Hi, I'm Alex Smith from Radio Ecoshock. In my last broadcast, "The Polluted Womb," we followed the science given to top government advisors, proving vehicle exhaust is poisoning a new generation. Smog causes an increase in diseases, and descreased mental capacity, starting in the womb.
Now, we investigate the other end: how people die from smog.
Unseen particles in the air shepherd us to the end, killing us by the millions. Whenever smog levels rise, victims die suddenly, slumped over in homes or offices. They die in ambulances and hospitals, despite the best medical help. For most, their heart breaks down.
It's counter-intuitive to think of air pollution as a killer of hearts, not lungs. We're going to learn how it works from one of the world's true experts, Doctor Joel Schwartz, from the Harvard School of Public Health. We'll use a briefing he gave to Congressional Staff on March 31st, 2005. I will be quoting and paraphrasing from Dr. Schwartz throughout this broadcast.
Why do people die? Of those who die from internal causes - not car accidents or hunting with the Vice President - the largest single cause of death is heart failure. Could smog be involved? Doctor Schwartz went on a 30 year odessy to uncover the role of air pollution.
The basis of the study seems simple enough. Take a polluted city, find the record of bad air days - which are often published in the daily paper - and compare the number of deaths on smoggy or clear days.
We know smog kills. The indisputable case: in 1952, London England, 3,000 thousand people died within 5 days, due to a nasty combination of fog, coal smoke, and chemicals. It was pea soup. People couldn't see more than a couple of feet. A wave of bodies arrived at the morgue. They did not die of lung disease, or the flu.
That was the real, orginal "smog" - a wet fog with hostile particles. Later, Los Angeles became famous for a differerent kind of pollution, caused by ozone hugging the ground, during air inversions. It was called "photo-chemical pollution," but people just called that "smog" as well. Both types share a key component: tiny particles incompatible with our biology.
We now know it's the particles, not sulfur dioxide gas. Studying different smog events, and through other research done in various countries, Dr. Schwartz and his team have ruled out sulfur dioxide GAS as the direct trigger for a wave of smog deaths. But, the gas combines with other chemicals to form other particles that irritate the body, adding to the chain of events resulting in sudden death.
In Europe, particles are measured by the number of micrograms per cubic meter. The authorities have decided that the 24 hour average should not exceed 65 micrograms per cubic meter. By comparison, when people smoked at the back of airplanes, they inhaled two or three hundred micrograms per cubic meter.
In North America, we only count particles 2.5 microns in diameter or less, the size that penetrates deeply into the respiratory system. These are the so-called "fine" particulates. You'll hear scientists discuss the air quality as Particulate Matter 2.5, or PM 2.5. Almost half the PM 2.5 particles come from burning carbon, and 30 to 40% come from sulfates, depending where you live. Larger particles, up to 10 microns, are called "coarse particulates."
If you lined up microns, it would take more than 25,000 of them to make an inch. The period at the end of this sentence contains at least 600 microns, maybe more. Human eyes can't see them.
But is there any safe level? Is there a threshold where the human body tolerates particles in the lungs, beyond which we die? The Harvard team selected 6 cities in the United States, ranging from the former steel town of Steubenville Ohio, to the less polluted Madison, Wisconcin. When all air quality and death rates were calculated, the scientists did NOT find any safe threshhold. There is no really safe level of exhaust particles for humans. And not just humans. When Boston street air was given to lab rats, they died too.
After 15 years of the study, statistics clearly showed: the worse the air pollution, the sooner people died. Dr. Schwartz tell us "the difference in life expectancy between the cleanest town and the dirtiest town, it's two years."
Some humans are more susceptible than others. Those with medical conditions, like diabetes, are threatened by smog. People already sick with a respiratory infection have a lower threshhold. And, it turns out, 50% of the population has a gene that helps them detoxify, which others lack. A 50-50 genetic chance.
In one study in Philadelphia, there was a 7 per cent increase in total deaths on smoggy days, compared with clear air days. But these are not just feeble people who would have died within a few days anyway. The California Air Resources Board concludes smog-related premature deaths take away 14 years of expected living, on average.
Most victims would never have guessed that smog would suddenly kill them. Yet, our method of collecting death statistics lists the cause of death as heart attack, or arrhythmia, not air pollution. Arrhythmia is "when the beating of the heart becomes incoherent." The electrical signal to beat goes haywire.
[clip hearbeat, then dis-rhythm]
----
Doctor Schwartz told the Congressional staffers that based on his extensive studies, smog is killing 250,000 Americans a year. Quote, "That's more than AIDS, plus breast cancer, plus prostate cancer, plus colon cancer, put together."
Some scientists, and more vested interests, questioned his results. So Schwartz collected all his original data, going back to 1975, and sent it to an independent team for verification, plus another outside group for analysis. Results confirmed. Still, not all scientists agree with the findings, and many family doctors have not heard about the link from smog to heart failure.
How do we know fewer people die, and live longer, if we clean up air pollution? The world has a classic example in old East Germany, which was a Stalinesque smokestack state. Just a few years after re-unification, when the worst polluters were closed down, or retro-fitted to meet West German standards, the smog levels went down, and so did the health problems and deaths. Bronchitis, endemic in the former Communist state, dropped to low Western levels. The lung function of school children improve markedly, in just three years. We know that cleaning up works.
[SUPRISING THINGS]
Some people die several times - those like Vice President Cheney who have defribrilators implanted in their chests. These devices start the heart back up, and record when heart failure occured. The Harvard team checked those records, to see if hearts stopped on smoggy days or clear, and once again, smoggy days stop hearts.
---
It's important to realize that most of the harmful particles that reach our lungs are not exactly what left the power plant, or the exhaust pipe. They are "secondary" particles, new chemical and metal combinations that grow from sulfur and carbon waste. Yet these secondary particles contain the fingerprints of their original source, whether trucks, chemical companies, or power plants. Scientists know, and can prove, where they come from.
[Clip4: "There was an increase in mortality associated with the particles from the coal burning power plants. There was a somewhat larger increase associated with motor vehicle particles."]
And, no, common dust particles are not killing us. Human-made ones are.
[THE PATHWAYS]
Combustion of coal or gasoline produces carbon particles, soot, but it also makes particles of various metals like nickel, iron, and more. Although not necessarily poisonous in themselves, studies show these metals act as catalysts to generate toxic chemicals that inflame and damage our circulation system. They create "oxidative stress."
Most people have heard that a oxidation can damage cells. Health conscious people look for food and supplements that contain "anti-oxidants." Now we know that a major source of this oxidation, which may limit or end our lives, comes from burning carbon fuels, especially in metal engines. Exhaust particles lead to chemical reactions in our bodies.
In addition, the disease fighting agents of the body, the macrophages, mistake industrial products for living agents. Our germ fighters try to get rid of metals and other toxic compounds - by creating inflammatory chemicals. The lung becomes inflamed, and this is the first step toward death.
All branches of medicine are now realizing the the impact of oxidative stress on most of our organs. Tests show that oxidatant compounds from pollution show up not just in our lungs, but in our hearts, within hours of exposure.
[Clip 2: Dr. Schwartz: "So particles do produce oxidative stress, oxidative stress is well established as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, in particular, inflammatory processes associated with oxidative stress increase the risk that plaques in your arteries rupture, and that's what triggers a heart attack."]
Humans do have a series of natural anti-oxidants that combat this stress on the heart and other organs. But half the population lacks the gene that makes one of the most powerful anti-oxidant enzymes. The rest of us have some protection, but less.
Tests also show that pollution, from coal plants and vehicle exhaust, interfere with the ability of blood vessels to relax, to let blood flow where it is needed.
The first pathway to pollution heart failure is thought to be plaques from hardened arteries breaking free, to create a heart attack, or a stroke. The plaques break off due to oxidative stress, passed on from the inflammation of lungs, caused by tiny toxic particles from the air.
The second pathway involves a chain of events. The heart depends upon the nervous system for its signals. The sympathetic nervous system, linked to consciousness, is one factor regulating the heart. For example, when we are afraid, the heart might beat faster. But the heart is also regulated by a second, unconscious, called the parasympathetic nervous system. This unfelt body system can act faster to regulate the heart beat. That regulation can be disrupted by chemical changes caused by inhaling smog. Why? Because the parasympathetic nervous system is connected to all the neural receptors in the lungs. We are aware of our rib cage moving, but do not feel the lungs themselves. Improper signals from the lungs impact the most important control of the heart.
For those without the strongest antioxidant gene, a mere 10 microgram change in PM 2.5, in the Boston study, reduced the high frequency parasympathetic control of the heart rate by 37 percent. That's a big change, for a small change in smog level, imperceptible to all of us. Hearts begin to react long before the threshold triggering official smog alerts is reached. Yet, in this test, those with the magic anti-smog gene did not register any effect, with a 10 microgram change.
A Swiss study showed that asthma symptoms in kids dropped dramatically, and bronchitis rates dropped 40%, with just a 10 microgram reduction in particles. Small changes can have big benefits for the whole population.
Because particle smog affects us so quickly, a cleanup can have dramatic results.
[Clip5Dublin] "There was a ban on the use of domestic coal in Dublin, in 1990. And there was a 13 percent reduction in cardio-vascular mortality, from one winter to the next."]
A miracle story.
Meanwhile, our industrial particle clouds are all too visible from space.
[Clip3: "This is a NASA photograph of the North East [United States], and I want to point out that this white stuff here, is clouds. But this stuff, underneath, is not a cloud. That's a fine particle aerosol haze. Those are particles. The East coast of North America is blanketed with particles, in the summer. And, in the summer, almost half of those particles are sulphates, the long range transport particles, from the power plants in the mid-West. And, you don't need an air pollution monitor. You can see can see it from space."
It's much worse for China. In some areas, the satellite photos can't penetrate the thick particle smog. China is disappearing under a heavy layer of coal smoke and vehicle exhaust. Millions are dying from it.
We already learned that while sulfur dioxide is not a killer, sulfur combines into particles that are. "Sulphate particles are one of the major sources of particles in our air." And we could clean up those power plant stacks with proven technology, for a lot less than the cost of treating and burying their victims.
According to more conservative figures from the California government, about 16,000 Americans a year die due to drunk drivers. 17,000 deaths are homicides. But the still unfiltered coal burning power plants can top both, with an estimated 18,000 people dying too soon, due to their particulates going out the stacks. Get more info from the group "Clear the Air" at cta.policy.net.
America, for all its riches, still has unfiltered coal-fired power plants belching out deadly pollution. Still has millions of diesel trucks and buses pumping out heart-stopping smog. The doctor has the last word:
[Clip6 "So we're talking about something whose mortality rate is on the order of half of cancer, right? Now, if I told you that I had a pill that cure half the cases of cancer in the United States, and we were going to phase it in over a 15 to 18 year period.... you would lynch me.
Now, every coal-fired power plant built since 1979 has had a scrubber on it, to remove the SO2 gas that turns into the sulphates. We know how to do this.
With the 1990 acid rain bill, a bunch of power plants, that had been built earlier, retro-fitted scrubbers. We know how to do that. And it takes 18 months to build a scrubber, not 18 years.
So you want to talk to me about Clean Air Interstate rules, versus "Clear Skies," but I want to know... how... unlike cancer, we know how to cure this! it's an existing technology. [Cough] Why are we giving people so much time to put it on.
And we know how to make particle filters, for diesel engines. The other half of the equation. And in London, at the end of this year, they will have retro-fitted every single existing bus, - and they have 7,000 diesel powered buses in London, - with a particle filter."]
Londoners, who still remember the 1952 killer smog, may now breathe easier. But the rest of the world, men, women, children, and animals, continues to be exhausted, even though the technology to solve it is known and quite affordable.
But Americans won't get it. The Bush administration has been caught, again, doctoring the advice of its own appointed scientific review board on air pollution standards - and refusing to improve particulate regulations by even a single microgram, though it could cut the health impacts in half.
A group of regulators from the North East states took the federal government to court to demand the EPA act to save lives. They wanted the acceptable annual average for Americans to be lowered from 15 cubic meters of particulates, to 14. As you've already heard, top American scientists, and the EPA's own review board, recommended this small change. In fact, the review board wanted to cut emissions to 12 cubic meters.
Nope. The Bush appointee, Stephen Johnson, turned it down, and, according to the group Environmental Defense, doctored reports to make them sound better. According to CASAC Committee Chair Dr. Rogene Henderson, this is the first time the EPA has refused their scientific recommendations for human health. You can hear more about this, from the February 10th edition of the NPR radio program "Living on Earth," at loe.org.
[The exact program is here: www.loe.org/shows/toc.htm?year=2006]
For Americans, this is literally a life and death issue. The EPA is holding public hearings on the new standards on March 8th in Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. You or your group can voice your opinion, to the EPA, until April 17th.
Wherever you live in the world, you are inhaling the exhaust of this new carbonated world.
Demand better. Your life depends on it.
The one hour lecture by Doctor Schwartz is available, free, from the downloads page of Radio Ecoshock, at www.ecoshock.org. The tip for this feature came from Calvin Jones from climatechangeaction.blogspot.com. Environmental problems described in this podcast may be closer than they appear.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
THE POLLUTED WOMB
THE POLLUTED WOMB
A report from Radio Ecoshock
[clip from speech by Dr. Perera, outlining the terrible statistics for children damaged by pollution]
That's right. Classrooms full of wheezing kids with inhalers in their pockets. Post modern kids have damaged DNA, and diminished IQ, because chemicals are hitting them right in the womb, in their earliest stages of development.
This is last year's news, but the horror of industrial damage to new generations of humans hasn't really reached out everyday minds. We definitely don't want to hear that our air, seeming so clear, is poisonous. And our vehicles, those magic things that let us fly across the ground, reach right into the womb, and our lungs, ever after.
A team of researchers led by Doctor Frederica Perera has proved this, with a ground-breaking study in New York City. The team from Columbia University followed hundreds of mothers, from the first discovery of pregnancy, through infancy, and early childhood. One of the most important discoveries: pesticides and other industrial chemicals are mixing with car exhaust, a kind of unseen toxic smog that penetrates the womb, and harms humans at every stage of life.
Pesticides cause birth defects, damage DNA, and predispose children to diseases later in life, especially cancer. We know this, by science, and by the sick and dying people exposed to pesticides. Of course, you don't use pesticides, just Mother Nature Brand Soap in your home, so you're OK, right?
Not really. As Doctor Perera describes in a 40 minute speech given to Congressional staffers, pesticides are everywhere. Municipalities spray them along roads to kill weeds and trees. Condo and apartment maintenance people use them liberally. Golf course spray adds to the aerosol mist of chlorinated poisons that float across the city. And your factory farm food is laced with fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides.
Blood tests of random citizens, whether in Europe or North America, reveal 60 or more toxic chemicals running around in all of us. Trust me, you are getting your fair share of the chemical feast.
[Clip of woman talking about her blood]
The biggest non-surprise: automobile smog combined with pesticides and stress, form a super threat to human health. The exhaust of cars and trucks, which we all take for granted, is so powerful it crosses nature's protective barrier in the womb, the placenta, and injures our babies. The number of cars and trucks has more than doubled since the 1950s. We are producing a new damaged generation, the Exhausted Ones.
Let's introduce Dr Frederica Perera, from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. A stylish-looking woman, Dr Perera, known as "Ricky" to her friends, has that rare combination of vision, science, and the skills to attract public agencies and dollars, for the study of disadvantaged people. She argues it is far cheaper, not to mention more humane, to prevent diseases from the moment of conception, than to pay for many lives of illness and disability.
A small story about her study broke in the New York Times for February 16th, 2005, an Associated Press piece titled "Pollution Is Linked to Fetal Harm." Google that title, the article pops up, top of the pile. It reads:
"Exposure to pollutants caused chiefly by vehicles was measured by backpack air monitors worn by the women during the third trimester of pregnancy.
When the babies were born, genetic alterations were measured. Researchers found an increase of about 50 percent in the level of persistent genetic abnormalities among infants with high levels of exposure, said the study's senior author, Dr. Frederica P. Perera, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health.
'We already knew that air pollutants significantly reduced fetal growth, but this is the first time we've seen evidence that they can change chromosomes in utero,' Dr. Perera said, adding that the kind of genetic changes that occurred had been linked in other studies to increased risk of cancer."
Three paragraphs note that vehicle exhaust is altering the genes of newborns, and not in a good way. It's a shame that car pollution stories don't warrant the full-page spreads available to car makers and oil companies.
But Doctor Perera said much more in her a talk titled "Pre-Natal Exposures to Pollutants and Future Health Risks." It was part of a Policy Maker Education course for Congressional Staff, organized by the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, on March 30th, 2005. You can be briefed like Congress Staff, by watching the video. I'll tell you how to find the video, and a better quality audio version of the speech, later in this broadcast.
We all need to investigate further, to face up to reality for babies, kids, and city humans generally. This likely includes you. So here's the problem:
Twenty five percent of inner city kids with asthma. Autism and other birth defects spiraling. Fifteen percent of school kids with a learning disability. In the 1950s, when cars were just beginning, these things were rare. Now, they are common and growing. Everyone knows a family with a child with difficulties. You may think its just a fad, or over-medicalization, until it happens to your family. Asthma, autism, and childhood cancer are not just a trick, but a heart-breaking struggle.
These problems are worst for visible minorities, who enjoy dense traffic, and truck or bus yards built into their already burdened neighborhoods. But who doesn't live near a highway now? Who doesn't inhabit an air shed loaded with vehicle exhaust?
In a criminal over-simplification of the Doctor's speech, she emphasizes three major causes of genetic deformation and disease in the womb and childhood. Pesticides, vehicle exhaust, and stress stand out from a complex weave of possible causes, once obvious things like tobacco, alcohol abuse, and heavy metals like lead are factored out. The study found that stress of living in pollution feeds the terrible stress of trying to raise sick or mentally challenged kids. It's a negative feedback loop.
Cars and trucks produce many chemical combinations. But gasoline and oil are basically hydrocarbons. When they are burned, they emit particles called "Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons." That chemical name is too long, so we use the acronym "PAH's."
PAH's can occur in nature, when organic matter burns, perhaps in a forest fire. But that's nothing like the persistent flood of airborne PAH's produced by our transportation system. There are many types of PAH's, and some of them are highly carcinogenic, cancer causing, and mutagenic, creating mutations of DNA, even in the womb. All PAH's contain benzene. PAH's are found in all sorts of petrochemicals, like solvents and dyes, as well as burnt gasoline. Roofing tar, creosote, and coal-fired power plants are strong sources of PAHs. So are cigarettes.
But today, we're just focusing on vehicle exhaust.
[Clip 2: PAHs]
Breaking more new ground, this New York study tested the COMBINATION of chemicals in the real world, as opposed to standard government tests of individual chemicals, by themselves.
[clip 3: Study Them All]
This is vital. Governments, and chemical makers, carefully isolate one chemical, and test it on rats. They base the safety level, the amount you may be receiving, on this illusory system. In reality, all sorts of chemicals appear in untested combinations. We inhale and ingest a chemical smorgasbord that has never been tested on humans, by anybody. We're all part of this global experiment to see what happens to human biology. Welcome to the experiment.
Babies and kids are far more sensitive to environmental toxins than adults. The Doctor explains why:
[clip 4: Higher Risk for Kids]
So in the Bronx, and in Harlem, the team set up indoor air quality monitors, and occasionally, fitted the pregnant mothers with backpacks that measured pollution. That was all combined with blood tests, questionnaires, and a host of other measurement techniques. They followed up with health checks on the babies, and followed the kids up to school age, so far, all the while comparing the amount of pollution with the actual health of children, both mental and physical. Science is proving that exposure to pollution sets up pre-natal changes that can determine major diseases in childhood, or even much later in life.
The study doesn't just measure what toxins remain in the body. It shows the genetic damage caused by pollution.
[Clip 5: PAH Markers]
Chromosomes are damaged, immune systems compromised, from birth by pollution. It's visible at a microscopic level, not a theory, but a provable fact.
They studied the lives of 700 mothers. They found PAHs and pesticides in every air sample, in every breath they took.
[Clip 6: Every Mother Exposed]
The fingerprints of DNA damage from PAHs was found in 40 percent of newborn babies.
Organophosphate pesticides like Diazinon were found in 100% of the babies, from day one of their breathing life on earth.
Doesn't the placenta, the blood barrier in the mother's womb, protect the unborn child?
[Clip 7: Placenta Protection]
These pollutants also reduce birth weight, meaning more chance of illness, or even reduced IQ, in later life. Again, PAHs, from auto exhaust, and other carbon burners, is now proven to reduce the survival of human offspring.
[Clip 8: Birth Weight Matters]
And as we said at the beginning, PAH's from vehicle exhaust and coal-fired power plants are directly driving the explosion of children with asthma.
[Clip 9: PAHs and Asthma]
New York City spends $450 million dollars a year for their "Early Intervention" programs, trying to help the victims of pollution. The cost of treating asthma in American children, in 2002, was 7 billion dollars. Of course, many of the growing number of children with asthma in China, or Poland, don't get treatment.
Add more billions for the productivity loss resulting from a drop in IQ, a generation less smart, less able to solve the problems that polluted their young bloodstreams. There are powerful economic arguments to reduce urban pollution.
What can be done?
Some universities and institutes are trying, with presentations like this one, to reach the minds of policy makers, to enact laws which reduce pollution. In 2002, the EPA began a phase out of the worst organophosphate pesticides for residential use. A single insecticide called Chlorpyrifos, sold as Dursban or Lorsban, was shown to affect not just mental ability in school children, but also body co-ordination. It was used in fumigation of cheap housing, and, before the regulation, was part of consumer products like "Raid."
It's amazing that tobacco-like lawsuits haven't been launched by the millions of parents whose children will never go to college, and who suffered or died, due to this pesticide. After the EPA tightened regulations, just a little, Dr. Perera's team saw an almost immediate decrease of these toxins in more recent blood tests. But Chlorpyrifos is still being used on crops, and shows up in kids' food, and your food.
Perhaps this study will help break down the generation-long wall of denial. Those who don't seem to care about city kids, or kids at all, may at least balk at the looming public health care crisis, as a new generation of pollution-damaged humans develop.
You can help, by educating yourself, and others. The Web address for the Perera video is just too long to repeat in the audio podcast. You can find the link in the Ecoshock Newsblog at www.ecoshock.org/podcast.html, under the article title "The Polluted Womb." (You are reading that now...)
For you Blog readers, the link for the video turned out to be too long, and chocked Blogger.
Sorry.
A better quality audio-only version of the speech is available from the Downloads page at Ecoshock.org. It's about 40 minutes long.
Here's the link: http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/PreNatal_Pereral.mp3
Dr. Perera's scientific work on pollution in New York City can be found in the NIEHS journal "Environmental Health Perspectives on Air Pollution," although that article is now outdated, surpassed by new data.
The main thing is to wrap your mind around the reality of clouds of tiny chemical particles, that you cannot see. Air quality in most cities in the world is no longer safe for pregnant women, babies, or children. At the very least, these groups need special protection.
In the worst cases, such as downtown New York, or Beijing, Mexico City, or Los Angeles, pregnant women may want to do the unthinkable: wear a breathing mask over the face when out and about, to protect the developing fetus from the smog of pesticides, chemicals, and exhaust. If the car, coal and pesticide culture continues, pregnant women may need to be evacuated into the countryside.
Once born, babies should be kept as high as possible from the roadway. Even a baby backpack is better than a low-slung stroller. In the 1990's, Greenpeace Germany measured vehicle exhaust at different heights. Accounting for the differences in lung and body size, they found a stroller would have to be about 14 feet up in the air, to give the baby the same dose of air available to adults five feet off the ground. Anyway, down where the dogs are, it's bad air, and babies don't belong there.
Incidentally, kids aren't safe inside the car either. It's even more polluted inside, close to that motor, than outside on the pavement. Again, a mask would offer some protection, and don't drive around with newborn babies more than necessary.
Another obvious short-term solution is to install a HEPA air filter in the bedroom of pregnant women and young children, to remove the particulates from car and diesel exhaust. Even with windows closed, the general city smog is moving through the building.
These are awful tricks for an awful situation. To make air fit for humans, we need to remove the most toxic pesticides and chemicals, and find a non-polluting form of transportation. And while we work toward that cleaner day, each of us needs to act, now, to reduce our personal consumption of polluting products. Reduce your personal exhaust.
Some little lives are depending on it.
[Clip asthma girl]
This report is from Radio Ecoshock, non-stop all environment radio, at www.ecoshock.org.
The podcast included samples of music by Dave Keifer, from podsafeaudio.com. Thanks Dave!
A report from Radio Ecoshock
[clip from speech by Dr. Perera, outlining the terrible statistics for children damaged by pollution]
That's right. Classrooms full of wheezing kids with inhalers in their pockets. Post modern kids have damaged DNA, and diminished IQ, because chemicals are hitting them right in the womb, in their earliest stages of development.
This is last year's news, but the horror of industrial damage to new generations of humans hasn't really reached out everyday minds. We definitely don't want to hear that our air, seeming so clear, is poisonous. And our vehicles, those magic things that let us fly across the ground, reach right into the womb, and our lungs, ever after.
A team of researchers led by Doctor Frederica Perera has proved this, with a ground-breaking study in New York City. The team from Columbia University followed hundreds of mothers, from the first discovery of pregnancy, through infancy, and early childhood. One of the most important discoveries: pesticides and other industrial chemicals are mixing with car exhaust, a kind of unseen toxic smog that penetrates the womb, and harms humans at every stage of life.
Pesticides cause birth defects, damage DNA, and predispose children to diseases later in life, especially cancer. We know this, by science, and by the sick and dying people exposed to pesticides. Of course, you don't use pesticides, just Mother Nature Brand Soap in your home, so you're OK, right?
Not really. As Doctor Perera describes in a 40 minute speech given to Congressional staffers, pesticides are everywhere. Municipalities spray them along roads to kill weeds and trees. Condo and apartment maintenance people use them liberally. Golf course spray adds to the aerosol mist of chlorinated poisons that float across the city. And your factory farm food is laced with fungicides, insecticides, and herbicides.
Blood tests of random citizens, whether in Europe or North America, reveal 60 or more toxic chemicals running around in all of us. Trust me, you are getting your fair share of the chemical feast.
[Clip of woman talking about her blood]
The biggest non-surprise: automobile smog combined with pesticides and stress, form a super threat to human health. The exhaust of cars and trucks, which we all take for granted, is so powerful it crosses nature's protective barrier in the womb, the placenta, and injures our babies. The number of cars and trucks has more than doubled since the 1950s. We are producing a new damaged generation, the Exhausted Ones.
Let's introduce Dr Frederica Perera, from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. A stylish-looking woman, Dr Perera, known as "Ricky" to her friends, has that rare combination of vision, science, and the skills to attract public agencies and dollars, for the study of disadvantaged people. She argues it is far cheaper, not to mention more humane, to prevent diseases from the moment of conception, than to pay for many lives of illness and disability.
A small story about her study broke in the New York Times for February 16th, 2005, an Associated Press piece titled "Pollution Is Linked to Fetal Harm." Google that title, the article pops up, top of the pile. It reads:
"Exposure to pollutants caused chiefly by vehicles was measured by backpack air monitors worn by the women during the third trimester of pregnancy.
When the babies were born, genetic alterations were measured. Researchers found an increase of about 50 percent in the level of persistent genetic abnormalities among infants with high levels of exposure, said the study's senior author, Dr. Frederica P. Perera, director of the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health.
'We already knew that air pollutants significantly reduced fetal growth, but this is the first time we've seen evidence that they can change chromosomes in utero,' Dr. Perera said, adding that the kind of genetic changes that occurred had been linked in other studies to increased risk of cancer."
Three paragraphs note that vehicle exhaust is altering the genes of newborns, and not in a good way. It's a shame that car pollution stories don't warrant the full-page spreads available to car makers and oil companies.
But Doctor Perera said much more in her a talk titled "Pre-Natal Exposures to Pollutants and Future Health Risks." It was part of a Policy Maker Education course for Congressional Staff, organized by the Harvard Medical School Center for Health and the Global Environment, on March 30th, 2005. You can be briefed like Congress Staff, by watching the video. I'll tell you how to find the video, and a better quality audio version of the speech, later in this broadcast.
We all need to investigate further, to face up to reality for babies, kids, and city humans generally. This likely includes you. So here's the problem:
Twenty five percent of inner city kids with asthma. Autism and other birth defects spiraling. Fifteen percent of school kids with a learning disability. In the 1950s, when cars were just beginning, these things were rare. Now, they are common and growing. Everyone knows a family with a child with difficulties. You may think its just a fad, or over-medicalization, until it happens to your family. Asthma, autism, and childhood cancer are not just a trick, but a heart-breaking struggle.
These problems are worst for visible minorities, who enjoy dense traffic, and truck or bus yards built into their already burdened neighborhoods. But who doesn't live near a highway now? Who doesn't inhabit an air shed loaded with vehicle exhaust?
In a criminal over-simplification of the Doctor's speech, she emphasizes three major causes of genetic deformation and disease in the womb and childhood. Pesticides, vehicle exhaust, and stress stand out from a complex weave of possible causes, once obvious things like tobacco, alcohol abuse, and heavy metals like lead are factored out. The study found that stress of living in pollution feeds the terrible stress of trying to raise sick or mentally challenged kids. It's a negative feedback loop.
Cars and trucks produce many chemical combinations. But gasoline and oil are basically hydrocarbons. When they are burned, they emit particles called "Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons." That chemical name is too long, so we use the acronym "PAH's."
PAH's can occur in nature, when organic matter burns, perhaps in a forest fire. But that's nothing like the persistent flood of airborne PAH's produced by our transportation system. There are many types of PAH's, and some of them are highly carcinogenic, cancer causing, and mutagenic, creating mutations of DNA, even in the womb. All PAH's contain benzene. PAH's are found in all sorts of petrochemicals, like solvents and dyes, as well as burnt gasoline. Roofing tar, creosote, and coal-fired power plants are strong sources of PAHs. So are cigarettes.
But today, we're just focusing on vehicle exhaust.
[Clip 2: PAHs]
Breaking more new ground, this New York study tested the COMBINATION of chemicals in the real world, as opposed to standard government tests of individual chemicals, by themselves.
[clip 3: Study Them All]
This is vital. Governments, and chemical makers, carefully isolate one chemical, and test it on rats. They base the safety level, the amount you may be receiving, on this illusory system. In reality, all sorts of chemicals appear in untested combinations. We inhale and ingest a chemical smorgasbord that has never been tested on humans, by anybody. We're all part of this global experiment to see what happens to human biology. Welcome to the experiment.
Babies and kids are far more sensitive to environmental toxins than adults. The Doctor explains why:
[clip 4: Higher Risk for Kids]
So in the Bronx, and in Harlem, the team set up indoor air quality monitors, and occasionally, fitted the pregnant mothers with backpacks that measured pollution. That was all combined with blood tests, questionnaires, and a host of other measurement techniques. They followed up with health checks on the babies, and followed the kids up to school age, so far, all the while comparing the amount of pollution with the actual health of children, both mental and physical. Science is proving that exposure to pollution sets up pre-natal changes that can determine major diseases in childhood, or even much later in life.
The study doesn't just measure what toxins remain in the body. It shows the genetic damage caused by pollution.
[Clip 5: PAH Markers]
Chromosomes are damaged, immune systems compromised, from birth by pollution. It's visible at a microscopic level, not a theory, but a provable fact.
They studied the lives of 700 mothers. They found PAHs and pesticides in every air sample, in every breath they took.
[Clip 6: Every Mother Exposed]
The fingerprints of DNA damage from PAHs was found in 40 percent of newborn babies.
Organophosphate pesticides like Diazinon were found in 100% of the babies, from day one of their breathing life on earth.
Doesn't the placenta, the blood barrier in the mother's womb, protect the unborn child?
[Clip 7: Placenta Protection]
These pollutants also reduce birth weight, meaning more chance of illness, or even reduced IQ, in later life. Again, PAHs, from auto exhaust, and other carbon burners, is now proven to reduce the survival of human offspring.
[Clip 8: Birth Weight Matters]
And as we said at the beginning, PAH's from vehicle exhaust and coal-fired power plants are directly driving the explosion of children with asthma.
[Clip 9: PAHs and Asthma]
New York City spends $450 million dollars a year for their "Early Intervention" programs, trying to help the victims of pollution. The cost of treating asthma in American children, in 2002, was 7 billion dollars. Of course, many of the growing number of children with asthma in China, or Poland, don't get treatment.
Add more billions for the productivity loss resulting from a drop in IQ, a generation less smart, less able to solve the problems that polluted their young bloodstreams. There are powerful economic arguments to reduce urban pollution.
What can be done?
Some universities and institutes are trying, with presentations like this one, to reach the minds of policy makers, to enact laws which reduce pollution. In 2002, the EPA began a phase out of the worst organophosphate pesticides for residential use. A single insecticide called Chlorpyrifos, sold as Dursban or Lorsban, was shown to affect not just mental ability in school children, but also body co-ordination. It was used in fumigation of cheap housing, and, before the regulation, was part of consumer products like "Raid."
It's amazing that tobacco-like lawsuits haven't been launched by the millions of parents whose children will never go to college, and who suffered or died, due to this pesticide. After the EPA tightened regulations, just a little, Dr. Perera's team saw an almost immediate decrease of these toxins in more recent blood tests. But Chlorpyrifos is still being used on crops, and shows up in kids' food, and your food.
Perhaps this study will help break down the generation-long wall of denial. Those who don't seem to care about city kids, or kids at all, may at least balk at the looming public health care crisis, as a new generation of pollution-damaged humans develop.
You can help, by educating yourself, and others. The Web address for the Perera video is just too long to repeat in the audio podcast. You can find the link in the Ecoshock Newsblog at www.ecoshock.org/podcast.html, under the article title "The Polluted Womb." (You are reading that now...)
For you Blog readers, the link for the video turned out to be too long, and chocked Blogger.
Sorry.
A better quality audio-only version of the speech is available from the Downloads page at Ecoshock.org. It's about 40 minutes long.
Here's the link: http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/PreNatal_Pereral.mp3
Dr. Perera's scientific work on pollution in New York City can be found in the NIEHS journal "Environmental Health Perspectives on Air Pollution," although that article is now outdated, surpassed by new data.
The main thing is to wrap your mind around the reality of clouds of tiny chemical particles, that you cannot see. Air quality in most cities in the world is no longer safe for pregnant women, babies, or children. At the very least, these groups need special protection.
In the worst cases, such as downtown New York, or Beijing, Mexico City, or Los Angeles, pregnant women may want to do the unthinkable: wear a breathing mask over the face when out and about, to protect the developing fetus from the smog of pesticides, chemicals, and exhaust. If the car, coal and pesticide culture continues, pregnant women may need to be evacuated into the countryside.
Once born, babies should be kept as high as possible from the roadway. Even a baby backpack is better than a low-slung stroller. In the 1990's, Greenpeace Germany measured vehicle exhaust at different heights. Accounting for the differences in lung and body size, they found a stroller would have to be about 14 feet up in the air, to give the baby the same dose of air available to adults five feet off the ground. Anyway, down where the dogs are, it's bad air, and babies don't belong there.
Incidentally, kids aren't safe inside the car either. It's even more polluted inside, close to that motor, than outside on the pavement. Again, a mask would offer some protection, and don't drive around with newborn babies more than necessary.
Another obvious short-term solution is to install a HEPA air filter in the bedroom of pregnant women and young children, to remove the particulates from car and diesel exhaust. Even with windows closed, the general city smog is moving through the building.
These are awful tricks for an awful situation. To make air fit for humans, we need to remove the most toxic pesticides and chemicals, and find a non-polluting form of transportation. And while we work toward that cleaner day, each of us needs to act, now, to reduce our personal consumption of polluting products. Reduce your personal exhaust.
Some little lives are depending on it.
[Clip asthma girl]
This report is from Radio Ecoshock, non-stop all environment radio, at www.ecoshock.org.
The podcast included samples of music by Dave Keifer, from podsafeaudio.com. Thanks Dave!
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