Chemicals

The Oakland Tribune is doing an interesting piece on accumulated chemicals in our bodies. It will run this Sunday (also in the Argus, the Daily Review, the Alameda Times Star, the San Mateo County Times, the Tri-Valley Herald) in the Trib. Basically the author has been following a typical East Bay family and has found some surprises in the chemicals in these people.

There has been quite a buzz about the story and it should be quite interesting. I am pretty confident that the writer has dug deeper than simply repeating what he read in the California Body Burden Campaign's press releases.

You can even go to Inside the Bay Area to take the test (then come back). Of course this version does not really test your blood and all that, but uses statistical means to determine how much stuff you are carrying around in you.

This is an issue that is difficult for the public, because on the one hand it deals with measurable science: yes, indeed, this person or that person has X amount of this or that chemical in his body.

But on the other hand, even words like "chemicals" are fraught with emotional charging.

One thing that drives me absolutely batty is the use of the word "chemicals" as some sort of currency for an immediate reaction. There really are folks who think that all "chemicals" are ghastly acids that ought to be kept in stored vaults or else some hapless child will stumble on them and immediately turn into a Republican or something else.

Going beyond the notion of chemicals as being inherently terrifying, we run up to the notion that somehow synthetic chemicals are the bad ones, because we all know that natural means good, right?

Oh, sorry, I wasn't listening. Sucking on a hemlock stock. What was that?

Ah, yes, natural is good. Synthetic is bad. Fine, just as long as you don't make me ingest any chemicals.

But seriously, scientific illiteracy is rampant in this country. Talk to someone about DDT and they start throwing out vaguely remembered statistics that actually were about lead anyway.

Now, in spite of my general cynicism towards Naderites and their ilk, I am aware of the dangers of certain accumulating compounds. As a painter I have to be very aware of this, because I use a lot of lead, cadmium, and various toxins that make lovely greens and have cyanide, aresenic and copper compounds in them (for those of you wondering, lead paint is still available for artists, just not for house paints), not to mention various solvents, synthetic and natural resins, solders, glues, inks, dyes, and oils. Add to the fact that I use these things around heat and power tools (including such things as using a router on finished wood and the like), and it comes down to a pretty significant exposure.

Artists' materials have been pretty well studied. We know which metals are the dangerous ones, which solvents are neurotoxins in which concentrations, etc. (OK, peanut gallery, I'm waiting). So far I have not had any symptoms, at least any of the short term symptoms, but I tend to be careful. You have to be when you use some of the stuff I use.

When we get into the topic of household chemicals, the jury is out. The way to find out is to measure and observe, but there is a problem. There is a significant malicious bunch of folks out there who have an agenda (and a not very hidden one, really), and they know that all they have to do is throw around some buzzwords and the scientifically illiterates will climb over each other to bring in new regulations and to ban new things (hydrogen hydroxide anyone?).

They take advantage of the fact that people really don't know what dosage means, so they say, "look, seventy percent of all toddlers have measurable amounts of X in their system." We are supposed to panic, to climb over ourselves worrying about the X that is leaching into the water table, even as we speak! Especially if X is something that we have heard of in some negative context (often in the form of a totally different compound, but to the chemically inept, that means little).

Sure, there may be some long term consequences to the accumulation of fire retardant in our bodies (although it could come in useful for many folks later on), and, quite frankly I would not be surprised if we found some pretty nasty connections between some compounds and some diseases. I would also not be surprised if those connections were between naturally occuring compounds and said diseases. Furthermore, I would not be surprised if the connections were revised several times.

Human life is complex. We live in a land that is powered by a gigantic hydrogen-bomb reactor, a world full of stuff that will kill us. We take some of that stuff and make it into other stuff. And then that stuff is mixed with still more stuff and then taken to different environments and so forth and so on. The control part of the experiment gets trickier and trickier to manage. Unfortunately scientists are subject to the same hubris as psychologists, so pronouncements are made that have to later be retracted, revised, or taken out back and shot.

So, while we certainly should be measuring and studying this stuff, the way is fraught with wolves in sheeps' clothing who have already come to the conclusions that they want (second hand smoke, anyone? How about DDT? Oh, you are too busy suffering from malaria to think about this stuff? Hug a liberal. When West Nile Virus reaches epidemic proportions in California's Central Valley this summer, hug a liberal).

Expect more from me on this topic, as I predict that it is going to be the tobacco-battle of the next ten years.

Posted by erik at March 9, 2005 10:28 AM | TrackBack