Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Archives

PBS Special - Are We Making Our Children Sick

PBS SPECIAL: ARE WE MAKING OUR CHILDREN SICK?
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KIDS AND CHEMICALS, A SPECIAL REPORT ON NOW WITH BILL MOYERS TRACKS THE
SCIENTIFIC SEARCH FOR ANSWERS ABOUT HOW ENVIRONMENTAL TOXINS AFFECT AMERICA'S
CHILDREN

Premieres Friday, May 10 at 9:00 (ET) on PBS (check local listings)

It is a medical mystery marked "urgent." Across America growing numbers of
children are suffering from asthma, childhood cancers like leukemia, as
well as learning and behavioral disabilities. Scientists are searching for
clues to the causes of these illnesses, and a growing body of research
suggests that everyday environmental toxins-what kids eat, drink, and
breathe-may put them at risk. Equipped with new technology and more
sophisticated analysis, these scientists are asking compelling questions
about the health risks to children growing up exposed to an ever-increasing
number of untested chemicals in our environment.
Kids and Chemicals, a special edition of NOW with Bill Moyers to be
broadcast on PBS, Friday, May 10 at 9 p.m. (ET), features medical
investigators and health officials engaged in the latest research on links
between childhood illness and environmental contamination. The program
looks at families around the country who are coping with the consequences
to their children of potentially toxic exposures.

"The disturbing increases in childhood illness in America cannot be
ignored," says Bill Moyers. "How does the exposure affect children's
health? The new research is studying how chemicals enter the human body,
and posing questions that they could never ask before: Do chemicals affect
children, babies and unborn fetuses more than adults? What factors increase
toxicity, and how can we protect children from harm?"

Kids and Chemicals' producers Gail Ablow and Greg Henry go to Fallon,
Nevada, a small desert town that has had 15 recorded cases of childhood
leukemia in just five years. Alarmed, Dr. Mary Guinan, who was one of
Nevada's top health officials, called in the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention to investigate the potential links between this childhood
cancer and the environment. Could toxic substances in water, food, air,
schools, homes or the ground in Fallon be responsible for this "cancer
cluster"? If so, which chemicals? Without clear evidence of a specific
cause, everything-from jet fuel emissions to pesticides to naturally
occuring arsenic in the water-is suspect.

As Moyers and his team learn in Fallon, research on cancer clusters once
focused mainly on gathering environmental samples because investigators
simply didn't have tools sensitive enough to measure which toxins had been
absorbed into people. Dr. Richard Jackson, the director of the National
Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, explains how his laboratories are using the latest instruments.
His research scientists are using sophisticated blood and urine analysis to
test for minute traces of toxins in the bodies of the sick children and
their families in Fallon.

This work is part of a larger movement in children's environmental health
unfolding nationwide. Dr. Phillip Landrigan of the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine in New York City works with scientists around the country to
understand how kids are affected by exposure to chemicals. "Of the 3000
high production volume chemicals in use in this country today, only 43%
have been even minimally tested," he tells Moyers. "Only about 10% have
been thoroughly tested to examine their potential effects on children's
health and development."

Speaking with Landrigan, Moyers learns that children are potentially more
vulnerable to chemicals than adults. "First of all they're more heavily
exposed pound for pound," says Landrigan. "They eat more food, they drink
more water, they breathe more air. Then, of course, kids play on the
ground. They live low, they put their hands in their mouth and so they
transfer more toxic chemicals into their body than we do."

Traveling to Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Moyers meets Dr.Linda
Sheldon of the Environmental Protection Agency's National Exposure Research
Lab. Sheldon demonstrates how her team of scientists is gathering evidence
of exposure to everyday chemicals in nursery schools, homes and daycare
centers.

In New York City, a groundbreaking study led by Dr. Frederica Perera at
Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, follows more than
500 expectant mothers. These women are wearing air quality monitors in
backpacks to trap the environmental toxins they breathe. As their children
are born and as they grow, Dr. Perera and her team will look for links
between the chemicals that the mothers were exposed to while their babies
were developing in the womb and asthma, cancer risk, and learning
disabilities.

Dr. Sandra Steingraber, a biologist at Cornell University, joins Dr.
Landrigan in asserting that exposure during pregnancy doesn't, by itself,
mean a child will get ill. What matters is the intensity of the exposure
and when it occurs during fetal development. A chemical exposure occurring
early in pregnancy might cause a
miscarriage, argue the researchers. If it occurs later on, it might cause
physical birth defects. Later still, it might damage brain cells.
Scientists are trying to precisely identify these "windows of
vulnerability." Says Dr. Steingraber: "Maybe certain problems that we
understand . . . as attention deficit disorders, hyperactivity, the
inability to pay attention, aggressive and violent behaviors, might have
their origins during those windows of vulnerability during pregnancy and
these questions are just being asked. Data is just beginning to come in."

Dr. Perera's team at Columbia is also studying the way that chemicals an
actually bind to human DNA in the womb and cause a mutation called an
"adduct." Work by Dr. Perera has shown that the greater the number of
adducts, the greater the risk for cancer. "And that's the missing link in
all of this," says Dr. Steingraber. "That's the link we're beginning to
fill in."

To place the current studies in a public health policy context, Moyers
revisits the firestorm over lead research; recalling the revolutionary work
of Dr. Herbert Needleman, who correlated low-level lead exposure to lower
IQ's in children in 1979. Twelve years later, Needleman's work was attacked
by the lead industry as it tried to protect its economic stake in lead
products. Ultimately, the validity of Dr. Needleman's work was fully
vindicated, and new public policy required unleaded gasoline and
restrictions on lead paint. And many scientists believe that, as a result,
children's IQ scores have risen, on average, three points. Yet, as Moyers
points out, lead remains the number one environmental threat to children's
health; many old houses and even many school buildings are still testing
positive for lead today.

In Herculaneum, Missouri, lead contamination is a very current issue. The
community is up in arms about the astonishingly high levels of lead to
which their families have been exposed because the town's primary industry,
the Doe Run lead smelter, failed to comply with EPA standards. "Doe Run
played a really good game," Robyn Warden, a mother, tells Moyers. "They
told people everything was under control and we were safe. And people
weren't educated enough to know any different. It took people actually
investigating lead to figure out that we were being lied to."

Dr. Steingraber knows the importance of informed parenting. Even in a
seemingly pristine environment in rural New York, she knows there are
possibilities of risk. "Just because there are no smoke stacks visible
around us, just because you live a long way from the source of these
chemicals, doesn't mean that nature won't bring them to you in some way,"
she says. A mother who breast feeds her
infant son, Dr. Steingraber also realizes that she passes toxins directly
to her baby every time she nurses. "No woman has uncontaminated breast
milk on this planet," she states. Dr. Steingraber tries to reduce her
children's exposure at home by using non-toxic products. "But we can't
shop our way out of our current situation," she warns. "We still need to
take action. It's time that our public policy takes action to get our kids
out of harm's way."

There are unknown answers to many questions. Moyers reports on a proposed
new project called "The National Children's Study," which will track
100,000 children from the womb to age 18 if it receives full funding from
Congress. This long-term study may provide the definitive answers necessary
for new regulations and laws protecting children from exposure to toxins.
"Without conclusive science," Moyers says, "it is a constant fight to
protect children's health."

Find out more about how scientists are studying environmental toxins and
join the ongoing discussion about the critical issues covered in NOW online
at www.PBS.org/now.

Kids and Chemicals was produced by Gail Ablow and co-produced by
Gregory Henry. Editor: Howard Sharp. Associate Producer

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