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Peter1469
03-24-2014, 07:08 AM
A Harvard professor of neurology calculates that Americans have lost 41 million IQ points (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/) due to exposure to to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides.

Interestingly fluoride and ethanol are on the list.


Last month, more research brought concerns about chemical exposure and brain health to a heightened pitch. Philippe Grandjean, Bellinger’s Harvard colleague, and Philip Landrigan, dean for global health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan, announced to some controversy in the pages of a prestigious medical journal that a “silent pandemic” of toxins has been damaging the brains of unborn children. The experts named 12 chemicals—substances found in both the environment and everyday items like furniture and clothing—that they believed to be causing not just lower IQs but ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. Pesticides were among the toxins they identified.

countryboy
03-24-2014, 07:29 AM
A Harvard professor of neurology calculates that Americans have lost 41 million IQ points (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/) due to exposure to to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides.

Interestingly fluoride and ethanol are on the list.

Clearly it's a problem, what's the solution?

It does seem people are increasingly unintelligent these days. I have often wondered, why? My wife and I half facetiously say, "there must be something in the water". Maybe we're not too far off the mark.

Peter1469
03-24-2014, 07:57 AM
Just to clarify, the study concerns children's development in the womb and shortly after birth- while the brain is still developing.


Clearly it's a problem, what's the solution?

It does seem people are increasingly unintelligent these days. I have often wondered, why? My wife and I half facetiously say, "there must be something in the water". Maybe we're not too far off the mark.

Peter1469
03-24-2014, 08:04 AM
The article has several suggested solutions. One advice to pregnant women:


“So you recommend that pregnant women eat organic produce?” I asked Grandjean, a Danish-born researcher who travels around the world studying delayed effects of chemical exposure on children.


“That’s what I advise people who ask me, yes. It’s the best way of preventing exposure to pesticides.” Grandjean estimates that there are about 45 organophosphate pesticides on the market, and “most have the potential to damage a developing nervous system.”


Landrigan had issued that same warning, unprompted, when I spoke to him the week before. “I advise pregnant women to try to eat organic because it reduces their exposure by 80 or 90 percent,” he told me. “These are the chemicals I really worry about in terms of American kids, the organophosphate pesticides like chlorpyrifos.”

nathanbforrest45
03-24-2014, 08:09 AM
The main problem as I see it is that those with the most exposure tend to become Democrats

Alyosha
03-24-2014, 09:58 AM
I've always used baking soda when brushing teeth. I took chemistry. Fluoride seemed like something whose harm would outweigh the benefit.

Peter1469
03-24-2014, 10:02 AM
I've always used baking soda when brushing teeth. I took chemistry. Fluoride seemed like something whose harm would outweigh the benefit.

It is an industrial waste product after all...

Polecat
03-24-2014, 10:44 AM
The sky has been falling every since I can remember. At some point it is bound to finally make it to the ground.

Peter1469
03-24-2014, 12:42 PM
Grandjean and Landrigan note in their research that rates of diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder and ADHD are increasing, and that neurobehavioral development disorders currently affect 10 to 15 percent of births. They add that “subclinical decrements in brain function”—problems with thinking that aren’t quite a diagnosis in themselves—“are even more common than these neurobehavioral development disorders.”


In perhaps their most salient paragraph, the researchers say that genetic factors account for no more than 30 to 40 percent of all cases of brain development disorders:


Thus, non-genetic, environmental exposures are involved in causation, in some cases probably by interacting with genetically inherited predispositions. Strong evidence exists that industrial chemicals widely disseminated in the environment are important contributors to what we have called the global, silent pandemic of neurodevelopmental toxicity.




The sky has been falling every since I can remember. At some point it is bound to finally make it to the ground.

donttread
03-28-2014, 05:38 PM
A Harvard professor of neurology calculates that Americans have lost 41 million IQ points (http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2014/03/the-toxins-that-threaten-our-brains/284466/) due to exposure to to lead, mercury, and organophosphate pesticides.

Interestingly fluoride and ethanol are on the list.

That would explain a lot.