More Toxic Chemicals Damaging Children's Brains, New Study Warns

The number of industrial chemicals, heavy metals and pesticides proven capable of derailing normal brain development -- and robbing children and society of dollars, IQ points and future potential -- has doubled over the last several years, according to a new paper published Friday .

Dr. Philippe Grandjean, one of the co-authors, suggested that the world is facing a "silent pandemic" of "chemical brain drain."

"We have an ethical duty to protect the next generation," he said. "In particular, the next generations brains."

As a medical student in the 1970s, Grandjean remembers watching a young Japanese teenager, Shinobu Sakamoto, on the TV news. Sakamoto struggled to walk and talk, but was determined to let the world know about her people's plight. Many in her fishing village of Minamata had unknowingly consumed seafood heavily tainted with methylmercury. Her mom had done so while Sakamoto was in her womb.

"I was shocked, as they didn't teach us anything about the effects of pollution on human health" in medical school, recalled Grandjean, chair of environmental medicine at the University of Southern Denmark and an adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. "That was the moment I decided to do something about it."

Grandjean has spent the decades since investigating chemicals capable of damaging the developing brain. He started with lead, then mercury. "Every time I turned over a stone, I found something new," he said.

The line-up has now grown to a dozen "bona fide brain drainers," said Grandjean. That's twice as many chemicals as he and co-author Philip Landrigan, chairman of the department of preventative medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, listed in their first review of the science in 2006 .

Joining methylmercury, lead, arsenic, PCBs, toluene and ethanol, according to the authors' updated list, are manganese, fluoride, DDT, chlorpyrifos, tetrachloroethylene and polybrominated biphenyl ethers.

The consequences of exposure in the womb or during the first years of life to any of these heavy metals, pesticides, solvents, flame retardants and other industrial compounds may not always be as obvious as they were for Sakamoto. But the effects on society, experts warn, can be profound.

An estimated one in six children in the U.S. is now affected by a cognitive or behavioral disorder, and that rate appears to be on the rise. Experts suggest that increases in the number of kids with autism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, for example, can't be explained by increased awareness or surveillance alone. Environmental pollutants are among the suspects.

Still, the new paper's concerns go much further.

Reduce one child's IQ by five points and the difference may be imperceptible. The child might be just a little slower to learn, a little shorter of attention and a little less successful on tests and at work -- which economists estimate could equate to $90,000 in lost lifetime earnings.

Reduce the average IQ among all children in the U.S. by five points, however, and the impact is striking: About half as many members of that generation will be "intellectually gifted," twice as many will be "intellectually impaired," and billions of dollars of productivity will be lost. And that doesn't take into account the costs of diagnosis, treatment, special education, incarceration and other indirect costs, such as an estimated rise in traffic accidents attributed to more distracted drivers.

A potential shifting of the bell curve should ring alarms for policymakers, business leaders and parents alike, experts say. They add that the current list of chemical culprits likely represents just the tip of the iceberg.

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