Kids at Risk
Chemicals in the environment come under scrutiny as the number of childhood learning problems soars
There is also evidence that mercury found in some childhood vaccines can hamper development. Will Redwood, for instance, a 6-year-old from suburban Atlanta, seemed perfectly normal at birth. Within two years, he had stopped interacting with his family. By age 5, he was diagnosed with a mild form of autism. His mother, Lyn, a nurse practitioner, read that some childhood vaccines contain the mercury-based preservative thimerosal, cumulative doses of which could be harmful. She had a lock of Will's hair analyzed, and it was found to be loaded with mercury. In his first round of vaccinations alone, given when he was 2 months old, Will received 62.5 micrograms of mercury, or 125 times the EPA's daily limit. No one can say whether the vaccines--which contained the maximum amount of thimerosal--caused Will's autism. And experts say that parents should not withhold inoculations. In a statement last year, a group of manufacturers said that vaccines containing thimerosal "have been administered to billions of children and adults worldwide, with no scientific or medical data to suggest that it poses a public health risk." Still, the American Academy of Pediatrics raised enough questions last year that vaccine manufacturers have agreed to phase out thimerosal as soon as possible.
PCBs. The EPA banned the manufacture of polychlorinated biphenyls in 1977, but the compounds continue to haunt children. PCBs are a well-known cancer risk, but recent studies show that they can also impair learning and memory. EPA adviser Joseph Jacobson and Sandra Jacobson of Wayne State University reported in 1996 that children in Michigan with significant prenatal exposures were three times as likely as unexposed children to have low IQ scores and twice as likely to lag behind in reading comprehension.
Jeanette Champion says that her family's mental difficulties now make sense. She and roughly 5,000 others are suing St. Louis-based Solutia, which made PCBs in Anniston under the Monsanto name from 1935 to 1971, seeking compensation for what they claim are pollution-related maladies and property devaluation. One of the plaintiffs is Karen McFarlane, who lives near the plant with her husband and five children. McFarlane, 31, attended special school and has failed four times to get her GED. Six-year-old Derrick Hubbard has speech, vision, and memory problems. "If we go over his ABCs, he forgets them right away," says his mother, Dessa. Gadsden, Ala., psychiatrist Judy Cook is astounded at how many local children have IQs in the "borderline retarded" range and exhibit a penchant for violence. "These kids are different," she says. "Their wiring's not right."
In February, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry reported that "PCBs in soil in parts of Anniston present a public health hazard" and that some adults and children had elevated amounts of the chemicals in their blood. Exposures, the agency speculated, "may still be occurring at high levels." The EPA has identified 22 other sites in Anniston that may contain dangerous amounts of PCBs, metals, and solvents. Solutia's Kaley concedes there may have been "historical exposure." But, he says, "We do not believe that people are currently being exposed." Nevertheless, the company has spent more than $30 million to clean up its Anniston site and surrounding land, bought out about 100 properties, and made a tentative settlement offer of $44 million to landowners along downstream waterways.
That prospect aside, there are still many unanswered questions about neurotoxicants and their effects on children. The dearth of data will continue to stymie parents like Terry DeCosta, who believes that pollution from the Tosco oil refinery in Clyde, Calif., contributed to the anger and attention problems in both her children. According to the EPA, Tosco discharged more than 1 million pounds of pollutants into the air in 1998, many of them neurotoxicants. When the DeCostas sued the refinery, however, their case was dismissed for lack of causation. Richard Jackson, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says that the easy work is done. "We've been able to find the things that are so toxic that they make people dizzy and fall down," he says. Now comes the harder work of identifying and regulating compounds that insidiously misarrange the brain. "I've heard people say we still don't have a smoking gun," says Chris De Rosa of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry. "And then I've heard others say, `Yes, but there are bullets all over the floor.' "
advertisement
