2011年5月17日星期二

Making Sense of a Toxic World

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中,找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件,或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。

We all know by now — don’t we? — that many of the synthetic chemicals in our food, personal--care and cleaning products, toys and household goods are harming not just the environment but ourselves. Body-burden tests, for measuring exposure to chemicals, reveal flame retardants, plasticizers, pesticides and perfluorinated chemicals in the blood of almost every person studied. We see rising rates of some cancers, autoimmune disorders, reproductive illnesses, autism and learning disabilities. Meanwhile, our consumption of synthetic chemicals, a majority of which haven’t been tested for human health impacts, has skyrocketed. A growing number of books make the case that these phenomena are linked.

It’s a scary premise, considering the ubiquity of these chemicals in our lives. But it’s maddeningly difficult to prove conclusively that multisyllabic compounds are harming us. (The European Union doesn’t require such proof: guided by the precautionary principle, it has banned entire categories of chemicals from use in consumer goods.) In “What’s Gotten Into Us?: Staying Healthy in a Toxic World,” McKay Jenkins, a professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of several previous books (including “Bloody Falls of the Coppermine,” about Catholic missionaries murdered in the Arctic), acknowledges that linking negative outcomes — like low birth weight and breast cancer — to specific chemicals is impossible. “In medicine, cause and effect are not always clear,” he writes. Part of the problem is that we lack a control group of purified humans upon which to experiment (even newborns are polluted with synthetic chemicals), if ethics in fact allowed such a thing. Another complication is that chemicals reach us through a variety of exposure routes, in varying combinations and in doses with different effects at different life stages.

The uncertainty, which manufacturers use to maintain the status quo, doesn’t bother Jenkins. Playing a genial if sometimes befuddled Everyman, he plunges ahead with a toxico-chemical survey of his surroundings. He declines to wallow in technical details, but he also fails to cite conflicting studies, and his breezy style sometimes borders on carelessness. He’s profligate with the word “toxic” (toxic to whom, and at what level?), and he’s vague about exposure routes. Sure, some Prius parts contain perchlorate, the primary ingredient of rocket fuel, but how many people eat their seat belts? If the exposure route is air, how and at what rate do seat belts degrade? He says baby shampoo contains formaldehyde, “which causes cancer and compromises the immune system,” but doesn’t explain at what level and through what exposure routes. (The E.P.A. recognizes formaldehyde as a human carcinogen under conditions of unusually high or prolonged inhalation exposure; I’m no formaldehyde apologist, but this glossing of detail left me feeling slightly distrustful of his reporting.) Jenkins also states that “premature births have jumped nearly 30 percent since 1981” and strongly implies a link with environmental chemicals. But a more significant factor may be the increasing use of fertility drugs, which lead to multiple births.

The more interesting parts here concern the chemical industry and the free rein it’s had to market scores of thousands of underscrutinized compounds. But it isn’t just chemicals that have gotten into us, Jenkins astutely notes: it’s also culture. “We are saturated with products, and marketing, and advertising,” he writes. “Our ignorance is not an accident.” Manufacturers fight labeling laws, and the federal government doesn’t adequately support independent research into the environmental and health impacts of even the most commonly used chemicals. Regulatory agencies are underfunded and understaffed, even as consumption of manufactured goods (and goods imported from countries with even less regulation than ours) continues to rise.

Elizabeth Royte’s latest book is “Bottlemania: Big Business, Local Springs, and the Battle Over America’s Drinking Water.”


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