Polluting Our Future, in contrast, goes on to list 323 chemicals as known or suspected developmental and neurological toxicants. These designations, though, are derived primarily from experiments in which laboratory animals are essentially poisoned with chemicals at high doses that humans would never experience. A fair read of the NRC report indicates that, even if some chemicals in the environment are responsible for some developmental problems, the occurrence is so rare that it cannot be reliably identified or measured despite more than a century of widespread use of and exposure to a multitude of chemicals. Considering that Polluting Our Future is sounding the alarm about 24 billion pounds of chemicals released into the environment annually, the report virtually debunks itself. Given the tremendous amount of scientific research on the topic, the absence of evidence can t be blamed on a lack of effort.
Chemicals are in the environment.
Children have health problems. Therefore, chemicals cause the health problems. This syllogism has intuitive appeal to many in the public protective of its children and already made suspicious of industrial chemicals by two decades worth of media hype such as this week s CNN headline, We're poisoning our kids, toxins report says. The report rushes to convict chemicals. Perhaps that s why the National Environmental Trust and Physicians for Social Responsibility put their conclusion in the report s subtitle, Chemical Pollution in the U.S. that Affects Child Development and Learning.