Vol. 3, No. 4, 1997 Page 2 
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Vol. 3, No. 4, 1997 Page 2 |
The May 30 issue of the British medical journal Lancet reports a
study of 501 children in Scotland, revealing a 6% reduction of
cognitive ability and learning skills among [children] with average
blood lead levels of only 10.4 ęg/dl. More than 80 percent of American
children already have blood lead levels as high as this.... The message
for parents seems to be this: there's already enough lead in the
American environment to damage a lot of children. No increase in
environmental lead is desirable or acceptable."
Peter Montague, in Rachel's
Hazardous Waste News, 1987
How many of today's criminals, languishing in prison, are there for
no other reason than being unfortunate enough to be born into a lead-
polluted, late twentieth-century society?"
James Bellini, in High Tech
Holocaust, 1989
Children are undergoing rapid growth and development, and their
developmental processes may be easily disrupted.... If cells in the
developing brain are destroyed by chemicals such as lead, mercury, or
solvents, or if the formation of vital connections between cells is
blocked, there is a high risk that the resulting neurobehavioral
dysfunction will be permanent and irreversible."
"Healthy Children-Toxic
Environments," Child Health
Workgroup, U.S.
Dept. of Health and
Human Services, Agency for Toxic
Substances and
Disease Registry, 1997
The educational community has really not understood the dimensions of
this because we don't see kids falling over and dying of lead poisoning
in the classroom. But there's a very large number of kids who find it
difficult to do analytical work or [even] line up in the cafeteria
because their brains are laden with lead."
Bailus Walker,
former commissioner
of public health
in Massachusetts,
quoted in Newsweek, 1991
At the moment it is impossible to know whether hormone-disrupting
chemicals are contributing to any of the disturbing social and
behavioral problems besetting our society and, if so, how much. Each of
these problems is immensely complex and the result of a variety of
forces acting together. At the same time, studies with animals are
clearly showing that disrupting chemical messages during development
can have a lifelong impact on learning ability and behavior. Hormone
disruption can increase the tendency toward a certain kind of behavior,
such as territoriality, or attenuate normal social behaviors, such as
parental vigilance and protectiveness. Given this provocative evidence,
we should consider chemical contamination as a factor contributing to
the increasing prevalence of dysfunctional behavior in human society as
well."
Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski,
and John Peterson Myers,
in Our Stolen Future, 1996