(ARNON hata cer nar -prrgnemannte ne ta Senta Pee mire aaNet

Pie

Chemical studies inadequate
in Showing long-term effects

SOME PEOPLE pride
themselves on keeping toxic
chemicals out of their
gardens and household
cleaning products. What
perhaps they don’t know is
that they're walking
repositories of toxins
themselves.

Anyone reading this column has
DDT, PCBs, and a number of
other organochlorines in his or her
body. These types of substances
are insoluble in water, but soluble
in fatty tissue, so reside in our
body fat.

Our major source for these
chemicals is in our food supply.
Toxins released into water bodies,
for example, are ingested by fish,
which are eaten by birds or
animais that retain the fishes’
organochiorines and, in turn, pass
them on to whomever eats them.

The chemical becomes mcre
concentrated as it rises within the
food chain. An organochlorine
measured in an eagle’s egy, for
example, will be 25 million times
more concentrated than it is in the
water supply that forms the basis
of that eagle’s ecosystem.

We are exposed to the bulk of
our organochlorines through our
dietary meat and milk. As milk is
especially fatty, there are high
concentrations of such substances
in the milk we drink, and in the
breast milk with which we feed
our children.

Although some of these chemi-
cals, such as the pesticide DDT,
have been banned from use in
Canada, they are still being in-
gested by us and passed on to our
children because they linger per-
sistently in the fat of the animals
we eat and in our own system.

And we are far from immune to
the chemicals used in other coun-
tries.

Chernobyl showed us that it
takes 11 days for an airborne

‘ substance to circle the world,

which is why DDT, still used
heavily in developing nations,
quickly finds its way to Canada.

Not that tiie blame can be put
on the shoulders of the developing
countries. In fact, many countries
that have banned a_ particular
pesticide for use in their own
lands will export it for use in the
Third World nations.

The effect of these chemicals on
humaz health is unknown. The
type of scientific studies that
pesticides and other chemicals are
subjected to are inadequate to
determine their long-term effects.

40TH SEASON

Peggy
Trendel-Whittaker

ECOINFO

When determining a chemical’s
toxicity, researchers are required
to test for death and cancer in lab
animals.

But as Catherine Davies, the
founding director of Toronto’s
Environmental Protection Office,
notes, we are starting to realize
that these “‘persistent toxic chemi-
cals’? may not affect us as much
as they will affect our children —
something that usually won’t show
up in lab tests. .

According to the 199° fa
vironmental Scan prepa.’ “y
Resource Futures Interna::. aal
and the Institute for Research on
Public Policy, ‘‘There is evidence
that many persisten: toxic chemi-
cals have similar mechanisms of
action in wildlife and human
species, suggesting that effects on
wildlife could be important in-
dicators of effects on humans.””

This is not very reassuring, as
we fook at the animals surroun-
ding the polluted Great Lakes who
have cranial and facial defects,
deformed limbs, a decreasing
reproductive success and the
tendency to exhibit abnormal
behavior.

One team of researchers studied
the babies of women who con-
sumed, on average, two meals per
month of Lake Michigan fish.

Their children, who were com-
pared with those of non-fish-
eating mothers, were found to
have a smaller average head cir-
cumference and a lower average
birth weight. Some
psychoreurological effects were
observed at birth and others are
now being observed as the
children grow.

Similar effects were found in
the children of Chinese women
who were exposed to rice oil con-
taminated with PCBs.

1991-92

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Unfortunately, it is almost im-
possible to scientifically document
precise cause and effect reiation-
ships, because humans are expos-
ed to a plethora of chemicals over
their lifetimes, one or all of which
could be contributing to a specific
effect.

“You can't expect to prove
causality,’’ says Davies. ‘‘All you
can say, in general terms, is that
the weight of evidence indicates
that Chemical X causes Health
Effect Y."”

“We shouldn't have tc wait to
count the dead bodies in the
Streets’’ before acting on the evi-
dence we're gathering now, she
went on to say.

And there is still plenty of evi-
dence to be gathered.

“There’s a fot of things out
there we don’t have any informa-
tion on,’’ notes Davies.

She quotes a study suggesting
that of the 65,000 registered
chemicals in use, only 18% of the
pharmaceutical drugs were suffi-
ciently tested to permit a complete
health hazard assessment, 10% of
the pesticides, and none of the

See Keep page 18

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