Body Burden

As I watched last week's media coverage on food allergies and listened to experts report that there is no known cause or cure for food allergies, a story on CNN caught my attention. The story featured a family with two young children who agreed to participate in a biomonitoring study to measure the levels of industrial chemicals in their bodies. Also referred to as "body burden" testing by environmentalists and public health advocates, this hot issue refers to the legacy f toxins in our bloodstreams. Then eighteen month old Rowan and five-year old Mikaela had seven times the chemical exposure levels of their parents (in their thirties at the time).

"We are the humans in a dangerous and unnatural experiment in the United States, and I think it's unconscionable" said Dr. Leo Trasande, assistant director of the Center for Children's Health and the Environment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Transande believes that industrial toxins could be leading to more childhood diseases and disorders. "We are in an epidemic of environmentally mediated disease among American children today," he said.

"Rates of asthma, childhood cancers, birth defects and developmental disorders have exponentially increased, and it can't be explained by changes in the human genome. So what has changed? All the chemicals we're being exposed to."

Interestingly, the EPA does not require chemical manufacturers to conduct human toxicity studies before approving their chemicals for use in the market. A manufacturer simply has to submit paperwork on a chemical, all the data that exists on that chemical to date, and wait 90 days for approval.

I can't help but transpose this information with sound bites from Ann Muñoz-Furlong of FAAN who says, "We're becoming more and more allergic..."