Minimize Exposure to Environmental Toxins

“It is vitally important to recognize that children are far more susceptible to damage from environmental carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting compounds than adults.  To the extent possible, parents and child care providers should choose foods, house and garden products, play spaces, toys, medicines, and medical tests that will minimize children’s exposure to toxins.  Ideally, both mothers and fathers should avoid exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals and known or suspected carcinogens prior to a child’s conception and throughout pregnancy and early life, when risk of damage is greatest.”

– Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now (2008 – 2009) by the President’s Cancer Panel; page xix

Individuals and families have many opportunities to reduce or eliminate chemical exposures.  For example:

• Family exposure to numerous occupational chemicals can be reduced by removing shoes before entering the home and washing work clothes separately from the other family laundry.
• Filtering home tap or well water can decrease exposure to numerous known or suspected carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting chemicals.  Unless the home water source is known to be contaminated, it is preferable to use filtered tap water instead of commercially bottled water.
• Storing and carrying water in stainless steel, glass, or BPA- and phthalate- free containers will reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting and other chemicals that may leach into water from plastics.  This action also will decrease the need for plastic bottles, the manufacture of which produces toxic by-products, and reduce the need to dispose of and recycle plastic bottles.  Similarly, microwaving food and beverages in ceramic or glass instead of plastic containers will reduce exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals that may leach into food when containers are heated.
• Exposure to pesticides can be decreased by choosing, to the extent possible, food grown  without pesticides or chemical fertilizers and washing conventionally grown produce to remove residues.  Similarly, exposure to antibiotics, growth hormones, and toxic run-off from livestock feed lots can be minimized by eating free-range meat raised without these medications if it is available.  Avoiding or minimizing consumption of processed, charred, and well-done meats will reduce exposure to carcinogenic heterocyclic amines and polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
• Individuals can consult information sources such as the Household Products Database to help them make informed decisions about the products they buy and use.
• Properly disposing of pharmaceuticals, household chemicals, paints, and other materials will minimize drinking water and soil contamination.  Individuals also can choose products made with non-toxic substances or environmentally safe chemicals.  Similarly, reducing or ceasing landscaping pesticide and fertilizer use will help keep these chemicals from contaminating drinking water supplies.
• Turning off lights and electrical devices when not in use reduces exposure to petroleum combustion by-products because doing so reduces the need for electricity, much of which is generated by using fossil fuels.  Driving a fuel-efficient car, biking or walking when possible, or using public transportation also cuts the amount of toxic auto exhaust in the air.

– Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now (2008 – 2009) by the President’s Cancer Panel; page xix

An article in a forthcoming issue of a peer-reviewed medical journal, Current Opinion in Pediatrics, just posted online, cites “historically important, proof-of-concept studies that specifically link autism to environmental exposures experienced prenatally.”  It adds that the “likelihood is high” that many chemicals “have potential to cause injury to the developing brain and to produce neurodevelopmental disorders.”

The author is not a granola-munching crank but Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, professor of pediatrics at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York and chairman of the school’s department of preventive medicine.  While his article is full of cautionary language, Dr. Landrigan told me that he is increasingly confident that autism and other ailments are, in part, the result of the impact of environmental chemicals on the brain as it is being formed.

“The crux of this is brain development,” he said.  “If babies are exposed in the womb or shortly after birth to chemicals that interfere with brain development, the consequences last a lifetime.”

– “Do Toxins Cause Autism?“  by NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF; published February 24, 2010

“I also advise against dyeing your hair during pregnancy”

– Disease-Proof Your Child (2005) by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.; page 109

“The avoidance of exposure to chemicals and potential allergens is important during this sensitive stage. Food additives, pesticides, household cleaners, insecticides, and antibiotics should all be scrupulously avoided, as there is an increased sensitivity to their damaging influences in the first year of life.

– Disease-Proof Your Child (2005) by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D.; page 109

[Regarding Pesticides in animal protein:] Prenatal exposure has caused altered sexual behavior, like demasculinization and feminization; behavioral problems; learning disabilities; hyperactivity; under-activity; memory problems; growth retardation; delayed reflexes; reduced intelligence; limb deformities; heart defects; penis deformities; undescended testicles; reduced size of penis and testicles; eye inflammation; and hyperpigmentation.  Infants and children are also at a much higher risk than adults because their organs are still growing and developing, and they eat and drink more than adults in relation to their body weights (so their exposure to toxins can be higher, relatively speaking).  Destruction, disruptions, and alterations during these delicate developmental periods can cause permanent and irreversible damage, especially because their metabolic pathways and immune systems are immature.  There is an increased risk for childhood cancers and for neurological diseases later in life, like dementia and Parkinson’s.

– Skinny Bitch: Bun in the Oven (2005) by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin; pages 99 – 101

“Perhaps most importantly, the impact of various exposures, whether individual, simultaneous, sequential, or cumulative over a lifetime, may not be simply additive.  Instead, combinations of exposures may have syngergistic effects that intensify or otherwise alter their impact compared with the effect of each contaminant alone.  In addition, we now recognize that critical periods of time exist across the life span [e.g., prenatal and early life, puberty] when individuals are particularly susceptible to damage from environmental contaminants.  Moreover, a person’s genetic make-up can significantly affect his or her susceptibility to the harmful effects of an environmental agent, and it also is becoming clear that some exposures can have effects across multiple generations.”

– Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk: What We Can Do Now (2008 – 2009) by the President’s Cancer Panel; page 2

Two of the greatest medical disasters in history involved two drugs that were thought to be safe for pregnant women: thalidomide and diethylstilbestrol (DES).  These drugs were given to pregnant women in the belief that the fetus would be unaffected, when in fact many offspring went on to develop severe malformations or aggressive cancers as a result of their exposure.  Nor have these attitudes completely disappeared.  They linger on, for example, in the sluggish response of health authorities to the current threat posed to fetuses by the class of chemicals known as endocrine disruptors, found in plastics and other commonly used products.

– How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives (2010) by Annie Murphy Paul; page 8

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The information contained throughout this blog / website should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician / physician.

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