Important article for many reasons. 
The article talks about chemical exposure of DDT in pregnant women increasing autism risk.
On a bigger scale though, the idea that our environment is causing health problems…
- Our environment effects our genes,
- Chemicals in our environment can cause serious problems (and they are not studied for risk in almost all of these chemicals),
- Many chemicals persist in the environment for a very long time after they have been discontinued.
Autism and virtually all chronic health problems are complex processes.
It’s not only one thing that causes any chronic problem… and that’s the problem!
If we looked at the cause of a cut, we can probably realize it was the knife you hold in your hand.
Far too often we look for the proverbial knife when trying to find the cause of a complex health condition.
We as a health care practitioner, a person suffering, or as a parent look to isolate any health problem to one cause.
It’s almost always much more complex with many factors.
This is why it’s important to eliminate many chemical exposures from…
- insecticides (DDT is an insecticide that was heavily used then banned over safety concerns in the US in 1972. It’s still found in our bodies today.),
- herbicides (Monanto/Bayer’s glyphosate for example that was recently found to cause a man’s cancer resulting in a $289 million settlement for ONE case. Or another Monsanto product Agent Orange that seriously hurt so many including our veterans.),
- plastics in our foods (BPA for example that over recent years has been pulled from baby and toddler items while only now are very slowly being pulled from other products),
- perfumes (often endocrine disrupting chemicals that change our hormones in us as adults and in our kids),
- preservatives,
- …the list goes on and on.
It’s often only after years or decades of use that we realize a chemical is a very real problem.
Yet the number of new chemicals produced every year is staggering.
Industrial chemical production exceeds 5 trillion pounds each year.
There are more than 80,000 synthetic chemicals now in use. Fewer than 1,600 of these have been tested for carcinogenicity (causing cancer) let alone testing for the massive number of other health problems that are on the rise.
Our government can’t test all these chemicals. There are far too many.
Manufacturers do not need to prove that they are safe to sell them.
Synthetic chemicals are everywhere.
They’re in our food containers, kid’s toys, furniture, clothes, household cleaners, detergents, perfumes, …
There’s BPA in our receipts from the store. Flame retardants in our beds, furniture, and car seats.
Are each of these isolated things safe?
Maybe, even likely for the majority of people.
They are not safe for everyone… especially when looked at as cumulative exposure by thousand’s of chemicals.
This is one of the things that makes it difficult to point the finger at one thing.
It’s probably not one thing, although it might be (as evidenced by the recent settlement against Bayer/Monsanto for it’s exceptionally common herbicide causing cancer).
What you eat, breathe, and put on your skin are major determinants of how you look, feel, and perform.
It also applies to your kids and that is even more important.
It’s impossible to avoid everything. It does make sense though to avoid unnecessary exposure to many known or suspected very toxic chemicals.
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