A new framework for assessing the impact of chemicals on child health

Nations must start testing and regulating chemicals and chemical products as closely as the current systems that safeguard prescription drugs or risk rising rates of chronic illnesses among children, according to a New England Journal of Medicine report by a group of experts writing as the Consortium for Children’s Environmental Health.

Global chemical inventories contain an estimated 350,000 products – such as manufactured chemicals, chemical mixtures, and plastics. Despite the risks of environmental pollution and human exposure, the manufacture of synthetic chemicals and plastics is subject to insufficient legal or policy constraints.

That regulatory vacuum must be replaced by new laws that prioritize health protection over the rampant production of chemicals and plastics, according to the co-authors, who include Boston College epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, MD, environmental law scholar David Wirth, biologist Thomas Chiles, and epidemiologist Kurt Straif.

“Under new laws, chemicals should not be presumed harmless until they are proven to damage health,” the authors said. “Instead, chemicals and chemical-based products should be allowed to enter markets and remain on markets only if their manufacturers can establish through rigorous, independent, premarket testing that they are not toxic at anticipated levels of exposure.”

In addition, the authors say chemical manufacturers and brands that market chemical products should be required to monitor their products after they have been released to the market in the same way that prescription drugs are monitored in order to evaluate any long-term negative health effects.

The call to action is the result of a two-year project by the group of the world’s most trusted independent scientists from 17 high-profile scientific institutions in the U.S. and Europe. The report was developed to enable a coordinated approach to reduce the ever-increasing levels of chronic disease being faced by children around the world.

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are the principal causes of morbidity and mortality in children today, the authors note. Their incidence and prevalence are on the rise. Emerging research links multiple NCDs in children to manufactured synthetic chemicals.

In the past half century, NCDs in children have risen sharply:

● Incidence of childhood cancer has increased by 35 percent

● Male reproductive birth defects have doubled in frequency

● Neurodevelopmental disorders now affect one child in 6, and autism spectrum disorder is diagnosed in one child of 36

● Pediatric asthma has tripled in prevalence

● Prevalence of pediatric obesity has nearly quadrupled and driven a sharp increase in type 2 diabetes among children and adolescents

● Certain chemicals have led to a reduction in IQ and thus massive economic damage

Most synthetic chemicals and related products are produced from fossil fuels – gas, oil, and coal. Production has expanded 50-fold since 1950, and is projected to triple again by 2050. Environmental pollution and human exposure are widespread.

Yet manufacture of synthetic chemicals and plastics is subject to few legal or policy constraints. Unlike pharmaceuticals, synthetic chemicals are brought to market with little prior assessment of their health impacts and almost no postmarketing surveillance for longer-term adverse health effects.

Fewer than 20 percent of these chemicals have been tested for toxicity, and fewer still for toxic effects in infants and children. Associations between widely used chemicals and disease in children continue to be discovered with distressing frequency, and it is likely that there are additional, still unknown links.

Protecting children from chemicals’ dangers will require fundamental revamping of current law and restructuring of the chemical industry, the co-authors write.

Safeguarding children’s health against manufactured synthetic chemicals will require a fundamental shift in chemical law that takes a more precautionary approach and prioritizes health protection over the unconstrained production of synthetic chemicals and plastics, specifically:

● New laws that require chemicals to be tested for safety and toxicity before they are allowed to enter markets

● Mandated chemical footprinting, which operates much like its better-known cousin carbon footprinting

● Safer chemicals, reducing reliance on fossil carbon feedstocks, developing a diverse set of safer, more sustainable molecules and manufacturing processes

● Policy reform, create a new legal paradigm for chemical management at a national level and a new global chemicals treaty

Pollution by synthetic chemicals and plastics is one of the great planetary challenges of our time.”

Philip Landrigan, Director, Observatory on Planetary Health, Boston College

“It is worsening rapidly. Continued unchecked increases in the production of chemicals based on fossil carbon endangers the world’s children and threatens humanity’s capacity for reproduction.”