Why Are We So Sick—and What Can We Do? 

by Brice Hereford

IES Healthy Building Materials Specialist

As many of us age, some start to wonder why we don’t feel so good anymore. Millions experience chronically occurring diseases and conditions that have developed in us over our lifetimes. Health care costs alone, according to PLANSPONSOR magazine, are estimated at $285,000 for a retired couple! How can this be? What is causing this spike in health care expenses for retirees? How do we get so sick and what can we do about it?

 My doctor explained it simply: “Throughout our lifetimes, we accumulate environmental toxins and poisons present in the world today. The result is essentially a 55-gallon barrel of toxic sludge in each of our bodies, full of chemicals, pesticides, herbicides and other toxic substances.” 

Isn’t that a comforting thought! Why are we being exposed to these toxins in the first place? Eighty percent of our diseases and chronic conditions are due to environmental influences, not genetic. What are these influences? Isn’t the EPA protecting us from dangerous substances? One would certainly think so. However, the truth is quite different.

The National Research Council Committee of the National Academy of Sciences conducted a survey in 1984 and “The NRC results were disturbing, even appalling, in revealing how many substances are produced and how little is known about the toxicity of substances with which citizens are contaminated,” writes Dr. Carl Cranor, author of two in-depth exposés, Legally Poisoned (2011)  and Tragic Failures (2017).

The numbers clearly illustrate the depth of this problem even then. According to Cranor, there are:

• 12,860 substances produced in volumes exceeding 1 million pounds per year—78% with no toxicity information available (10,030 substances)
• 13,911 chemicals produced in volumes of less than 1 million pounds per year—76% with no toxicity data (10,592 substances)
• 21,752 chemicals produced in unknown volumes—82 % with no toxicity data (17,836 substances)
• 3,350 pesticides—36% with no toxicity data (1,206 substances)

“Of a total 65,545 substances, 45,996 have no toxicity information!” said Cranor, “The vast majority (80-90%) are subject to post-market regulation, so there is no toxicity data for about 70% of these substances.

“Remember, this outdated information is from 1984. There has been no follow-up since then—35 years ago! The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 forbade blanket pre-market toxicity testing and review of more than 22,000 new chemical products that have entered the market since then. Combined with the 62,000 existing substances which they grandfathered in 1976, there are now over 80,000 chemical substances that have never been tested.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting to see what the statistics are today—if there were any? Since 1980, the EPA has tested only about 200 of the 62,000 substances grandfathered in 1979 (0.3 of 1%). Further the GAO found that the EPA has ‘reviewed’ only 2% of the original 62,000 grandfathered substances—a total of only 1,200.”

How Bad Can It Be?

Polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants were grandfathered as safe in 1979. PBDEs are endocrine disruptors, mimicking and replacing natural hormones. They are reproductive toxicants and neurotoxins. Children with higher PBDE exposures have impaired attention, less verbal and full scale IQ and deficiencies of full motor coordination. In the mid-1970s U.S. citizens had no PBDEs in their bodies. By 2017, they had the highest concentrations in the world. 

Bisphenol A (BPA or BPS) is associated with increased risks for cardiovascular disease, miscarriages, decreased birth weight at term, breast and prostate cancer, reproduction and sexual dysfunction, altered immune system activity, metabolic problems and diabetes in adults and cognitive and behavioral development in young children. Remember this when you next are handed your store register receipt: BPA is commonly present in the receipt rolls.

There is no oversight by the EPA and other agencies to protect the public. Rather than pre-market tests, such as the pharmaceutical industry uses, the EPA uses post-market tests. When enough people have been poisoned to a sufficient degree by toxic chemicals the EPA then requests post-market testing. This must stop. post-market testing forces the public to bear the costs of ignorance as involuntary, random guinea pigs for risky substances.

An Unfair Burden is Weighing on Our Children

Children are most susceptible to harm from these unregulated and unknown toxic chemicals. Even further damage is done to our children by the toxic load that parents pass on to them. Lead, BPA, dioxins and several other substances are even passed down from generation to generation. Some of these substances will transfer genetically three and four generations, perhaps more. 

These toxic substances affect children more than adults and at lower concentrations due to their still-developing immune system and more fragile blood-brain barrier. The brain and immune system are especially susceptible to disease and dysfunction. Compounding this tragedy, there is currently no understanding of the effects that multiple toxic substances have on the body. They may well be worse than single attacks.

What Can We Do? Is there a Solution?

The post-market policies of the EPA offer scant hope for us or our children, because by the time the market realizes the damage has been done it is too late for those afflicted, except to deal with their new health conditions. And it gets worse as you age. 

Toxic substances contribute to impaired mental development; decreased IQ; poor memory; anti-social behavior or other neurological deficiencies; breast; prostate and kidney or bone cancers; early Parkinsonism and other diseases, many of which could have been prevented with adequate toxicity testing before commercialization.

Many children have been condemned to lifelong health issues such as lead poisoning, childhood cancer, serious asthma, intellectual disability, Autism, ADD and ADHD attributable to chemical exposures. These exposures contributed to health care costs of over $76 billion in 2008.

The European Union has one solution: since post-market testing does not work, pre-market testing on products to evaluate their toxicity before they enter into the market, the environment and our bodies is the only sane solution.

The European Union is already doing this with their REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals). REACH requires specified data for each substance that is manufactured, used or distributed in Europe. Their position is “no data, no market.” History has shown that the EPA’s post-market testing policy has been a travesty and the EPA should demand pre-market testing on all new chemicals as well as on the 84,000-plus chemicals that have been grandfathered since the 1970s and are still on the market today.

A reasonable first step is for the EPA to compare the 84,000 plus grandfathered substances against both the REACH database as well as the Cal Prop 65 database to identify the toxic chemical substances that these two groups have already researched. As the figures below attest, pre-market testing will be far less expensive than treating diseases and conditions caused by these toxic substances.

Consider the economics. The cost of childhood disease alone in 2008 from lead poisoning, asthma, intellectual disability, Autism, ADD and childhood cancers was more than $76.6 billion dollars, while the 11-year cost for Europe to test and review 30,000 chemicals was only about $5 billion ($454 million per year). These figures don’t even begin to touch on the far greater costs to adults as they age, and these toxic chemicals continue to deteriorate our health. 

So, testing costs are not the issue, are they? REACH testing increased costs of chemical products by 0.063 of 1% at the low level and 0.20 of 1% at the highest. “Pre-market testing for toxic properties of chemical creations, required by justice, seems efficient in relation to the current circumstances,” said Carl Cranor.

However, Time is Running Out

According to Steve Christol, managing partner at Strategic Harmony Partners, “If this isn’t dire enough, consider what the amplification effect that climate change is having on chemicals of concern. It is even more threatening in a hotter world, as well as making the world even hotter still. For example:

• The toxicity of air pollutants and pesticides is exacerbated by hotter temperatures, which affect the way these chemicals are distributed in the environment and absorbed by our bodies (and all species). 
• Hotter temperatures weaken the ability of humans and animals to cope with chemical toxicity.
• Inversely, the suppressed immune systems of chemically compromised bodies are less capable of withstanding climate change effects including extreme temperatures, severe storms, tainted water or food shortages.
• The more chemicals of concern in the environment, the more runoff contamination of watersheds from increased intensity and frequency of storm events as well as storm surge contamination of coastal water supplies — contamination that ultimately finds its way into our bodies and imperils biodiversity. Also, flooding events not only produce mold in buildings, but release hazardous chemicals such as formaldehyde from wood products and plasticizing chemicals from flooring products that have not been sustainably manufactured.
• Hotter temperatures make the increasing quantities of chemicals in the ground and water much more likely to become airborne health risks, and allow them to travel great distances.
• The overwhelming majority of harmful organic solvents are petroleum-based (92 percent of all organic chemicals are petroleum-based), the production of which intensifies climate change in all the ways that fossil fuels do.”

https://www.greenbiz.com/article/why-caring-about-climate-change-means-caring-about-chemicals-concern 

Perhaps Help is on the Way

In 2014, the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was signed into law. The act will require pre-market testing for all new chemical substances introduced into the market after 2016. However, the EPA still must work on testing the 84,000-plus chemical substances grandfathered since 1976. A great first step would be to compare these 84,000 chemicals against the chemicals in the REACH database (http://ec.europa.eu/environment/chemicals/index_en.htm) as well as the California Prop 65 list (https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/proposition-65-list).

What Can You Do?

There are a number of things anyone can do to reduce toxic chemicals in our lives. Here is a short list to get you started:

• Detoxify your body. Start eliminating the lifetime’s accumulation of toxic chemicals and heavy metals from your body. Check out https://www.ewg.org/ .
• Eliminate toxic chemicals from your diet, your home and lifestyle. This website can get you started: https://livinginthechemicalage.com/. For building materials specifically, check out the Resources section of materiallybetter.com. In addition, the International Living Future Institute (https://living-future.org/) maintains a comprehensive Red List (https://living-future.org/declare/declare-about/red-list/) of toxic chemicals and also has a website of products that have been vetted and disclosed (https://living-future.org/declare/).
• Consider testing yourself for heavy metals and other toxic substances. I was unpleasantly surprised by what was found in my body. Start here. A number of laboratories specialize in heavy metal and toxic chemical testing. 
• Communicate with elected representatives about your concerns over toxic chemicals in our lives and ask what they are doing to help reduce and eliminate them. Encourage support and enforcement of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century act by your elected officials at the federal, state and local levels. (https://www.edf.org/health/new-chemical-safety-law-lautenberg-act).
• Further, encourage your representatives to force the EPA to review the 80,000 plus chemicals against the REACH database and California Prop 65 list.

Finally, make some noise about these chemicals in our lives that are crippling us over time! Share your knowledge with family, friends and others. Only awareness and our action can change this.