Last night, LCV staffers Charlene, Elizabeth, Michelle and Spencer bravely attended a lecture given by Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG), who spoke about toxins in Americans’ bodies.
EWG recently took blood samples from ten umbilical cords after they had been removed from babies in American hospitals. Tests revealed that the babies had an average of more than 200 industrial chemicals in their bodies. Like alcohol and drugs, toxins are passed to fetuses via the mother’s bloodstream and many of the chemicals discovered by the EWG are common in household products and food that has been treated with pesticides.
Of the 287 chemicals detected in the babies’ blood, studies showed that 180 are cancerous, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 caused birth defects or abnormal development in tests on animals.
Chemicals that can have harmful effects on the development of infants and children often exist in seemingly innocuous products. For example, the chemical used in Teflon, Perfluorooctanoic Acid, was recently labeled as a likely human carcinogen by the EPA's Science Advisory Board. Yet the current legislation regulating what products chemical companies are allowed to put on the market, the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), has not been updated in thirty years.
Ken Cook discussed EWG’s study on umbilical cords to draw attention to the Kid Safe Chemical Act, a bill that has been introduced in both the Senate (S1391) and House of Representatives (HR 4308). The act would require chemical makers to disclose the safety of their products to the EPA before being allowed to release them into the market.
The complete Environmental Working Group report on contaminants found in umbilical cord blood is found at http://archive.ewg.org/reports/bodyburden2/.
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