The chemical industry is poisoning babies in the womb. A recent issue of the journal Acta Paediatrica reports on a Spanish study that found a fetus’s exposure to minute concentrations of hexachlorobenzene in the womb increases the child’s risk of being overweight at age 6.
I’ll unpack this.
First, overweight children are of great concern to medical and public health officials because it’s believed to be the cause of other medical conditions that develop later in life. I disagree. Excess body fat in children is certainly associated with later medical problems, but it’s not the cause. It’s a symptom of metabolic disruption caused by physiological stress that results from, among other things, the biochemical assaults of environmental toxins like hexachlorobenzene. Psychosocial stress resulting from social inequity is another cause of physiological stress—which, by the way, is associated with increased exposure to environmental toxins.
Second, hexachlorobenzene is part of a large class of organochlorine and organophosphate chemicals that are used as pesticides in industrial agriculture and that are waste products thrown off by other industrial processes. The Spanish study on fetal exposure reinforces work that has found a strong relationship between pesticide exposures and the risk of being diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance, and diabetes. These conditions, like excess body weight, are, in my opinion, the consequence of physiological stress.
Third, hexachlorobenzene was banned for use as a pesticide in Spain in the 1970s. Yet pregnant women register detectable amounts in their blood and in the cord blood of their babies. This is true for a wide variety of banned pesticides and other chemicals in the same class—chemicals such as PCBs. These chemicals do not degrade into non-toxic chemicals. Instead, they find their way into the food chain. Because they are lipophilic, they accumulate in fat tissue and so become more concentrated as you move up the food chain. Humans are at the top.
A listener once suggested to me that the so-called obesity epidemic is a result of the body trying to protect itself by sequestering these toxins in fat cells. More toxins, more sequestration, more body fat. Although I’ve read research that notes this hypothesis, I’ve yet to see actual research that test this very good idea. But I digress.
Fourth, in addition to metabolic disruption, hexachlorobenzene and other organochlorines and organophosphates are associated with an increased risk of developmental neurotoxicity. In other words, the developing nervous system of a baby is damaged by these exposures.
Why is this happening? There are two, interconnected reasons.
The first is that industry is more important than babies. I know that isn’t the polite way to put it. I’m supposed to talk about all the wonderful things that modern industrial chemistry has brought us: cheap clothes, cheap food, lightweight automobiles that carry us through our busy day while consuming less gasoline and lowering our carbon footprint, and much, much more. I’m supposed to say that there are inevitable risks associated with the necessities of contemporary life. What I’m not supposed to say is that industry calls the tune and that tune is a three-part harmony: create a product that sells, make as much money as you can, and do what needs to be done to stay in business. And industry knows a whole lot more than most of us about each of those parts. Babies do not enter into the picture.
The second reason babies are being poisoned by industrial chemicals is that, practically speaking, industry doesn’t have to produce non-toxic products nor does its production processes have to emit non-toxic waste. In other words, the initiative is theirs. They do what they do and we get stuck with the problem of figuring out whether we’re at risk and get further stuck with figuring out what to do about it. We have to prove that what their doing isn’t safe.
That needs to change. The REACH program in Europe, discussed in Mark Shapiro’s book Exposed, is a move in the right direction. A new chemical must be proven safe before it can be used in a product. Chemicals currently in use will have to go through the same process. If they’re not safe, out they go.
That’s the right way to design and produce things. Yes, it might create inconveniences for our contemporary lifestyles. And yes, it will inconvenience the chemical industry. But they’re clever boys and girls. I’m fully confident that they’ll be able to figure out another way to make money.
The most important thing is: babies are way more important than industry.
