In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development

my name is norma grier i made secular director of the northwest coalition for alternatives to pesticides so normal what you feel is the most significant threat to children in terms of toxins in their exposure our organization works on pesticide issues and pesticides are sort of hidden and silent threats to the health of children are pesticides are used in all kinds of arenas mostly in places we don't suspect an idea like something like this a cigarette whether smoke coming out from the end of a cigarette children's exposure to pesticides is usually i've done happens in ways that we have no knowledge on pesticides are applied in schools and kids are at their desks the next morning their pesticides are used in lots of public spaces in restaurants in public buildings in the playgrounds in the parks where children

play and the exposure of children to these substances is there's more and more scientific information that shows that it's affecting the health of our children and their proper development so this conference is a call to action it's a convergence of people who were practitioners in our health care community of researchers and activists and i think that our combined effort can help bring about the need to change to make sure that our kids are not exposed to toxic substances and that we have the mechanisms to address these problems in our communities they mention the idea that most people aren't aware of how children are exposed to a lot of these toxins you folks produced a report about pesticides in the schoolyard you referenced playgrounds and parks could you elaborate on those specific areas and maybe describe a little bit of

what children are most commonly exposed to there because at play kids are probably being exposed in that different ways as opposed to someone sitting at a desk or walking in the gambia just open air which are simply not smaller adults aren't they have a much higher metabolism day drink more water breathe your air and eat more food per pound of body weight as compared to adults their behaviors are very different from adults mom i think i'm most adults don't spend the time that we used to rolling around on rides you know putting standen dorgan our mouse on and so children's behavior and their bodies are functioning very differently from adults and say exposures that occur occur

in spite of it it tipped her children because of their behaviours on their rolling around and playing on grass that's been treated with herbicides rooting around him shrub that's ally at parks are in schools when they are in school they are at in rooms where treatments could have been made to deal with an answer other kinds of indoor problems and the air quality in those rooms as well as residue is on surfaces of desks and shelves on may be a problem pesticides are also in the food we eat again it said willamette river is contaminated with fifty different pesticides and so pesticide residues are all around us and i think we have an obligation to take action on these issues and try and an eight established

policies and take individual action to reduce the use of pesticides in our communities a baffling from ithaca new york saturn airport mar chicago o'hare larkins an amazing lightning strikes were flying all around the first center of it if you can generalize this in an answer we filled the most significant threat to children are in terms of toxins the answer depends on the ecology where the child lives and where the mother lives it's clear that they earlier the exposure happens the more dangerous the risk so i think we need to start remembering that mothers bodies of the first environment for all of us and that those are really aquatic environment you really are aquatic animals for the first nine months of my life i am we know that there are pesticides and dioxin it's in peace ibiza find their way that only cross the placenta and into the umbilical cord blood of the davy but also into the amniotic fluid itself this liquid bubble wrap with a

baby swims around in and also swallows those very early exposures that occurred when the body human bodies just getting assembled represent disproportionate risks to the health of their child later on in life we can have much larger exposures and fend off they're the bad effects that at that point in time how many of the dead fetuses are very vulnerable most common health problems associated with my guest newborns and young people from exposure to toxins either in utero or you know the first year well again a lot depends on when exactly the exposure happened so very early on in pregnancy on the issue are maybe aren't spontaneous abortion a white woman experiences as a miscarriage because we know there's a certain set of toxic chemicals like solvents they can enter into a uterus interfere with all that sell sell signals that govern a process called implantation by which the embryo implants

itself into uterine lining in the life support system of that embryo has to be established later on what follows after implantation is a period called organic genesis that goes between week five and ten of the human pregnancy and during that time entire human body take shape on any pesticide or outcome of a contaminant interest rate this point it is a risk or a physical malformation what we would know as a priest affect us an emerging evidence now suggesting that pesticide exposure in during this window of time basis of this christian defects like cleft palate hole in the higher certain kind of lay reduction deficits some kind of genital abnormalities later on in pregnancy i after the body's actually formed the risk is not so much that the body of the baby will be born or wrong but rather that there be some kind of functional deficit between the brain the brain tissue this huge burst of growth in the fifth of six months of pregnancy exposure to neurological poisons

heavy metals like lead mercury and siri candace are chemicals like pc piece on race or risk that the grain of that that baby will be subtly change the architecture brings actually different there's nothing that's not show up in the delivery room when the baby's born however later on on that child may have an increased risk for things like we're a learning disability champa however activity disorder attention deficit problems depression problems short attention span even settled effects and things like balance and which nation the health professionals attending this event will come away from it with his in terms of either techniques or are preventative measures my hope is that we begin to see that the issue of pregnancy and childbirth and children should be taken out of its current cultural places this very private intimate affair and i recognize that the

larger policy issues affect childbirth and children more than they fact affect us adults and children eat more food and drink more water and breed more hair pound for pound an adult to miss into year six months early on even have a blood brain barrier to protect your brain for neurological poison so that means that tom organic agriculture is a prenatal issue our energy policy is a prenatal issue because the burning of course the number one arm a contributor to mercury in our environment this means that bomb workplace health as a prenatal care she and consumer products our prenatal issues so i'm interested in is an i'm having a conversation about the ways in which human women are the first environment for all of us and that in their private intimate environment pregnancy exist in a kind of exquisite communion whistle with the larger

ecological world and with the recognition that our embryos fetuses infants and children are more vulnerable than the rest of us to fishing a small exposures toxic chemicals comes up political moral awareness that were really not offering equal protection under a lot of citizens are really discriminating based on age we might assume now the so called safe threshold levels that we established for other toxic chemicals that we try to really try to regulate all these chemicals in such a way that none of this is exposed to much of anyone into chemicals so we set the so called safe threshold levels but those are only are relevant to adults and date the new signs are showing us that we don't read not really offering and sufficient protection to the very young amen and therefore i argue that's a form of age discrimination and human rights violation so i'm interested in the pediatric community as well as anybody that has a stake in child

welfare and pta four h clubs girl scouts of america are you know all these different organizations beginning to take a look a child welfare from an environmental perspective and just lastly if i could create new one which regarding the issue of child toxic exposure you mentioned regulating chemicals maybe have the the chemical regulatory system reversed so that you have to prove that it's safe as opposed to prevent harm to remove something if you could do one thing what would be i think you'd be exactly that i think that the entire regulatory system is premised on this idea that we can say is that safe threshold levels for people all the new science showing is that these levels are not officially protective for children and so if we can if we can reverse the burden of proof and can't compel industry

to demonstrate that their products are almost certainly safe rather than asking the public to do to prove that people aren't getting harmed and dying from the use of these chemicals i think will solve a lot of problems on one time i said i said set set three

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and i think that speaks to the people los lonely thanks kevin thomson time physician where oregon physicians for such responsibility and our

organization spearheaded putting on this conference today at this conference in the content has been given and other locations around the country from boston new york minneapolis and others in seattle on saturday and so what is it what is it that you hope attendees will come away from here today with in terms of knowledge work technique training et cetera or first time i think that attendees are here primarily because they know that there are some concerns about environmental toxins causing health problems so i hope that they learn in much more detail what those actuality czar so they may know about lead and mercury but they may not know about household use of pesticides or lead in their drinking water in our schools so basic knowledge is real important but then you have to as a pediatrician said to me this morning one of your alarm because

this doesn't apply to me and i was astonished and i thought to myself well how can this pediatrician not think that this information applies to him but he doesn't go around i know saying mercury toxicity where there isn't a test saying you were exposed to pc bees in utero and therefore you have a learning disability so in terms of diagnosis and treatment where we let the horse out of the barn but there are some things that we should do be telling in populations about and so that the pig attendees here are not only healthcare providers but they're also environmentalists are teachers there concerned citizens can help individuals improve their health practices like same sex dank river just said that women shouldn't be eating tuna fish and yet it's a wonderful source of food and yet many don't know that i'm so increasing our ability to educate others easy she's on our ability to become better stewards of our environment throw try to influence

policy so we've brought together i'm not only these wonderful speakers but also organizations that are working on health policy so physicians for so she spots below the oregon environmental council was instrumental in getting a mercury bill passed last year so that we can get the mercury acts are based not continue to pollute it and so making those policy decisions are also extremely important and hopefully people can learn about the long lines of policy related issues is there any degree of leadership at the federal level kind of immediate health and medical around the beat national institutes of health or centers for disease control and prevention are these folks looking at these issues or is it really being led from the bottom up in the sense that it's grassroots folks making network and connections in and going directly in educating the public which then can help influence legislatures the example of the oregon marked reduction well as

a person who works for the state and oregon department environmental quality said to me just this morning i am i can do the studies and i can pull the information together but i can create political will to do that and so there's always the two sides of the coin yes there's been excellent center studies in work that's been done by the epa the gq identifying the issues are identifying that i'm deadly incredible significant percentage of our waterways here in oregon then a plea with mercury and put up signs saying don't fish and eat this fish but that doesn't keep the immigrants and the native americans who say this is good for us and i need this for my diet for eating it and so there's the you know there's those kinds of linkages that really need to be made so that policy can change in

the political will can occur to make that change so that honeywell can't stop the mercury bill because they don't wanna stop making mercury containing thermostats even though they have the market and number three containing thermostats if i had the ability to grant you one thing though regarding child's child exposure to toxicity i asked sandra this tonight she had mentioned the idea of him making sure that chemicals are proven safe as opposed to having to prove them unsafe to get them hold so um not choosing that because it's already been taken as an idea if there was one thing i could let you do regarding this issue or would they put out is a really tough one and the precautionary principle is basically what senior was talking about hand and that certainly would take care of an awful lot of problem arm i think my warm biggest issue we have to be

energy and the concepts that sustainability has to occur otherwise our life on this planet as a race well and in what they will do is improve an incredible amount of air pollution toxicity an incredible amount of environmental toxicity from wales and toxins in the debt that hole aspect of things on any date the chemicals that come from the oil industry as well so i would say policy i would say we'd have we have to go sustainable in our energy policy in that will saw incredible number of problems so a shout out leader with greater boston physicians for social responsibility and the show could you tell us a little bit about the origins of in harm's way and how the event has

progressed since its origin it's sort a few years ago ted schettler in a number of other colleagues from greater boston ps are released a report in harm's way toxic threats to child development and the report which it which covers the scientific underpinnings of me the way brain development is impacted by environmental toxic assets and after the release of that report the interest was just overwhelming and we need to figure out ok what can we do with this information how can we take this out to the public in and chinese in a way that will help with public health and environmental protection so we decided to develop a training program for health professionals being our physicians for social responsibility we really feel that health professionals play a key role in terms of educating their patients and becoming involved in activism to protect public health so we developed a training program based on the report that was piloted in new york city in two thousand one of the

new york academy of medicine and since then we've had trainings in boston and san francisco minneapolis and now here in portland and seattle and with leaves pediatricians nurses lay people from all over the country attending