The latest government report on biomonitoring will be presented next week -- but the Environmental Working Group (EWG) could not wait for that data. Instead, today they released their own "study" concluding that chemical "pollution" is so extensive that it "permeates everyone in the world, including babies in the womb."
I have to give EWG credit. What they lack in science, they make up for in spades in their ability to manipulate the most basic human fears and emotions.
In recent years, radical environmental groups have employed a full spectrum of scare tactics to terrify us about "chemicals" in the environment and the threat they allegedly pose to human health.
They use colorful, spooky rhetoric, writing of chemicals "oozing" into our water supply, "festering" in air and water, and "lurking" in our bodies. Organizations like the EWG have for years hyped the results of government "biomonitoring" studies, which examine blood and urine samples of random Americans and report the presence of trace levels of chemicals like dioxin, PCBs, and DDT.
This time, EWG reported on 287 chemicals found in samples of umbilical cord blood and declared that most of them were "known...to cause cancer in humans or animals...were toxic to the brain and nervous system [and] caused birth defects or abnormal development in animals." They noted, grimly, that umbilical cord blood "harbored pesticides, consumer product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline, and garbage."
EWG soberly reminds us that the umbilical cord is "a lifeline between mother and baby, bearing nutrients that sustain life." Then their tone turns ominous as they inform us that "the umbilical cord carries not only the building blocks of life but also a steady stream of industrial chemicals, pollutants, and pesticides."
This does indeed sound scary and unsettling. Who could be more vulnerable than an unborn baby? What can the layman conclude other than that our modern industrial age has spawned countless dangerous chemicals, putting adults at risk of devastating health effects and forcing babies to suffer these effects even before they enter our world?
We should be upset and ashamed, EWG tells us, since "as a society we have a responsibility to ensure that babies do not enter this world pre-polluted with 200 industrial chemicals in their blood." The advocacy group proposes to solve this problem with new federal laws that would curb the use of all industrial chemicals -- the very chemicals that keep our food supply plentiful, keep our energy supply available and affordable, and make possible the myriad consumer products that contribute to our unprecedented state of good health and longevity.
Let's get real here for a moment. Let's set aside the scare tactics -- the basic fears that all of us have for the safety of our children and EWG's assumption that all of us are "polluted" by chemicals -- and instead consider the facts:
--All living matter is comprised of chemicals.
--Due to the intimate relationship we have with our environment, we are exposed to thousands of natural and manmade chemicals every day. These exposures come not only from food, air, water, and everyday products such as cosmetics, pesticides, drugs, and household cleaners, but also from natural sources, including minerals leaching into ground water from soil, and dioxin from forest fires and volcanic eruptions.
--Scientists are now able to measure exceedingly low concentrations of chemicals in all human tissue -- including umbilical cord blood. Concentrations measurable today are thousands-fold lower than we could detect even ten years ago.
--The mere ability to detect a chemical in the body is only an indication that exposure has occurred; it does not mean that there is any health hazard.
--Furthermore, if a chemical is called a "carcinogen" or "reproductive toxin" on the basis of laboratory animal tests, that does not mean it poses a human health hazard. Indeed, if we did biomonitoring of natural chemicals in the body, we would find a full spectrum that could be labeled "toxic" or "carcinogenic" on the basis of animal testing.
Using biomonitoring data -- whether from adult blood samples or from studies of umbilical cord blood -- to terrify Americans about trace levels of environmental chemicals will do absolutely nothing to promote public health. It will generate unnecessary anxiety and will lend support to those who literally wish to dismantle our technological society. Their misguided effort to return us to a more primitive form of living will, ironically, threaten our health rather than improve it.
Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan is president of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org) and editor of America's War on "Carcinogens".