Exposure to toxins early in life linked to lower IQ

A public health expert says children who are exposed to toxins, especially when they are in the womb, have lower IQs among other deleterious outcomes.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a major paper on the ties between the environment and childhood disease. It says unregulated chemicals found in everything from the foods we eat to the mattresses we sleep on have caused a health crisis among children.

Dr. Philip Landrigan, the lead author of the study, joins us.

The American Chemistry Council, the industry’s lead trade organization, responded in a statement:

“We support strong science and risk-based regulations that are protective of human health and our environment. In fact, we supported the historic, bipartisan 2016 amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) aimed at modernizing and strengthening our federal chemical regulatory system and have consistently called for implementing TSCA in a sensible, risk- and science-based manner to achieve its statutory requirements.

“ACC’s members are serious about their responsibility to produce chemistries that offer important safety, product performance and durability benefits and that can be used safely. Our members undertake extensive scientific analyses to evaluate potential risk of their chemicals, from development through use and safe disposal. We work with regulators, retailers, and manufacturers to provide them with information about our chemicals.

“The mere presence of a chemistry is not an indication of risk or adverse effect. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasizes, ‘The measurement of an environmental chemical in a person’s blood or urine is a measure of exposure; it does not by itself mean that the chemical causes disease or an adverse effect.’

“We continue to work with EPA, FDA, and other federal agencies to strengthen our regulatory system and help ensure that policies are made using use the best-available science and the weight of the evidence to make decisions. In fact, chemicals in commerce are subject to government oversight, primarily by six federal agencies (CPSC, DHS, DOT, EPA, FDA, and OSHA), under more than a dozen federal laws and regulations. Today, any chemistry introduced or imported into the U.S. must undergo rigorous review and approval processes by federal agencies, such as EPA and FDA.”

This article was originally published on WBUR.org.