Existing Systems Do Not Protect Us

by Sarah Westervelt

Many of us live with the assumption that our framework of government agencies, environmental and occupational laws, and state-of-the-art medical institutions provide adequate protection against daily toxic exposures. They do not. Currently, about 80,000 chemicals are in use, but only about 10 percent have been tested for toxicity. Of particular concern are those persistent toxic chemicals that do not break down for decades, but concentrate in the environment and particularly in those highest on the food chain. Meanwhile, researchers toil to explain dramatic increases in the number of children with autism, asthma, ADHD, cancer, and birth defects.

Toxic heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, and cadmium, as well as chemicals that cause cancer and disrupt our hormonal and immune systems are all around us. We spread them on our gardens and lawns, put them in our cosmetics, incinerate them in our solid waste streams, inhale them from our coal plants and school buses, and eat them in our food. Because of the difficulty inherent in proving cause and effect when it comes to the health impacts of chronic, low-level exposure to toxic chemicals, we have been slow to recognize the problem and act upon it. In Europe, where the "precautionary principle" is more widely accepted, the burden of proof is shifting toward manufacturers to prove a chemical is safe before it is allowed on the market.

But here in the United States we do the opposite. Our policies are based on an assumption that a chemical is safe -- innocent until proven guilty -- resulting in the legal use of massive quantities of chemicals that cause significant health problems. For example, manufacturers are allowed to meet flammability requirements by using brominated flame retardants, which have proven to be neurotoxic in animal studies. Polybrominated diphenyl ether levels in breast milk of US women are 10 to 100 times higher than in European women. We are downloading these persistent toxic chemicals into our infants from day one as we welcome them into our unsafe post-industrial world.

Our laws even allow use of substances that have been known to be hazardous for decades. It is legal to dump 48 tons per year of highly toxic mercury into our air from coal burning power plants. US laws exempt schools from testing lead levels in public drinking water they provide to our children 35 hours a week, nine months out of every year.

In Seattle, the prevalent response to lead in our schools' water is to discount the risk. Delphine Lallemand, the daughter of a close friend, spent two years in the classroom that has lead levels of 1600 parts per billion, or 80 times higher than EPA's recommended action limit for schools and 8 times higher than Dr. Catherine Karr's "worst case scenario" recently outlined in the Seattle Times. Delphine was a gifted and vibrant child prior to entering kindergarten in this classroom. In the ensuing 2 years, she became so confused (a common symptom of lead poisoning) that she could not find her own bedroom in her family's home, was wracked with headaches and fatigue, and experienced a dramatic loss of language. Doctors looked for a brain tumor, among other things, to explain her neurological symptoms, but repeatedly sent her home with no diagnosis or treatment. Blood tests are not a reliable measure of the body burden of lead because it is quickly pulled out of the blood and stored in the bones. During the summer between her two years in this classroom, Delphine's symptoms started to abate, only to flare up again when she returned for a second year of exposure to 1600 ppb.

Despite recent statements that "no child should experience health impacts due to lead in drinking water," it is highly likely that Delphine and her classmate Forrest Allison-Brown were poisoned by extraordinary levels of lead in their classroom water fountain. Even though definitive cause and effect cannot be proven, and even though it is probable that they have had other exposures to lead as the rest of us do, there is a preponderance of evidence when classic symptoms of lead poisoning began shortly after arriving in the most toxic classroom in the district and were the worst during these two years.

How many other children have similar or less severe symptoms of lead poisoning? According to the Washington State Department of Health website, "The harmful effects of lead in the body can be subtle and may occur without any obvious signs of lead poisoning." The Seattle School District knew in 1992 that 40 of their schools retested with lead levels exceeding EPA limits, and yet they did nothing.

Our current laws, enforcement, and medical protocols have not kept up with the cumulative impacts of our industrial age. As a society, we must require all schools to get the lead out of their water. We must retrain our doctors to detect and treat chemical and heavy metal poisoning. We must quickly phase out persistent toxic chemicals that build up in our bodies. We must adopt the precautionary principle across the country in order to turn the tide on the poisoning of our children and ourselves.

Sarah Westervelt, M. Ed., is a parent who has recently learned that her daughter spent two years in the classroom with the highest levels of lead in the Seattle school district and that her son's significant disabilities are completely parallel to those caused by fetal exposure to mercury.