CNN shows on toxic exposures tonight & tomorrow

[Guest guest]

Toxic America tonight and Toxic Childhood tomorrow night, June 2 & 3, on

CNN. Program description below from Healthy Child/Healthy World and Mt.

Sinai Childrens Environmental Health Center. HC/HW has a call to action

as well. There are many papers on increased autism risk from lead

exposure and other pollutants. Maybe soon thinking on low dose mercury

will be same as that for low dose lead, that is, no exposure level is

" safe " .

*****

FROM HEALTHY CHILD/HEALTHY WORLD

Wednesday and Thursday, June 2nd and 3rd, at 8pm EST, CNN's Dr. Sanjay

Gupta will be airing an eye-opening investigative story: Toxic America.

If you care about public and environmental health, it's must-see TV.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta hosts the two-part program, revealing devastating

results from a year-long investigation.

*Wednesday night highlights “Toxic Towns”* and will delve into the

environmental health and justice problems plaguing the community of

Mossville, Louisiana

<http://hchw.convio.net/site/R?i=R0G2-0dhHN4eIvKDvdb64g..>. Mossville is

not an isolated example

<http://hchw.convio.net/site/R?i=1E9Hz-ql26JWOB97MxMgQg..>, but instead

a poster child for a broken chemical safety system.

*Thursday night highlights the “Toxic Childhood”* and features Healthy

Child founders, Jim and Chuda; Scientific Advisor, Dr. Phil

Landrigan; and our “A Wake-Up Story” video. This second part of the

series reveals the effect toxics have on unborn babies.

*Here's what you can do:*

* Have your friends over to watch the show on June 2nd and/or 3rd or

record the series to share with others in the future.

* Tell other to watch by using these suggested status updates:

o Facebook: Will be watching America’s toxic little secrets

revealed by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta on June 2 & 3 at

8pmEST/5pmPST. If you care about public and environmental

health, it’s MUST SEE TV!

o Twitter: MUST SEE TV: CNN special on Toxic America – June

2-3 at 8pmEST/5pmPST – Watch and learn! Plz RT

* Take Action

<http://hchw.convio.net/site/R?i=dkLqWXYFWWEWFBHlHu0feQ..> to help

prevent these tragedies by emailing your members of Congress and

asking them to support a strong Safe Chemicals Act.

* Get your friends to stay involved and informed by having them

sign-up <http://hchw.convio.net/site/R?i=UGLeurhSZrdR3XBTifoQ7g..>

for the Healthy Child newsletter.

*Please join us in tuning in!*

*Healthy Child Healthy World*

<http://hchw.convio.net/site/R?i=utCrcfUzlnpLS-2-4ajYjA..>

*****

FROM MT. SINAI CEHC

On Wednesday and Thursday, June 2nd and 3rd, at 8pm EST, CNN's Dr.

Sanjay Gupta will host Toxic America, a two-part investigative report

that addresses important topics in environmental health.

The first segment of this report, titled " Toxic Towns, " will explore the

environmental problems that plague Mossville, Louisiana as a result of

its broken chemical safety system. The second segment, titled " Toxic

Childhood, " will feature MSCEHC's own Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, among

others, and will discuss the effects of toxins on unborn babies.

Recently, CNN.com also featured an article about Dr. Landrigan. This

story, found below, relates Dr. Landrigan's work as a young

epidemiologist in El Paso, Texas and explains how his findings regarding

chronic lead poisoning helped bring about reform that removed lead from

gasoline and other ubiquitous products such as paint.

Sincerely,

Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center

Scientist taught world to get the lead out

S.

NEW YORK, May 13, 2010 - CNN News

As a young doctor with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

Landrigan's job was to chase down epidemics. He'd gone after

measles in the Southwest and smallpox in Nigeria.

Then the CDC sent him to Texas for a lead poisoning epidemic.

" I was told to find out what was the cause of the epidemic and to solve

it, " Landrigan recalled.

When Landrigan and CDC colleague Dr. H. Gehlbach arrived in El

Paso in 1970, they agreed the prime suspect was a local smelter, which

had emitted 1,000 tons of lead into the atmosphere in the previous three

years. A smelter extracts metal from its ore through heating and melting.

So the two young doctors got a map, drew three concentric circles

centered on the smelter and started taking blood from children in each

of the areas. As they suspected, the children closest to the smelter had

the highest blood-lead levels; the children farthest away, the lowest.

" There really was a bulls-eye distribution of lead poisoning in El Paso

with the epicenter right at the smelter, " Landrigan said.

What they found next contributed to new medical thinking about exposure

to toxic chemicals -- and helped spur bans on lead-based paint and

leaded gasoline.

At the time, poisoning was thought to be all or nothing. If you weren't

showing symptoms like vomiting, muscle weakness or convulsions, you were

fine. But Landrigan and the CDC team found that even children in the

outer circle of their map were profoundly affected by lead exposure.

" At lower levels of exposures, it still caused loss of intelligence,

disruptive behavior, a whole spectrum of damage to the brain and nervous

system, " Landrigan said.

This new type of poisoning became known as " subclinical " toxicity

because the effects were never severe enough to warrant a trip to the

doctor.

Landrigan's research was published around the same time as studies by

Dr. Herbert Needleman, then at Harvard, who was also looking at the

effects of lead exposure on IQ in children.

Their research reverberated through the medical establishment and

influenced policymakers in the nation's capital.

In 1973, the Environmental Protection Agency issued new regulations

phasing lead out of gasoline. Lead had been used as an additive designed

to improve engine performance, and at the time, car emissions produced

200,000 tons of lead a year.

In 1978, the Consumer Product Safety Commission banned lead-based paint.

Since then, the percentage of children aged 1 to 5 with what the CDC

considers dangerously high levels of lead in their blood has declined

from 77.8 percent to 1.6 percent, according to the most recent figures

available.

During his time in El Paso, Landrigan found his calling. He is now

director of the Children's Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai

Medical Center in New York. He's also a principal investigator with the

National Children's Study, a 21-year, federal project just getting under

way designed to give the most detailed picture to date on how the

environment affects health.

When Landrigan flew to El Paso in 1970, 40 milligrams of lead per

deciliter of blood was the standard for lead poisoning. Now, the CDC

says 10 milligrams of lead per deciliter constitutes lead poisoning and

considers no amount of lead completely safe.

Landrigan sees the story of lead as a cautionary tale, and he's critical

of the current federal law governing toxic substances, which does not

require testing to show a chemical is safe before it's put into consumer

products.

" We've been very careless in simply presuming that chemicals are

innocent until proving guilty, " Landrigan said.

" What typically will happen is smart chemists will develop a new

product, see that it has useful properties, put it into consumer goods

and the chemical then gets disseminated very widely in the marketplace, "

He said. " And typically 10 or 15 or 20 years or more later, scientists

begin to realize that this chemical is really quite toxic. "