Tag Archives: environmental health

Urgent Need for New Chemical Regulations For Kids

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The Consortium for Children’s Environmental Health. NEJM 2025; 392: 299-305. Manufactured Chemicals and Children’s Health — The Need for New Law

This review article explains the worsening toll that chemicals in our environment are exacting on the health of children.

Here are some of the key excerpts:

  • “An estimated 350,000 manufactured chemicals, chemical mixtures, and plastics are currently listed in global inventories.3 Most are produced from fossil fuels — gas, oil, and coal. Production has expanded 50-fold since 1950, is currently increasing by about 3% per year, and is projected to triple by 2050.4 Environmental pollution5,6 and human exposure7 are widespread.”
  • In the past half-century, “the incidence of childhood cancers has increased by 35%.10 Male reproductive birth defects have doubled in frequency.11 Neurodevelopmental disorders now affect 1 in 6 children, and autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed in 1 in 36.12 Pediatric asthma has tripled in prevalence.13 Pediatric obesity has nearly quadrupled in prevalence and has driven a sharp increase in type 2 diabetes among children and adolescents.14 In adults, by contrast, illness, disability, and death due to cardiovascular disease, stroke, and many cancers have decreased.15,16“
  • “Research in environmental pediatrics has flourished over the past 25 years. Two key catalysts of this growth were the 1993 publication of the National Research Council report, Pesticides in the Diets of Infants and Children21 which elucidated the biologic bases of children’s heightened susceptibility to toxic chemicals, and the passage in 1996 of the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA), the U.S. law on pesticides. The FQPA made protecting children’s environmental health a national priority and required generation of data on chemical hazards to children, stimulating substantial expansion of federally funded research in environmental pediatrics…Prenatal exposures are particularly hazardous…diseases associated with early-life exposures can manifest any time during the life span.23“
  • “Prospective, birth-cohort epidemiologic studies that measure chemical exposures in pregnant persons and fetuses and follow children longitudinally over many years are particularly powerful platforms for discovering associations between synthetic chemicals and disease because they link exposures to outcomes in individual children and eliminate recall bias.”
  • “Widespread childhood exposure to a toxic chemical can damage the health, economic viability, and security of an entire society. For example, each year from the 1950s through the 1970s, about 100,000 tons of tetraethyl lead were added to gasoline in the United States to enhance automotive performance, causing massive environmental lead contamination and extensive human exposure… The average IQ among U.S. children was reduced by an estimated 2 to 5 points,32 the number of children with an IQ above 130 decreased by more than 50%, and the number with an IQ below 70 (the criterion used in the International Classification of Diseases to define intellectual disability) increased by more than 50%…reducing toxic chemical exposures can produce major economic benefits…because each additional IQ point is associated with an increase of 1.8 to 2.4% in lifelong earning potential.
  • “Chemicals should no longer be presumed harmless until proven otherwise…National chemical policies should take into consideration findings from animal and mechanistic toxicology studies, which are highly predictive of human health risks, including risks to children.49“

My take: Pollution from chemicals and plastics is worsening and resulting in worsening health/intellectual outcomes for children. I doubt any legislation will be forthcoming to improve the situation. It is unfortunate that protecting profits is prioritized over protecting our health.

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What We Don’t Know About Toxic Exposures is a Lot and Dangerous

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TJ Woodruff. NEJM 2024; 390: 922-933. Health Effects of Fossil Fuel–Derived Endocrine Disruptors

Initially, I was tempted to title this post ‘Burying the Evidence and the Bodies from Pollution.’ That sounded too alarmist, though. That said, this review article asserts that “chemical pollution is estimated to be responsible for at least 1.8 million deaths each year…This number is probably an underestimate, since less than 5% of approximately 350,000 chemicals registered for use globally have been adequately studied.1”  (90% of pollution-related deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries).

In addition, “polluting industries [are] “weaponizing” scientific uncertainty to foster distrust in scientific findings and lobbying for weaker regulations.71 For example, previously secret industry documents show that the industries knew about the health harms of PFAS decades before the scientific and public health community did.72” The science behind pollution is hampered by the inability (unethical) to conduct randomized trials of pollution exposure.

This article focuses on Endocrine Disruptors Chemicals (EDCs).

Health Effects of Fossil Fuel–Derived Endocrine Disruptors

  • Fossil fuels contribute to chemical pollution through production of petrochemicals, many of which interfere with hormonal function (endocrine-disrupting chemicals [EDCs]). Examples include perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances in food packaging and fabrics and phthalates in plastics and consumer products.
  • Petrochemical production is increasing, and people are exposed through contaminated air, water, food, and manufactured products (e.g., plastics, pesticides, building materials, and cosmetics).
  • EDCs can increase several health risks, including cancer, neurodevelopmental harm, and infertility.
  • Risks are higher with exposures during fetal and child development and with exposure to multiple EDCs and occur at low exposure levels. Exposures are higher in communities of color and low-income communities and contribute to health inequities.
  • Clinicians can provide advice to patients toward reducing some exposures, but policy change is needed to establish legal requirements for comprehensive safety testing and to reduce health threats from petrochemicals. Clinicians are important advocates for these changes.

Figure 2 reviews the potential individual modifiers to the effects of pollution as well as the increased adverse health effects.

Table 2 provides recommendations for reducing exposures including diet/food preparation, cleaning/use of cleaning products, minimizing occupational exposures, and advocacy.

My take: There are limited steps that individuals can take to reduce their exposures. In order to make our environment safer, this requires policy changes. Most individuals do not even know if they are being exposed to dangerous pollutants and would have limited ability to move away from unsafe areas.

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