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Children and Chemicals
The illnesses that children suffer from have changed dramatically over the past 50 years. Traditional infectious diseases like smallpox, measles, and cholera have largely been controlled, but they have been replaced by chronic and disabling conditions like cancer, asthma, neurological impairment, and hormone disorders. Exposure to toxic chemicals in the home and environment as well as poverty, racism, and inadequate health care have contributed to the rise of these health problems in children.
Since 1950, more than 75,000 chemicals have been created and are in use. These chemicals eventually end up in the environment, either as a product or as a waste. Consequently, children are exposed to many of these chemicals in the air they breath, the water they drink and the food they eat. The problem is that there is adequate information on the health effects of only a small fraction of these chemicals and even less is known about the effects of exposure on children.
Children Are More Vulnerable
We do know, however, that children are more vulnerable to the toxic effects caused by exposure to chemicals than adults. This susceptibility is based on several factors:
1) Children are exposed to more toxic chemicals than their parents because, pound for pound, they ingest more food, water, and air than adults giving them a proportionately greater dose of contaminants. They also put their hands in their mouth and play on the ground more often than adults, exposing them to more contaminated dust and soil, lead paint, household and garden chemicals, and other potentially hazardous chemicals.
2) A child's ability to detoxify, or break down, a chemical that they have been exposed to is less than that of an adult because a child's natural defense mechanisms are not fully developed.
3) Childhood is a period of rapid growth and development when the functions of critical organ systems are defined. Exposure to chemicals during this time can interfere with the normal development of these organ systems and can result in permanent and irreversible damage.
4) Exposures early in life give children more time than adults to develop chronic diseases that may be triggered by chemicals.
Childhood Cancers
Each year about 8,500 children are diagnosed with cancer. Leukemia and brain cancer are the most common types of cancer in children. Cancer is the leading cause of death from illness and disease among children. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a newborn child has a 1 in 600 chance of contracting cancer by the age of ten.
Although the overall number of new cases of cancer reported by NCI in March 1998 dropped slightly for the first time since the 1930's, cancer rates in children continue to climb at an alarming rate. According to the NCI, from 1973 to 1995 childhood brain and nervous system cancers increased by 26.3% and acute lymphocytic leukemia increased by 13.5%. The increases are even more dramatic in children 0 to 4 years old, where brain and other nervous system cancers increased 53%; leukemia 18%; soft tissue cancer 37%; and kidney and renal pelvis cancer 32%. These increases are shown in Figure 1. Teenagers suffer from different types of cancer. The increases from 1973 to 1995 in 15 to 19 year olds are shown in Figure 2. In this group, thyroid cancer increased 29%; Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma 128%; ovarian cancer 78%; testis cancer 65%; and bone and joint cancer 30%.
The cause of these increases is not known. Better diagnostic detection may explain part of it. Lifestyle, diet and exposure to viruses may contribute as well. Genetic alterations are not a likely factor since the increase is so rapid. Perhaps the largest contributing factor is exposure to toxic chemicals, especially during the critical periods of development during pregnancy and infancy.
Asthma
Asthma affects approximately 4.8 million children under the age of 18 and is the leading cause of children's hospital admissions for chronic conditions. According to the American Lung Association, asthma in children has increased by more than 92% from 1982 to 1994. Of the 15 million people who suffer from asthma, approximately 30% are children. An astounding $1.9 billion is spent annually on treatment for children with asthma who lose approximately 10 million school days a year.
Air pollution can trigger asthmatic responses in children. Traditional air pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter have long been implicated in childhood deaths and hospitalizations. Now, exhaust from cars, trucks, and buses and emissions from incinerators, chemical plants, and refineries contribute to general respiratory distress, especially in urban areas. In New York and Chicago, asthma has become the leading cause of children's admissions to hospitals. Asthma rates are highest in many urban areas among African American and Latino children.
Other triggers for asthma vary a great deal. Allergens in the form of pollen, mold, animal dander, dust mites, cockroach droppings, and certain foods can trigger asthma. Irritants such as household cleaners, cooking fumes, paints, coal and chalk dust, and tobacco smoke are also triggers.
Neurological Impairment
Children are exposed to many neurotoxic chemicals in the environment including lead, mercury, solvents, pesticides and PCBs. One study by Herbert Needleman at the University of Pittsburgh found that children with no symptoms of lead poisoning but who had elevated body and blood levels of lead had a 4.5 point deficit in mean verbal IQ scores. Similarly, children born to mothers who ate Great Lakes fish contaminated with PCBs had a 6.2 point IQ loss and were twice as likely to be at least two years behind in reading comprehension as children with lower PCB levels.
Hormone and Sexual Disorders
There is mounting evidence that chemicals such as dioxin, PCBs, and DDT interfere with the normal function of the human endocrine system. Hormones are critical to controlling the normal growth and development of many of the body's functions including those of the neurological, immune, and reproductive systems. Hormones work like a key fitting into a lock at an organ's receptor site. The proper amount of a hormone released at the right time produces a response that is needed for the body to operate and function normally.
Some chemicals have the same shape as natural human hormones. When these imposter chemicals "sit" in a receptor, an incomplete or inaccurate signal, or no signal at all, is sent to the organ, preventing or altering its normal function.
Chemicals that mimic or block normal hormone functions are called endocrine disruptors and have been linked to many adverse health effects. Exposure to these chemicals may explain the increase over the past two decades of testicular and ovarian cancer, a reported doubling in the U.S. of the male birth defect hypospadias, the 50% decrease in sperm counts reported in U.S. and European men, the increase in undescended and undersized testicles, and the early onset of puberty in young girls.
Steps You Can Take to Protect Your Children
Its's very likely that environmental factors play a significant role in the increase in these childhood illnesses. Exposure to low level mixtures of toxic chemicals over long periods of time does have an impact. These chemicals get into the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the products we buy, and the places where our children play.
The ultimate solution to protecting our children and ourselves is to change the corporate practices that put chemical contaminants into our food, air, drinking water and soil in the first place. This means we need to stop allowing companies to release toxic chemicals into our communities and environment. It will take time and a tremendous organized effort to achieve this goal. We all need to become environmental detectives in our communities, asking questions about if our trash goes to an incinerator, how the local hospital deals with waste, or what pollution sources are in town. CHEJ can help you become a community environmental detective. And in the meantime, there are steps that you can take to reduce your children and your family's exposure to toxic chemicals.
- Because of the many advantages of breastfeeding, mothers should continue to breast feed. But if it is possible, express milk between feedings. If you're thinking of having another child continue to express milk after weaning your child. Each time you express milk, you reduce your body's storage of chemicals.
- Because many persistent chemicals like PCBs and dioxin accumulate in animal fat, reduce the amount of fatty food that you feed your child; buy lean meats and low-fat dairy product.
- Whenever possible, eat organic food not treated with pesticides
- Check at your child's school or day care to see if pesticides and herbicides are used to control pests and work with the school to establish a non-chemical pest control program
- Buy a water filter to remove chemicals in drinking water;
- Have your home tested for lead in paint if you plan any renovations or if any paint is peeling. Also check for asbestos if you are planning any renovations. Make sure there is no asbestos or lead paint in your local schools
- Place air filters on heating and cooling units in your home.
Protecting our children's health can not be achieved alone. You cannot move to a remote island or fully control the environmental influences on your family. Even if you moved to Montana, bought only organic food, and became a vegetarian, you and your family would still be at risk. As long as corporations continue to release toxic chemicals into our communities and the environment we will all continue to be exposed.
The impact that these chemicals have on our health is not fully understood and it cannot be measured by scientific methods. As scientists, we know little about the toxicity of most chemicals and almost nothing about exposure to low level mixtures of chemicals. This is because both industry and government have refused to recognize the obvious in contaminated communities across the country where people have become ill due to low level exposures to toxic chemicals. While science tells us nothing about what is going on in these communities, the people are telling us loud and clear that they are sick and that they want help. Statistics on childhood cancer, asthma, neurological dysfunction, and hormone and sexual disorders confirm what the people are saying. We need to listen and take action to protect our children's health.
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