In recent years, the incidence of hypospadias, a congenital malformation of the penis, has doubled. Leading health experts blame this surge on a family of toxic chemicals called endocrine disruptors, which attack the hormone system.

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, has written about the expanding evidence that hypospadias and other birth defects in people and wildlife that may be linked to the daily bombardment of endocrine disruptors in household goods, pesticides and other man-made products.

"Shouldn't our government be as vigilant about threats in our grocery stores as in the mountains of Afghanistan?" Kristof asks.

Yes, it should.

Reforming the process by which the Environmental Protection Agency reviews and approves chemicals for commercial use is an issue that generates passionate advocacy. All Americans are exposed to toxic chemicals every single day - even before we are born. And, as Kristof points out, some of these chemicals have the potential to severely undermine our children's health and their futures.

No wonder concerned customers have lost faith in products that aren't "green." It's virtually impossible to walk the aisles of a large retailer in search of diapers without seeing signs marketing products as "BPA-free" or "phthalate-free". The organic industry now hauls in more than $30 billion a year, largely because shoppers don't want to eat pesticides and other synthetic chemicals mixed into food and food packaging.

You don't have to spend much time online to realize that consumers are increasingly angry that cosmetics, blankets, toys, baby seats, sofas and all manner of everyday goods are impregnated with chemicals with unpronounceable names and dubious or non-existent safety records.

Most members of Congress have probably have heard of the federal Toxic Substances Control Act. But they might be as alarmed as most Americans when they find out more than 80,000 chemicals, including many endocrine disruptors, have been rushed onto the market with no assurances that they are safe for people.

No parent would knowingly choose a toy contaminated with lead. We're certain the same holds true for those parents - of both parties - who are members of Congress.

People are furious with a federal government they perceive to be too badly broken to serve the needs of average Americans. And they are furious with a chemical industry that floods the market with products that may not be safe. Thanks to the leadership of Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Congress and the Obama administration have a real chance to address one source of this anger: regulation of toxic chemicals in consumer goods. Congress and the Obama administration should make sure the EPA gives top priority to endocrine disruptors in the nation's drinking water, because when the water supply is contaminated, everyone is exposed.

No matter which party is in power, the White House and Congress should come together on this very serious and pressing public health crisis. A glass of water should be free of carcinogens and endocrine disruptors. So should toys, toothbrushes, countertop cleaners, infant formula and store receipts. That's something we can all agree on.

Image via

A guest post from Laura MacCleery Mom, attorney and blogger

Last month, the New York Times published a story about my efforts when I was pregnant to rid my home of toxic chemicals. The story featured a photo of my 18-month-old daughter and recounted how I threw out a large pile of cosmetics, cleaners and other products that my research, using the Environmental Working Group's online Skin Deep Cosmetics Database, found to contain dangerous substances. While at the time I thought I was doing the right thing for my family, when I read readers' comments, I felt as if I were on Nickelodeon, in one of those scenes when an unsuspecting person has an entire bucket of green slime dumped on her head.

By Alex Formuzis: Vice President of Media Relations

I spend more time than most people reading about scientific studies on the environmental and public health effects of exposure to toxic chemicals. Last week I came across one report that I found particularly troubling. Published on the Environmental Health News website was a synopsis titled: Chemical exposures cause child IQ losses that rival major diseases.

The beginning of first sentence didn't improve my mood.

"Three common environmental chemicals - lead, organophosphate pesticides and methyl mercury - may have effects on children's IQ in the overall population..." wrote Aimin Chen, MD, Ph.D. of the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and environmental journalist Wendy Hessler.

Chen and Hessler reviewed a recent study led by David C. Bellinger - the noted environmental epidemiologist and pediatric neuropsychologist who divides his duties as a professor between Harvard's Medical School and its School of Public Health.
If Bellinger's calculations are accurate, American children have collectively suffered an estimated 40-million- point IQ loss as a result of environmental exposures to lead, organophosphate pesticides and methyl mercury.

Here's Belligner's breakdown of the effects of those exposures:

• Lead - about a 23 million IQ points lost

• Organophosphate pesticides - about 17 million IQ points lost

• Methyl mercury - about 300,000 IQ points lost.

No need for me to go on. Find the full analysis and Professor Bellinger's abstract here.

Image from: http://kindersandi.moonfruit.com/

By Alex Formuzis, Vice President for Media Relations

Many parents who don't smoke - and have raised their kids to do the same - might be surprised to learn that their offspring could be secondhand-smoking a pack a week.

Roughly one in every five children in high school and middle school is exposed to secondhand smoke while riding in cars, according to a new report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Because there is no safe level of secondhand smoke, the CDC is particularly concerned about exposures that occur in the close confines of a car, which it has linked to allergy symptoms and breathing problems. Both the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization classify secondhand smoke as a "known human carcinogen."

The CDC based its findings on 10 years of data (2000-2009) on US students in grades 6 through 12. Encouragingly, the research found a dramatic decline in exposures over the 10-year period, but there are still far too many non-smoking adolescents who are inhaling secondhand smoke while riding in cars.

Brian A. King, the study's lead author, told the Associated Press: "The car is the only source of exposure for some of these children, so if you can reduce that exposure, it's definitely advantageous for health."

Under state laws, parents in Arkansas, California, Louisiana and Maine are prohibited from lighting up in the car while children are riding along. But the kids in the CDC survey were not just riding in cars driven by parents; many were passengers of friends and classmates.

The study, published Feb. 6, 2012 in the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, concluded that:

Jurisdictions should expand comprehensive smoke-free policies that prohibit smoking in worksites and public places to also prohibit smoking in motor vehicles occupied by youth.

If you'd like to reduce or eliminate your or your children's exposure to secondhand smoke, the Mayo Clinic has some helpful tips to do just that.

Photo credit: Centophobia Flickr

Guest Post by Robyn O'Brien and Angie Nordstrum

We've all seen (or at least heard of) the movie "Erin Brockovich" in which a bold and fiercely determined mom takes on a chemical company for exposing a small town and the families and children that live there to toxic chemicals that have been linked to cancer. It's Academy Award winning material.

And it's happening again.

In a small town in Colorado, 600 yards from three elementary schools and a childcare center, the natural gas industry is about to drill wells and expose hundreds of school children to chemicals that have never been proven safe, for which there is no accountability when it comes to their safe disposal and for which there is no clarity on who would assume liability (and future medical bills) for the health of these children should they become ill.

It's an unprecedented situation, because in the haste to drill, no regulations and no long-term human health studies have been conducted to assess the impact that these processes and the chemicals used in them might have on the health of children.

According to the Denver Post, "the American landscape is dotted with hundreds of thousands of new wells and thousands of drilling rigs, as the country scrambles to tap into this century's gold rush for natural gas.

Drilling companies have developed techniques to unlock these enormous reserves, and energy companies are clamoring to drill.

But the relatively new drilling method -- known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking -- carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting huge amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressures to break up rock formations and release the gas."

Given that the American children have already earned the title "Generation Rx", due to the rates of asthma, allergies, autism, ADHD, diabetes and the fact that cancer is now the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of 15 (source: Centers for Disease Control), perhaps it is time that we stop and learn a little bit more.
Angie Nordstrum, a mother of a young child with multiple food allergies and asthma, sheds light on what is happening at her child's school:

My son attends the new Red Hawk Elementary in Erie, Colorado. This state of the art green school is a LEED certified building which means that it is complete with geothermal heat system, super insulated building envelope, skylights and displacement ventilation.

The mission of the school is to focus on math, science, technology and integration of the arts by fostering a sense of environmental responsibility by taking care of one's self with healthy eating and exercise and reducing environmental waste. Students begin each school day outside. The school also has a 1,500 square foot garden space. Students and staff will be an integral part of the gardens, with beds for each grade level.

In the news recently, you may have heard of something called "fracking" or "hydraulic fracturing". It is a drilling process used by the natural gas industry to extract natural gas from beneath the ground.

And there are health and safety concerns about it. Despite provisions in the Clean Air Act, there is something called the Halliburton Loophole that allows the gas companies to inject proprietary mixtures of methane, ethane, liquid condensate, and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the wells. Some of the VOCs that are used in the mixtures have a significant impact on health and include benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene and xylene.

Health effects of exposure to these chemicals include neurological problems, birth defects, and cancer. Other symptoms may include bloody noses, asthma, GI distress, diarrhea, dizziness, migraines, nerve pain, neurological disorders and skin rashes. These health risks pose a potential threat to children.

Yet despite these concerns, drilling is beginning on eight natural gas wells less than 600 yards from our school, Erie Elementary, Erie Middle School and Exploring Minds Childcare Center. Yes, three schools and a childcare center are about to be exposed to an unprecedented experiment in children's health.

Will the school nurse will be seeing dozens of sick children in her office. What health issues will these students have in 5 years? In 10 years?

The companies will begin the drilling process in the next couple of weeks. It will be visible from my son's classroom. The only access to the site will be from the road which runs right in front of the school. Let me repeat that, "The only access to the site will be from the road which runs right in front of the school" because while there is another road that is actually closer to the drilling site, this road cannot be used for drilling transportation because the chemical-carrying trucks are not allowed to cross railroad tracks on the course of their path.

At what point are children more valuable than railroad tracks? The trucks transporting the chemicals cannot cross the railroad tracks but they can transport toxic chemicals right in front of the entrance to our school?

Erie is an old coal mining town. There are parks and ball fields built on top of these mines for kids to enjoy all over our town. Our school garden sits on top of an old mine. We don't want our children to be the canaries in the natural gas coal mine.

To learn what you can do to protect yourself and your family and how to prevent the drilling of these wells near children's schools, the following pages and resources provide information about:

• The drilling planned for your community.


• The harm drilling can cause.


• Steps you can take to limit the dangers to yourself and your family.


• Resources in each state in which drilling is or is likely to occur.

• EWG: Natural Gas Industry Hides Risks of Fracking from Landowners


• Natural Resources Defense Council: Steps to Keep You and Your Family Safe from Fracking


• Sign On: Request a Moratorium on Oil and Gas Drilling Near Schools in Colorado


• "What You Need to Know About Natural Gas Production"


• Gasland: The Movie


• Blue Green Alliance: Chemicals in the Environment


• Fracking Across the United States: Learn about "Fraccidents" and How to Protect Your Loved Ones

By Nils Bruzelius, EWG Executive Editor

Lobbyists for polluting industries and opponents of environmental regulation have been tripping over one another to come up with self-serving lists of targets for the Congressional Super Committee as it labors to find ways to reduce federal spending and trim the deficit.

The nation deserves a more thoughtful approach, one that recognizes that Americans want, and deserve, to live in a place where air and water are clean, where soil and natural resources are conserved for future generations, and where health and safety - not merely profit - stand atop the hierarchy of public values.

EWG believes that many, but not all, of the budget proposals offered by President Obama go in the right direction by recognizing a larger vision of the public good, one that takes into account the interests of all Americans, not just the self-serving interests of the wealthiest and those who seek to profit while sacrificing health and the environment.

With that in mind, EWG offers the Super Committee its own lists:

Top 10 Things NOT to Cut - if you care about the environment and public health:

1. Good food for kids. Full funding for nutrition programs that help Americans who lack access to affordable, nutritious food, especially the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (formerly Food Stamps), the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, school meals and the Fruit and Vegetable School Snack Program, as well as funding for the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act of 2010.
2. The EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency's funding and authority to protect human health and the environment, including the resources it needs to appropriately enforce the Clean Air, Clean Water, Safe Drinking Water and inadequate Toxic Substances Control acts.
3. Healthy foods. Programs that promote cultivation and consumption of fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods, including Section 32 Fruit and Vegetable Purchases, including the Department of Defense's FRESH program, and the Department of Agriculture's Specialty Crop Block Grants that are targeted to a wide range of specialty crop farmers and consumers.
4. Food safety. Programs at the Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture designed to ensure food safety, especially funding for the brand new Food Safety Modernization Act.
5. Agricultural conservation. Conservation and research programs that support farming practices that prevent the loss of irreplaceable soil, prevent water and air pollution and conserve water and wildlife habitat.
6. Water infrastructure. Funding for state and local efforts to replace the nation's crumbling, leaky infrastructure of aqueducts, pipes and water treatment facilities that struggle to supply Americans with pure, safe water.
7. Clean energy. Funding for basic and applied scientific research at the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy that sow the seeds for tomorrow's true clean energy breakthroughs.
8. Extreme weather. Research and monitoring programs at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and elsewhere that seek to better understand the dynamics of climate change and to develop strategies to reverse the trends toward warmer temperatures and extreme weather events.
9. Toxic-related disease research. Programs at public health agencies that identify, understand and find cures for disease and disability caused by poor diets and environmental contamination, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the National Toxicology Program and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
10. Sustainable agriculture. USDA programs that provide new market opportunities and research for beginning, sustainable and organic farmers and ranchers, including the Farmers Market Promotion Program, Value-Added Producer Grants, Beginning Farmers and Ranchers, Sustainable Agriculture Research Education Programs and Organic Extension and Research Initiative.

Top things that the Congressional Super Committee should cut:

1. Kickbacks for dirty fuels. Subsidies, tax credits and special breaks for the oil, gas, and mining industries that encourage the fouling of land, water and air.
2. Ethanol subsidies. Subsidies and tax credits for first generation biofuels such as corn ethanol that encourage fencerow-to-fencerow crop production, contribute to higher food prices and barely dent the nation's reliance on fossil fuels.
3. Cash to wealthy, absentee landowners. Direct payments that go to wealthy farm operations regardless of need and to landowners who do no farming, and loopholes that allow these subsidies to be paid to landowners and farmers who exceed payment limitations or income caps.
4. Crop insurance. Heavily subsidized crop insurance programs that enrich insurance companies and farmers already making record incomes.
5. Antiquated price support programs. Outdated price support programs for crops that currently command all-time high prices, such as corn, soybeans and wheat.
6. Bogus rural energy programs. Energy programs in the farm bill that undermine true energy efficiency and independence at the expense of wind, solar and energy conservation projects, such as subsidizing large pulp and paper companies and funding installation of ethanol blender pumps.

Like our lists? Great. Then let the 12 members of the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction (aka the Super Committee) know that you want them to tackle the deficit the right way - because there IS a right way.

EWG sent the committee members our recommendations, showing that they can address the budget AND make sure that we protect programs for children, the environment and our health, as well as ensure that there's a true safety net for farmers who need it.

Just click here now to stand with EWG.

By Rebecca Sutton, EWG Senior Scientist

Medical experts will never cease searching for cures for the gravest illnesses that afflict people. But a growing consensus is forming in the medical and public health communities that preventing these disorders in the first place is a more urgent - and ultimately less costly - priority.

Though researchers have much to learn about the very earliest stages of a variety of diseases ranging from cancer to asthma, many experts believe that environmental pollutants are often a key trigger.

Doctors are speaking up for a stronger national chemicals policy
Earlier this week (April 25), the American Academy of Pediatrics called for an overhaul of the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 in order to protect developing children, pregnant women and other vulnerable people from toxic chemicals. The law, the academy said, has not kept pace with the "explosion of knowledge about special vulnerabilities and differential exposures that children and pregnant women have to environmental toxicants."

The pediatricians' statement follows the U.S. government's latest Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, made public last month, which found that rates of U.S. cancer deaths generally declined between 1998 and 2007, but rates of new diagnoses of childhood cancers increased. Cancer death rates among American children under 19 decreased, the report said, but that's likely the result of better treatment, not prevention.

Last month, David Christiani, M.D., M.P.H., an expert in environmental and occupational health issues at the Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard School of Medicine, issued a similar call. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, Christiani asserted:

"...over the past three decades, increases in incidence of some childhood cancers, such as leukemia and brain tumors, may implicate prenatal exposures to environmental carcinogens."

Cancers could be prevented
He said epidemiologists believe that in developed countries like the United States, as much as 85 to 95 percent of many cancers would be prevented by eliminating environmental factors.

Environmental Working Group's research has documented more than 300 industrial chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of newborns. A number of these chemicals are suspected carcinogens or hormone system disruptors.

Christiani underscored the importance of last year's report on environmental carcinogens by the President's Cancer Panel, an advisory committee of doctors and scientists appointed by President George W. Bush. In a paper released in April 2010, the Cancer Panel called for more research on the environmental causes of disease.

Like the pediatricians, Christiani argued for "stronger environmental laws and regulations to require pre-marketing safety testing, reduce industry influence on regulation, and control the importation of toxic chemicals and products."

Christiani made his case with hard evidence that:

• Eliminating exposure to vinyl chloride monomer in PVC manufacturing facilities resulted in decreased incidence of angiosarcoma of the liver;


• Reducing exposure to bis-chloromethyl ether used to make bulletproof glass eliminated work-related small-cell lung cancer;


• Removing aromatic amines from dyes decreased bladder cancer incidence.

Cause-and-effect relationships between many chemicals and disease aren't easily established. But, Christiani argued, why delay until scientists come up with proof beyond reasonable doubt? He wrote:

"The current regulatory approach calls for safety testing [of chemicals in commerce] only when evidence of possible danger arises. Since most cancers are long-latency diseases, waiting for population-based evidence of a problem allows avoidable cancer epidemics to occur."

Individuals and society pay an enormous toll, both human and financial, for chronic disease. We can always know more. Christiani said that roughly two-fifths of Americans are expected to develop some form of cancer in their lifetimes and one-fifth will likely die from it.

There's no time like the present to accelerate the transformation of U.S. policy to an emphasis on prevention.