Jan 9, 2024, Daily Mail: Doctors 'identify cause' of surging childhood cancers and autism cases as they issue urgent warning
Top doctors have issued a global call to arms to regulate toxic chemicals that are linked to a spike in childhood cancers and autism.
A group of scientists and doctors from 17 institutions in the US and Europe called for a crackdown on more than 350,000 synthetic chemicals and microplastics which are found in everything from clothing to cosmetics and food packaging.
The researchers said these chemicals have increased 50-fold globally since 1950 and are expected to triple by 2050.
Yet less than one in five of the substances are tested for toxicity, the team from the Consortium for Children’s Environmental Health wrote in a medical journal.
At the same time, an alarming trend has seen childhood cancers increase by 35 percent in the last half-century, despite cancers in older people decreasing.
And autism rates have tripled in the last decade.
The team also suggests synthetic chemicals and microplastics could be responsible for sharp rises in childhood other illnesses like asthma and obesity.
The researchers also called for increased regulations on these chemicals and said manufacturers should be required to monitor their products similar to prescription drugs to look for long-term health issues.
The toxic chemicals have contaminated the air we breathe, food we eat and water we drink and have been found in virtually every major human organ, including the brain, where they cause widespread inflammation.
Toxic chemicals like BPA and PFAS, also dubbed forever chemicals, have also been shown to disrupt the production of sex hormones like estrogen and testosterone, leading to reproductive issues, which may be contributing the West's fertility crisis.
The authors wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine: 'Protecting children from chemicals’ dangers will require fundamental revamping of current law and restructuring of the chemical industry to prioritize children’s health.
'Under new laws, chemicals should not be presumed harmless until they are proven to damage health.
'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.'
The researchers said that toxic chemicals have been shown to cross the placenta, an organ that forms during pregnancy to provide the fetus with nutrients and oxygen.
They also noted children are more vulnerable to lasting harm from synthetic toxins because their organs are not fully developed, leaving them less able to filter out toxins.
Younger children are also more likely to put toys and other objects laced with synthetic plastics in their mouths, increasing exposure.
Microplastics have also been found in a mother's breast milk, increasing the chance of them passing on to a child.
One study of children born in Sweden between 1960 and 2015 found that children whose mothers were exposed to the heavy metal arsenic were 38 percent more likely to develop childhood cancers like lymphoma.
Additionally, a study published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that mothers exposed to PFAS during pregnancy led to an increased risk of their children developing leukemia. . . .
The team called for several measures to reduce childhood exposure to environmental toxins.
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