New Study Links Toxic Chemicals to Soaring Childhood Chronic Diseases

By David Murphy,

Children around the world are facing skyrocketing rates of chronic disease, cancer, reproductive, and autoimmune diseases that did not exist in previous generations and are now the leading cause of illness and death in infants and children. Many of these significant long-term health threats are increasingly being linked to exposures to unregulated synthetic chemicals that are now pervasive in our food, air, water, and environment. 

Overview:

• A major scientific paper on protecting children’s health from toxic chemicals has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the world’s leading medical journal.
• This new research, conducted by some of the most trusted independent scientists and institutions, offers a workable roadmap of actionable steps and solutions to address the growing impact of synthetic chemicals on children’s health.

A Call for New Laws and Common Sense Regulations to Protect Future Generations

A team of 25 independent scientists from around the world published a new peer-reviewed paper this week after two years of deep research that chronicles our current public health crisis and found a conclusive link to unregulated synthetic chemical exposures. The team, from 17 leading scientific institutions, now proposes a series of simple legal and scientific solutions and calls on U.S. and global leaders for serious reforms of how safety testing is conducted on synthetic chemicals before they are approved and recommends replacing those chemicals found to cause harm. 

Their results, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s leading medical journal, highlight the direct link between synthetic chemicals in our environment and the rising chronic disease epidemic in children in the U.S., Europe, and the Western world in the past 50 years, where chronic exposure to synthetic chemicals is now widespread.

“Diseases caused by toxic chemical exposures in childhood can lead to massive economic losses, including health care expenditures and productivity losses resulting from reduced cognitive function, physical disabilities, and premature death,” the paper notes. “The chemical industry largely externalizes these costs and imposes them on governments and taxpayers.”

According to conservative estimates, IQ loss and cognitive damage from childhood exposure to toxic chemicals and the resulting lifelong negative consequences of reduced cognitive abilities and chronic diseases has caused significant economic damage to the tune of over $340 Billion dollars each year in the U.S. alone. 

Left unchecked, this level of harm to individuals and society will ultimately be our undoing.

As a result, scientists and medical doctors are sounding the alarm on the widespread exposures to synthetic chemicals and the current chronic disease epidemics in children and are calling for a major overhaul of the laws regulating toxic chemicals. In addition, these experts are prescribing a new global “precautionary” approach that would only allow chemical products to be approved once their manufacturers establish the products safety through independent testing. 

Alarming Children’s Health Statistics Over the Past 50 Years:

• Childhood cancer has increased by 35%
• Male reproductive birth defects have increased by 100% 
• Neurodevelopmental disorders now affect 1 child in 6 
• Autism is now diagnosed in 1 child of 36
• Childhood asthma has increased by 200%
• The prevalence of childhood obesity is up nearly 300%, leading to a spike in obesity, 
• Certain chemicals have led to significant IQ reductions, thus, massive economic damage.

Today, children in the U.S. and EU are regularly exposed to toxic chemicals, including plastics, PFAS, phthalates, microplastics, glyphosate, atrazine, and other pesticides, in the ultra-processed foods they eat, the air they breathe, the water they drink, swim, and bathe in, and their everyday environment. 

“Pollution by synthetic chemicals and plastics is one of the great planetary challenges of our time. It is worsening rapidly. Continued unchecked increases in the production of chemicals based on fossil carbon endangers the world’s children and threatens humanity’s capacity for reproduction,” according to the study’s lead author, pediatrician, and epidemiologist Phil Landrigan, MD, the director of Boston College’s Observatory on Planetary Health.

The paper highlights industry data showing the global increase of over 350,000 poorly regulated synthetic chemicals that these medical doctors, legal scholars, and scientists state clearly pose a significant risk to children’s long-term health and future generations. 

According to the peer-reviewed study, over the past 50 years, the synthetic chemical, plastics, and pesticide industries have released a wave of untested synthetic chemicals onto the market that have faced little or no rigorous safety testing or regulatory oversight. 

Alarmingly, fewer than 20% of these chemicals have been properly tested for toxicity to human health, and even fewer have been properly tested for harm to infants and children.

As a result of the chemical industry’s excessive lobbying and financial power, the long-term health of our nation’s children and national security are being put at risk.

Since 1950, the manufacture of more than 350,000 synthetic chemicals, chemical mixtures, and plastics, most of which are derived from fossil fuels, has increased 50-fold. This number is projected to triple by 2050!

According to the co-authors, who include Boston College epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, MD, environmental law scholar David Wirth, biologist Thomas Chiles, and epidemiologist Kurt Straif, this regulatory vacuum must be replaced by new laws that prioritize the protection of human health over the rampant production of chemicals and plastics.

Unfortunately, adequate safety testing and proper regulations or legal oversight have not kept up during this time, and these scientists are hoping to change that. 

For the past 50+ years, more than 80% of synthetic chemicals have been approved for sale in common everyday consumer products and foods without proper toxicological studies to determine their harmful impacts on human health.

According to a press release from Boston College, the study’s authors declare: 

“Under new laws, chemicals should not be presumed harmless until they are proven to damage health. Instead, chemicals and chemical-based products should be allowed to enter markets and remain on markets only if their manufacturers can establish through rigorous, independent, premarket testing that they are not toxic at anticipated levels of exposure.”

As environmental pollution and the exposure to toxic chemicals’ harmful impacts on children’s long-term health outcomes become more evident, a growing chorus of scientists, parents, and public health advocates are calling for major reforms. 

Unlike pharmaceuticals, synthetic chemicals are approved and brought to market with little prior assessment of their health impacts and almost no post-marketing surveillance for longer-term adverse health effects. 

“The core of our recommendation is that chemicals should be tested before they come to market; they should not be presumed innocent only to be found to be harmful years and decades later,” said lead author Dr. Landrigan, MD.

Landrigan, who heads Boston College’s Observatory on Planetary Health, has long advocated for proper oversight of toxic chemicals and warned against their potential long-term negative impacts on children’s health.