I don’t know how many tons of toxins—that is, items specifically created to be toxins—humans push into the environment each year: beyond the pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides industry agriculture spreads so lavishly (and the companies that make those continually work to increase sales—i.e., to get more of their products into the environment), households in the US regularly use many of the same products to control insects and make their lawns look good. But perhaps filling our environments with toxins is not so good an idea as it first seemed. Toxins are, naturally enough, toxic, and we’re seeing evidence that bee colony collapse disorder is related to a certain type of pesticide. And now Eleanor Bader offers an intriguing explanation for the rapid increase in rates of autism:
If horror is your genre, environmental writer Brita Belli’s The Autism Puzzle, is the book for you. Her terrifying look at the chemicals we eat, drink and breathe is guaranteed to make your hair stand on end.
We should thank her for it.
Statistics released earlier this spring by the Centers for Disease Control revealed that one in 88 U.S.-born toddlers has an autism spectral disorder — from the less severe Asperger’s syndrome to the so-called classical form of the ailment. Worse, it’s not just a North American phenomenon; Belli also reports a 57 percent spike in Asia and Europe.
The question is why. Perhaps, some posit, medical professionals have simply become better diagnosticians, and people previously labeled eccentric or developmentally disabled were in fact, autistic. Or, perhaps there’s a genetic culprit since ASD typically runs in families. Belli gives credence to both theories, but ultimately concludes that there is more to the puzzle. “If the rise in autism numbers were only due to improved diagnosis and awareness of autism among the medical community — or if the roots of the epidemic were primarily genetic — professionals would have seen an increase in adult or adolescent patients who had not been diagnosed or who had been misdiagnosed in the past,” she writes.
But they haven’t. This realization piqued Belli’s curiosity, and her investigation into the relationship between environmental poisons and human health is riveting. “The idea that a toxin can cause autism is neither controversial nor speculative,” she begins. In fact, thalidomide, a medication used in the 1960s to control morning sickness in pregnant women, was tied to autism almost 20 years ago. Likewise valproic acid, used to treat bipolar disorder; misoprostol, an ulcer drug; and chlorpyrifos, an insecticide.
And that’s just the tip of the chemical iceberg. “Many other chemicals distributed far and wide across the natural world by power plant smokestacks, leaking waste sites, improper storage facilities and outdated manufacturing processes have been proven to cause injury to developing brains,” Belli continues. More specifically, mercury, lead and polychlorinated biphenyls — also known as PCBs — along with the chemicals used to make insulation, flame retardants, electronic equipment and plastic pose known health risks to fetal life and newborns.
Belli cites recent studies by the Environmental Working Group that discovered an average of 200 pollutants in the umbilical cord blood of infants. Among them: pesticides, perfluorinated compounds, antibiotics and polybrominated diphenyl ethers.
Belli is particularly interested in “autism clusters,” geographic areas with higher-than-average rates of the disorder. One such place is Brick Township, N.J., where 63 million gallons of septic waste were dumped into a nearby landfill between 1969 and 1979. By the time the community learned that heavy metals and volatile organic compounds had leaked from storage containers, it was too late — soil and groundwater had already become contaminated by bromoform, chloroform and chloroethylene.
Researcher Carol Reinisch tested the impact of each of these substances on clam embryos (a precursor to human trials) and found that the “chemical cocktail” — the combined impact of the three substances acting together — was far more destructive to the body than each of the chemicals acting alone. Reinisch’s research, Belli writes, “made a solid case for the fact that toxins in combination can have a unique impact on the way brains develop. It is likely not one bodily insult that’s driving up [autism] cases, but a number of contaminants and exposures acting in concert.”
That there are approximately 1,300 Superfund sites on the National Priorities List — 200 of them in New Jersey, the state with the highest autism rates — should both give us pause and make us furious since we know who is responsible for fouling the air, water and soil: unscrupulous businesses. In fact, Belli reports that the corporations responsible for the lion’s share of pollution often avoid taking responsibility for their misdeeds, sometimes declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying necessary cleanup costs, at other times disappearing altogether. Many companies simply continue polluting without consequence.
Take Fairfax County, Va. . .
Continue reading. Who could have guessed that filling the environment with toxic substances might be bad for us? And, among businesses, which ones care? I would guess only those that see a profit in selling anti-toxic scams. Businesses are by design sociopathic, and make all decisions with a single goal: maximize the growth of profit. That is their fiduciary responsibility. Also, of course, since the managers are running the business, not the shareholders, the secret first priority is to maximize the managers’ remuneration. In other words, I believe that managers first make sure a decision will benefit themselves, and only then consider whether it benefits the company. Good managers look at all decisions that benefit the company and select for implementation those that benefit the manager most. Bad managers look at all decisions that benefit themselves and select those that either also have some benefit for the company or whose benefit for the manager is substantial enough that the return (if any) the company is unimportant to the decision-maker. No managers really work for other benefits (the community, the families of the employees, etc.), except insofar as such efforts promise to benefit the manager directly or to increase company profits—a fairly severe restriction.
You will note that companies have fought tooth and nail not to clean up their environmental messes. GE lost after years of legal struggle and finally began to clean up the Hudson River, but most companies increase their profit by not disposing properly of their waster: it’s called “externalizing costs”—the idea is to have others pay for the company’s actions, typically taxpayers (as in the various Superfund cleanups).
I don’t see how to fix it: the incentives seem to favor destructive approaches.