14 DAY TRIAL // A UC Riverside professor, denounces the risks of daily exposure to toxicants and demands changes in regulations in order to protect public health in the United States.
Professor Carl Cranor says that Americans are exposed to hundreds, if not thousands of possibly toxic substances every day, and this because there are no public health laws that require product testing of most chemical compounds before they enter production.
These substances could affect the development of brain functions, of the immune system the reproductive organs or hormones, and children are the most vulnerable.
Professor Cranor, a professor of philosophy and longtime advocate of reforming US regulatory policies, recently wrote a book presenting his research in this matter for the past thirty years.
He stresses the regulation problem when it comes to toxic substances, and says that “because most substances are subject to post-market regulation, the existing legal structure results in involuntary experiments on citizens.
“The bodies of the citizenry are invaded and trespassed on by commercial substances, arguably a moral wrong.”
He adds that the Centers for Disease Control has found over 200 toxicants in the bodies of average Americans, and this number is very low, considering that the CDC has not yet developed protocols to identify other substances.
“The list is only going to grow over time,” Cranor adds.
Scientists found that all the pesticides and industrial chemicals produced today are capable of entering the human body, said the professor, who has also served on science advisory panels for the state of California and on Institute of Medicine and National Academy of Sciences committees.
He has studied US regulatory policy and philosophic issues concerning risks, science and the law, for the last 30 years, as well as the regulation of carcinogens and developmental toxicants, and the ways of protecting susceptible populations from new and existing technologies and toxicants.
It seems that besides pharmaceuticals and pesticides, the American legal system allows most substances to come in without being tested for toxicity.
This means that if they cause cancer, reproductive defects, birth defects or developmental problems, people won't know it before it's too late.
According to his research, only 2% of 62,000 substances that were in commerce before 1979, have been tested for toxicity by the US Environmental Protection Agency, and of the 50,000 substances that have been introduced since then, 85% were allowed to market with no data on health effects.
A few examples of toxic substances we can all touch every day are bisphenol A – used in plastic bottles and that lines cans of food, perfluorinated compounds in non-stick cooking surfaces or Gore-Tex material, brominated flame-retardants that helped manufacture curtains, baby car seats and TV sets, and many cosmetic ingredients, industrial chemicals, pesticides, and other compounds, all of which enter our bodies and remain for a while or for years.
The problem here is that having chemicals everywhere, everyone will be contaminated, and “that it will make future human studies more difficult,” says Cranor, since “there will be no clean controls against which to compare people who are contaminated.
“We are all contaminated.
“It’s a question of more or less contamination.
“So it’s going to be increasingly difficult for the science to detect some of these effects in humans, when they exist.”
And since removing the harmful products is a difficult and long-lasting process, it would be far easier “to require testing of products before they come in to commerce,” he says.
“If they appear to pose adverse health effects, they should not be permitted, or they should be required to be reformulated so the problems disappear.”
Cranor's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and University of California Toxic Substances Research and Teaching Program.
The new book is entitled “Legally Poisoned: How the Law Puts Us at Risk from Toxicants” (Harvard University Press, 2011).