An Inconvenient Truth for Toxins and Health: 10 Americans (video)
We all know pollution and toxins are unhealthy for us, but we’re just now beginning to find out just how many substances are affecting us when we’re exposed to them on a daily basis.
And what about our kids? What are the health effects on their bodies of low-dose exposures to toxic chemicals, and how does the mother’s own exposure affect them?
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has conducted perhaps the deepest analysis of the health effects of low-dose exposures to chemicals of concern, an issue for the most vulnerable demographic on the planet: our kids.
In this video, Ken Cook, president and co-founder of EWG, discusses the implications of the hundreds of toxins they found by analyzing the blood of ten average Americans. And not just any Americans. There’s a special reason that they picked these 10 people.
It’s all science but full of emotion, and worth every minute if you’ve ever wanted to understand the connection between chemicals and environmental health. Or need to convince a friend. This powerful presentation does both.
In a nutshell, EWG found 287 industrial chemicals in the cord blood of unborn children – an average of 200 in each one. Among the toxins were found 28 industrial waste byproducts, 47 consumer product ingredients, and perhaps most disturbingly, 212 industrial chemicals and pesticides that were banned 30 years ago.
In this, the first study since the beginning of the chemical revolution to assess the umbilical blood of babies to see how many toxic chemicals get through to developing children, the implications are staggering. Up until a certain age, there is no blood/brain barrier in an unborn baby, which means that they are at their most vulnerable stage for chemical exposure. It was previously thought that the placenta protected the baby, but this is another corroboration that the placenta does not filter out the chemicals.
The information in his presentation is kind of scary, and Ken sums it up perfectly by saying “Industrial pollution begins in the womb.”
This needs to change.
Find out more at EWG, and lend your voice to the movement behind the Toxic Chemical Safety Act.
