I've been reading a couple of scary articles today on the danger of the industrial pollutants and chemicals to which we're all exposed to on a regular basis, and have been since birth. Some of the stats are simply amazing. An article from The Guardian which discusses the topic is aptly titled "Danger: chemical hazards" and in it they quote from a recent scientific study published this week in Lancet:

"Almost all children born in industrialised countries between 1960 and 1980 were exposed to substantial amounts of lead from petrol that could have reduced the number of children with far above-average intelligence (IQ scores above 130 points) by more than 50% and might likewise have increased the number with IQ scores below 70"

Scotsman.com news backs up this article with one of their own with the title "Chemical pollution 'responsible for silent pandemic of brain damage'" which quotes one of the authors of the paper as saying:

"The human brain is a precious and vulnerable organ. And because optimal brain function depends on the integrity of the organ, even limited damage may have serious consequences. Most chemicals are not regulated to protect the developing brain."

Many of the problems that we have in the world today may be directly related to disorders and mental and physical problems which we're causing ourselves through the continuing exposure to chemicals used in everything from cleaning fluids to pesticides to the output of the smokestack down the road. Neurodevelopment disorders are on the rise, and it's entirely likely that everyday chemicals may play some role in that. The National Academy of Sciences is quoted as saying that between the known chemical causes, and the suspected chemical causes, over a quarter of these disorders can be explained already, with more research on the way.

Most people probably don't realize that there's over 30,000 industrial chemicals which are frequently used, and research hasn't been done to determine the longterm effects of exposure to most of them. In the research paper the authors have suggested that over 200 chemicals, each of which carry some evidence of neurotoxicity, should be immediately put under stricter controls so that the next generation doesn't have to deal with the effects. When the WWF recently did blood work on 400 people in the UK, each was found to have a virtual cocktail of industrial chemicals in their systems, and even though in most cases the levels were low, the proof of continuing exposure is there. This is not the first study to show this. I remember a study of pregnant women in the US showing virtually identical results in blood and then later on in breast milk, while a Swedish study showed a particular fire retardant concentration in breast milk doubled every five years between 1972 and 1998 before being banned.

All of this also, in part, ties into a study I read about in New Scientist last week about obesity. In their article they list ten reasons why people are getting fatter, and one of the reasons is pollution. In studies with mice just a small amount of a pesticide, dieldrin, caused the mice to more than double their body fat. Exposure to hexachlorobenzene caused rats to gain significant amounts of weights compared to controls, even when eating half as much, and a human study on people eating fish contaminated with PCBs showed that the more PCBs in the people, the greater their body weight.

The bottom line, to me, here is that we're all exposed to massive amounts of chemicals that humans have just never been exposed to before. No one really knows what they all do to us, but the anecdotal and scientific evidence is that many of them are bad for us. As the effects are studied, it'd be nice if greater controls were put on just how much we're exposed to. Down here in Florida, where I now live, the use of pesticides is higher than most anywhere on the planet, and accordingly, so are the incidences of brain and lung cancer. What's the point of living the benefits of an industrialized society if we're killing ourselves to be here?