemicals found in pesticides on children’s health, persuading Congress to revamp the federal pesticide law. At Boston College, Landrigan directs the Global Observatory on Planetary Health, which is working with the United Nations on an international treaty to end plastic pollution.

To launch his fight against the chemical industry, Landrigan brought in colleagues from across the University, including Thomas Chiles, BC’s vice provost for research and academic planning; environmental law scholar David Wirth; and epidemiologist Kurt Straif. Along with twenty-one other researchers from universities such as Duke and Johns Hopkins, they formed the Consortium for Children’s Environmental Health and spent two years pulling together existing scientific studies and developing a plan. “Going up against these enormous, highly influential companies is hard,” Chiles said. “But if you look at Phil Landrigan, he’s been able to do it. He does what we always teach our students: Get the science behind you and then go lobby.”

In the consortium’s report, the researchers call for sweeping new laws requiring manufacturers to test chemicals for toxicity before they reach the market, and to continually monitor products to identify any long-term health effects. “It doesn't make any sense for scientists to be discovering these connections decades after people have developed diseases,” Landrigan said. “We should be screening chemicals beforehand and keeping the bad actors out of the market.” ◽