PART ll ….CHEMICALS AND AUTISM

(Denele Campbell blogs from Arkansas.)

Despite compelling and well-documented scientific studies showing the strong link between certain chemicals and a slate of neurodevelopmental disabilities including autism, the EPA has for decades postponed any meaningful action to more strictly regulate (or ban) the culprits. In a recent publication, scientists stated:

In 2006, we did a systematic review and identified five industrial chemicals as developmental neurotoxicants: lead, methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, arsenic, and toluene. Since 2006, epidemiological studies have documented six additional developmental neurotoxicants—manganese, fluoride, chlorpyrifos, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, tetrachloroethylene, and the polybrominated diphenyl ethers. We postulate that even more neurotoxicants remain undiscovered.

This is the tip of a massive iceberg. As reported in a 2016 PBS report on “Science Friday,”

There are more than 80,000 chemicals registered for use today, many of which haven’t been studied for safety by any government agency. But that’s about to change…somewhat. President Obama today signed into law the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, named after the late senator who introduced a version of the bill in 2013. This marks the first overhaul in 40 years to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976, the nation’s main law governing toxic chemicals.

Absurdly, the law only requires the EPA to test twenty chemicals at a time and each one has a seven-year test deadline before a five-year period during which industry is supposed to comply with any new regulation. At that rate, it will take over a century for all the current chemicals to be tested, all while about 20,000 new chemicals hit the market each year.

New EPA head Scott Pruitt, who voted for the Lautenberg bill, has stated that the law “guarantees protection of the most vulnerable by placing emphasis on the effects of exposure to chemicals on infants, children, pregnant women, workers and the elderly.”[11]

This should be a hopeful note, but even in a best-case scenario where President Trump’s EPA enacts swift meaningful restrictions on chlorpyrifos and other chemicals saturating our soil, air, and waterways, the incidence of fetal exposure and the resultant impairment of so many of our nation’s young will not abate any time soon. These chemicals wash down our rivers and linger in oceans where we harvest seafood. They soak into the walls and floors of our homes, survive in cropland that produces our fruits and vegetables, and become even more concentrated in livestock feeding on those plants.

Since developmentally disabled children form over half the nation’s Medicaid caseload at an estimated cost of about $300 billion (2015), legislators looking to reduce Medicaid expenditures should turn first to the nation’s agrochemical industries. In 2015, for example, Dow AgroSciences reported a full year profit of $962 million. In 2016, even after some losses, the company still enjoyed an $859 million profit. Monsanto and DuPont reported similar numbers.

Why not impose a 50% tax on such profits? This would yield a modest $1.5 billion toward the Medicaid costs resulting (in part) from their products and serve as a powerful incentive to ensure such products are safe before they’re marketed.