Center for Health, Environment & Justice : Building strong, healthy, and safe communities

Lead is more toxic to children than previously believed and the federal government has once again lowered the blood level of concern threshold.  The federal Center for Disease Control recently reduced the “action level” from 10 micrograms per deciliter to 5 micrograms per deciliter. 

The agency stated that this new action level means that “children will be identified as having lead exposure earlier, and parents and doctors can take action earlier.  The action came about because a national committee of experts recommended CDC change the blood level of concern.  Their recommendation was based on reviewing a growing number of scientific studies that show that even low blood lead levels can cause lifelong health effects.  For more information, go to www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead  

Last week, the Chicago Tribune ran a series of articles that uncovered a devious relationship between the tobacco and chemical industries. It’s hard not to be outraged – no matter how cynical you might be – by the tactics used by the chemical companies that made flame retardant products to convince the American public that furniture needed to be treated with chemicals to protect life and property in the event of household fires. This 4-part series, titled “Playing with Fire,” makes clear the calculated efforts of this segment of the chemical industry to dupe the American public.

The first article in the series lays the background to this extraordinary expose. “These powerful industries distorted science in ways that overstated the benefits of the chemicals, created a phony consumer watchdog group that stoked the fear of fire and helped organize and steer an association of top fire officials that spent more than half a decade campaigning for their cause.”

The source of the information used in this series was internal memos, speeches, strategic plans, correspondence and other materials among more than 13 million documents made public after the tobacco companies settled lawsuits related to health claims brought by victims. These documents also reveal the influential role that Big Tobacco played in the extensive use of toxic chemicals in American furniture.

According to the Tribune series, this relationship began when Big Tobacco came under attack when smoldering cigarettes sparked fires leading to deaths (see Part 2 in the series). One choice facing the tobacco companies was to make a fire-safe cigarette that was less likely to start a fire. But the industry insisted that they couldn’t make a fire resistant cigarette that would still attract smokers. Instead, they shifted attention to the furniture (ands away from cigarettes) and promoted fame retardant couches and chairs. To achieve this goal, Big Tobacco poured millions of dollars into an “aggressive and cunning campaign to ‘neutralize’ firefighting organizations and persuade these far more trusted groups to adopt tobacco’s cause as their own.”

Part 3, “Distorting Science,” describes how the makers of flame retardant chemicals manipulated research findings to promote their products and down play health risks. The article tells us that “the industry has twisted research results, ignored findings that run counter to its aims and passed off biased, industry funded reports as rigorous science.” There was also a prominent burn doctor speaking in support of flame retardants as part of a campaign of deception and distortion on the efficacy of these chemicals.

Lastly, Part 4 describes the pathetic efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, whose mission is to safeguard America’s health and environment, which allowed generation after generation of flame retardants onto the market without rigorously evaluating the health risks.

This series makes it clear that fire retardant materials used over the years are not effective and some pose serious health risks. They have been linked to cancer, neurological deficits, developmental problems and impaired fertility. Lots of household furniture is full of these chemicals. Worse, they escape from the furniture and settle in dust that is particularly dangerous for infants who crawl and play on the floor constantly putting things in their mouths.

If ever you had doubts about the lengths that big business will go to deceive and “pitch” the public, including politicians and bureaucrats, look no further than this series. It‘s an education in corporate behavior gone awry.

Over the weekend, mothers from Kansas and Texas visited our Cape Fear region to give a self-less and invaluable glimpse into what our future could look like. These moms raise children near coal-fired cement kilns, wake up from late-night rail cars carrying hazardous waste behind their homes, and have children attending toxic schools. These moms live in Midlothian Texas and Chanute Kansas, also known as cement towns. Selene Hummer and Alexandra Allred have given our community the shell-shock we needed to keep fighting Titan’s proposed cement-manufacturing and strip-mining facility slated for construction along the already mercury-impaired Northeast Cape Fear River.

While Alex and Selene shared their heart-breaking stories, I couldn’t help but pan the audience to see the faces of our local moms, who have been the backbone of the citizens’ movement against Titan for four years now. Although the stories were hard to listen to, I felt the positive energy from moms strategizing on their next hard-hitting questions to hopeful elected leaders, while their face-painted, happy and healthy kids ran around and enjoyed the outdoors.

“I loved hearing from Alex Allred. She‘s right on the mark that mothers have a protective instinct that is often times absent from corporate interests, state agencies and politicians. We know when something is good for our kids or not,” says Julie Hurley, local mom and organizer with Mothers United. “In the case of added air pollution and potential water waste and contamination in New Hanover County, Titan Cement doesn’t pass the ‘good-for-our-community test.,’ In fact, their proposed project looks like harm to our kids and community for the foreseeable future.”

Mothers United is a newly formed group of moms who advocate for a healthy community. Their point of view, as parents looking out for their kids, is an undeniable force and one that any politician better brace themselves for.

“We’re a support system for each other,” Ashley Reed, of Mothers United said in a recent interview for local women’s magazine, WILMA. “We set up play dates and movie nights every third Thursday to get our children together, but while the children play, we’re planning.”

This group now representing almost 300 people is multi-tasking, like only moms can do, and I cannot wait to see the results, which I’m confident to say will be a healthy, breathable, swimmable, fishable, lovable future for everyone to enjoy, including our children.

To follow the Mothers United group, please check out their Facebook page, by clicking here.
For more info on the fight against Titan, visit www.StopTitan.org

Alex Allred is a mother of three who lives in Midlothian, Texas. Alex visited Wilmington, North Carolina to share with citizens her experiences of raising a family in the ‘cement capital of Texas.’ Moms and face-painted children attended a Picnic in the Park on April 29, 2012 in Castle Hayne, North Carolina. This unincorporated town is the proposed site of Titan Cement, which will be the largest cement manufacturing facility and strip-mine in a coastal setting. Mothers United began advocating for children’s health in February of 2012 and has grown to a group of local moms, representing close to 300 people.

Guest Blog by Sarah Gilliam

How often have you sat in a public meeting with a government representative at the front of the room responding to questions from the public with answers that make no sense? Maybe his answers are legally accurate (that is, they are doing what is required by law), but are they following the spirit of the law in involving members of the public in the decision-making process? Rarely does government engage the public as an equally or even as a partner.

Have you ever wondered why it always seems to be this way? Have you ever asked why does the government do things the way it does? A fascinating look into what makes government tick was published today in Independent Science News. The article, “Designed to Fail: Why Regulating Agencies Don’t Work,” provides an insiders look into how government works, or more to the point, why it doesn’t work. The author, William Sanjour, retired in 2001 after spending 30 years at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), mostly working on its regulations. Sanjour provides unique insight and offers counter-intuitive advice. He tells us that most people think you need to “fill the regulatory agencies with honest people who won’t cave in to special interests. “Give them more money, more authority and more people.” Instead, he says that “concentrating all legislative, executive and judiciary authority in one regulatory agency just makes it easier for it to be corrupted by the industries it regulates.”

Sanjour goes on. “I’ve learned that the way to achieve true regulatory reform is to give regulatory agencies less money, less authority, fewer people but more intelligent regulations.” He points out that by dispersing regulatory authority, rather than concentrating it, it would make corruption more difficult and make it easier to write more sensible regulations.

Public interest comes and goes, he says. “The interest of Congress, the press, and the public can only be maintained for a few months or years. There are lots of other things going on. But there is one group whose interest never wanes or wavers. The life, the existence, the future of the regulated industry depends on the pressure it can exert on the regulatory agency. At least that’s what the special interests believe.”

Here’s what Sanjour believes needs to be done:

1) Agencies which enforce regulations should not write the regulations.
2) The revolving door should be shut.
3) Whistle blowers should be protected, encouraged and rewarded.
4) To the greatest extent feasible, those who the regulations are intended to protect should participate in writing and enforcing the regulations.

The full article is available on-line at http://independentsciencenews.org/health/designed-to-fail-why-regulatory-agencies-dont-work/

CHEJ has been talking about the dangers of PCB’s in school lighting fixtures and how the chemical can affect children’s health. Last month, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported that autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 of every 88 American children — a 23% increase from 2006 and a 78% increase from 2002. CDC also reported that ADHD now affects 14% of American children.

As these disorders continue to affect more children across the U.S., researchers are asking what is causing these dramatic increases. Some of the explanation is greater awareness and more accurate diagnosis. But clearly, there is more to the story than simply genetics, as the increases are far too rapid to be of purely genetic origin.

The National Academy of Sciences reports that 3% of all neurobehavioral disorders in children are caused by toxic exposures in the environment and that another 25% are caused by interactions between environmental factors and genetics. But the precise environmental causes are not yet known.

To guide a research strategy to discover potentially preventable environmental causes, a list of ten chemicals found in consumer products that are suspected to contribute to autism and learning disabilities.

This list was published today in Environmental Health Perspectives in an editorial written by Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, director of the CEHC, Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and Dr. Luca Lambertini, also of the CEHC.

The top ten chemicals are:
1. Lead
2. Methylmercury
3. PCBs
4. Organophosphate pesticides
5. Organochlorine pesticides
6. Endocrine disruptors
7. Automotive exhaust
8. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
9. Brominated flame retardants
10. Perfluorinated compounds

The editorial was published alongside four other papers — each suggesting a link between toxic chemicals and autism.

There are things we can do as parents as concerned taxpayer and citizens. First, is to remove chemicals in areas that children frequent. As you may know CHEJ’s Children Environmental Health Program has been working on identifying and the removal PCBs in school lighting fixtures as well as removing other environmental chemicals from children environment such as emissions near schools.

As a humane society we cannot allow this devastating neurological problem to continue to rise in our children. It is time to speak up and out about environmental chemicals and children’s health. It is time to ask our health authorities to explore where children may be being exposed and eliminate that source of exposure. This is especially true in the case of PCBs and school lighting(schools built before 1980 and had no retrofitting) since this is a win win situation. The school district can remove exposure and save money on the energy efficiency of new lighting fixture.

Our children are our future. Let’s protect them . . . our future depends on their leadership.