Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals:

Far More Costly to U.S. Than $340 Billion

BY DR. PAUL WINCHESTER, M.D.

The author is director of neonatology, St. Francis Hospital, Indianapolis, and clinical professor of pediatrics, Indiana University School of Medicine.

A recent study by researchers at New York University Langone Medical Center (see article in November Community Word) calculated damage from exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). By their tabulation, damage in the United States is $340 billion annually compared with $163 billion in the European Union. Study authors attributed lower costs in the European Union to more proactive regulations there.

However, damage caused by exposure to EDCs is far more costly than billions of dollars.

Placing a dollar figure on your child’s IQ has always fascinated me. Imagine a mother being asked to choose between protecting her child’s IQ or using baby cribs, bedding, sleepers, pillows and car seats made with flame retardants high in EDCs. How many IQ points would you allow to be deducted from your child’s IQ?

Maybe the study authors felt they had to speak the language (money) of legislators who take political contributions from the corporations that manufacture products containing EDCs.

The real cost of chemical flame retardants and the 80,000 other chemicals now contaminating the human race is much more nefarious than billions of dollars.

These chemicals are linked to infertility and the long slide toward extinction of the human race. A recent report found populations of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish have declined by an average of 52 percent. A mass extinction is under way in which the human race is the cause and very likely a victim. How many dollars should we assign to a lost species or to our own extinction?

EDCs damage the body’s hormone system. But recent evidence (not used by EPA risk models) has found that most EDCs cause DNA imprinting and DNA sequence changes that last for generations.    Exposures to even very low levels of EDCs are linked to obesity, anxiety, depression, metabolic syndrome, polycystic ovaries, premature onset of puberty, low sperm count, infertility, lower intelligence, autism, ADHD and cancer. These diseases are not only noted in the exposed fetuses after they’ve grown up, but in their second and third generation offspring.  One exposure exposes three generations to subsequent harm! How much would you be willing to spend to prevent all of your descendants from developing autism, ADHD, obesity, anxiety, lower IQ?  All of these health outcomes are currently epidemic in humans and likely caused or promoted by EDC exposures over three generations. (But this is not what we are being told.)

If we are only concerned about the economic cost of EDCs, the cost of these epidemics should be balanced against the profits made by businesses that treat and/or cause them. Monsanto makes billions of dollars with GMOs that are bred to be tolerant to its herbicides. Pharmaceutical companies make billions prescribing anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications (and now opiates for pain). Infertility clinics and autism treatment centers now operate profitably in every city. The number of special needs teachers and therapists has skyrocketed. Oncology (cancer treatment centers) is one of the top moneymakers in hospitals today. Heart centers are so successful they even have valet parking for their patients. Our Midwest surgeons see more birth defects than East Coast Medical Centers because of our high pesticide use here in the Corn Belt. We are in a “profitable” region if you are a pediatric urologist, or heart surgeon.  Creating disease (or war)  has its upside.  Just ask Halliburton how much they made during the Middle East wars.

Our research team has recently found that 91 percent of Midwest pregnant woman tested positive for glyphosate, the main ingredient of Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup. Glyphosate is an endocrine disrupting chemical. There is a credible probability that a fetus exposed to Roundup will develop new and permanent DNA imprints that will change his or her health for a lifetime and likely will change the health of his or her descendants. Roundup is in virtually every fetus, every breast milk sample, every mouthful of baby food, produce and meat! Thanks EPA! Without even asking for it, we’ve all been given a free supply of Roundup!

The current system for approving new chemicals has taken 15 years to even consider the endocrine disruption risks of approved chemicals and has ignored the epigenetic evidence altogether. As the EPA admits, it only enforces environmental laws (it doesn’t create them).  Legislators create environmental laws (and we know who they work for.)  EPA was on watch when 100 percent of pregnant Americans accumulated a  DDT level, and a flame retardant level, and a Dioxin level, and a PCB level and a benzene level, and a phthalate level and a BPA level, and a rocket fuel level. EPA has now been caught allowing nearly every pregnant American to have a Roundup level.

This current regulatory system for environmental chemicals has created winners and losers.  EPA has had meetings with “stake holders” to decide how many chemicals are allowed in your drinking water.  (These meetings include all the corporate polluters but no fetuses or impacted families).  It’s so hard to be the one “at stake” and get invited to a stakeholder meeting.

In general the winners are major manufacturers of chemicals, plastics, weed killers, and flame retardants and pharmaceuticals (and hospitals and doctors who treat diseased people). The losers; well, that’s you and me.  More and more of us have diseases ranging from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, learning and mental disabilities and lower cognitive ability. We have children with autism, childhood cancer, asthma, and ADHD. We are hypersensitive to foods, mold and yes, chemicals.  We all take antidepressants, anxiolytics, pain relievers, and blood pressure and cholesterol medicine. Many of us have polycystic ovarian disease, our children are starting puberty earlier than their grandmothers, and we have a harder time getting pregnant.  When did this become the norm? Those of us conceived in peak pesticide months have a higher chance of having a birth defect and of having a lower ISTEP score.  Those of us born in the peak pesticide months are more obese, after shorter pregnancies and we actually have a shorter life span.

I worry about this.

The true cost of EDC exposure is multigenerational declines in health, cognitive ability and fertility.

It has been calculated that by 2050, our gene pool will be made up of IQ potential much lower than it is today and that over half of our children will be autistic. How can a less cognitively sophisticated population make better choices? Is the Fall of Rome near?

I’m not all doom and gloom, but I’m more aware than ever of the need to speak out and energize leaders who don’t seek power but seek societal well-being. Survival is the issue not money.

Editor’s note: After an extensive examination of independent data, The New York Times reported recently that GMOs in the United States and Canada have not increased crop yields and have resulted in dramatically higher use of pesticides compared with Europe which largely has rejected GMOs. The report cited data from the U.S. Geological Survey that found herbicide use has risen 21 percent. Herbicides, including atrazine, are EDCs used widely in central Illinois on corn and soybeans.