HUFFINGTON
07.22.12
CHEMISTRY LESSONS
an ad from the chemical giant
Dupont Co. promoting its motto:
“Better Things For Better Living
… Through Chemistry.”
“Back in mid-century, a lot of
people thought that the placenta
was a barrier to environmental
chemicals,” says Tracey Woodruff,
a reproductive health expert at the
University of California, San Francisco. It was some 40 years after
Silent Spring’s publication when
scientists finally confirmed Carson’s hunch — finding nearly 300
different industrial chemicals in
samples of umbilical cord blood.
Pingree also knows, as did Carson, that a rapidly developing fetus
or child is particularly vulnerable
to the effects of those chemical
exposures. Childhood cancer may
be one tragic consequence. Carson
pointed out that “more American
school children die of cancer than
from any other disease.” A statistic
that holds true today.
In many cases, however, the effects of early life exposures don’t
appear for decades, and once they
do, they’re almost impossible to
trace back to their origins, Carson noted. “A child is not going
to necessarily wake up with some
rash, but they may later have cancer at age 50,” says Pingree. She
is less worried about her now
16-month-old’s “daily survival,”
and more about the long-term effects of “things like pesticides and
the plastic she’s chewing on.”
Still, Myers, the chief scientist at Environmental Health
Sciences, points to a “remarkable ray of hope.”
“We’re learning that we actually may be able to prevent chronic
diseases of adulthood by reducing
exposures in the womb,” he says.