The Story of Stuff - Annie Leonard [66]
Only a handful of the tens of thousands of synthetic compounds in use have been screened for health and environmental impacts. Not one has been screened for full synergistic health impacts, which means the impacts on us when we’re exposed to more than one of these compounds at the same time.131 And these days, for those of us living in industrialized countries, that kind of multiple-compound exposure is pretty much constant.
The terrible truth is that once we make them (or, in the case of the heavy metals, extract and disperse them), it’s very difficult, often impossible, to get rid of these materials. They travel vast distances, carried by wind and water and within animals. Many of them bioaccumulate or biopersist. We breathe tiny particles of them right into our lungs, drink them in with our water, absorb them from our Stuff. Our sunscreen, our furniture, our nonstick frying pans, our foam fire-retardant cushions, and our waterproofed fabrics, to name just a few sources, are all leaching toxins.
Toxics are everywhere now. Many scientific studies report they are ubiquitous. Scientists seeking an unexposed population tested native people in the Canadian Arctic, far from major industrial sources, and still found very high body burden levels of synthetic chemicals.132 NGOs in the United States and Europe have vacuumed household dust, tested it, and found that it is full of toxic substances.133 No wonder crawling babies and household pets often have such high body burden levels, even though they haven’t been around long enough to come into contact with all the various sources of toxins or to be affected by what the chemical industry apologists call “lifestyle choices.” In a study of umbilical cords, the Environmental Working Group found they contained an average of 287 agricultural and industrial chemicals each.134 And, in a shocking violation of the sanctity of human life, breast milk, which is at the top of the food chain, now has alarmingly high levels of toxic contamination.135
The fundamental truth about all these dangerous materials is captured in one simple phrase: toxics in, toxics out. As long as we keep putting any of these toxic ingredients into our production processes, toxics will continue coming out: in the products, and via pollution.
It seems like a lightbulb has gone off in the European Union, where in 2006 they passed the REACH act, which stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals. Essentially, REACH means that companies have to prove that chemicals are safe before they get used and spread around,140 as opposed to the “innocent until proven toxic” mentality that continues to reign in the United States. That mentality is illustrated by our ancient and notoriously weak Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), which has not been updated since its adoption in 1976. At its adoption, TSCA allowed 62,000 chemicals in use to continue without testing them; it has since allowed another 20,000-some chemicals to enter the market, resulting in tens of thousands in wide use today despite growing evidence of serious health risks.141 To begin to rectify the situation, lawmakers introduced the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act (KSCA) in May 2008. KSCA takes Europe’s REACH approach, placing the burden of proof on chemical companies to demonstrate that chemicals are safe before being introduced into commercial use.142
INTO THE MOUTHS OF BABES
Toxics in breast milk? Talk about a controversial issue.
This is a hard one to talk about for many reasons. It is the last thing that a new mother wants to think about while holding that precious little bundle of joy. It is scary. It feels overwhelming. It may discourage mothers from breastfeeding, which is still, by far, the best food for babies.
But we’ve got to talk about it. Silence only serves the polluters who, I am sure, would be grateful if no one ever brought up the issue of toxics showing up in human breast milk. So let’s talk about it. Let’s talk