Now some experts are saying there is a third wave of Ground Zero illnesses—cancers and, in particular, myelomas.
What we don’t know is whether these cases are related to Ground Zero and if this is the beginning of a trend or just background noise. Frankly, only time will tell. Mesothelioma as a result of asbestos, for example, typically takes two or three decades to make its appearance. Children have many more years in future life than we adults, and if they are exposed to asbestos, for example, they’ve got five, six, seven, or eight decades to manifest any disease.
The government was initially reluctant to recognize that people were harmed by exposure to this caustic dust. What do you think finally turned the tide?
It just became painfully obvious that people were damaged, and the press was filled with stories about the World Trade Center cough. A critical event was the David Prezant paper on it in the New England Journal of Medicine in September 2002.
The EPA’s decision to allow people to swallow pesticides to see what’s going to happen to them is frankly immoral.
When power players know about health hazards yet don’t alert us or admit harm, are you shocked, appalled, or surprised?
No, none of those. Too many people have been motivated by greed. It becomes the job of people like me to expose that wrongdoing and hopefully prevent its recurrence. But their persistence and how they can set out to destroy people is painful. What they did to my friend Herb Needleman was unconscionable. After the lead industry was unsuccessful in rebutting his arguments scientifically, after they lost the battle to keep lead in gasoline, after the ambient air lead standard went from 5 micrograms per cubic meter down to 1.5 in the ’70s, they decided to attack him personally, and what they did was recruit two scientists who raised concerns without initially mentioning they had been hired by the lead industry. Herb invited them to come to Pittsburgh to look at his records. They found some minor numerical discrepancies in his data, which you’re going to find in most people’s data if you look far enough, and they claimed that he had committed scientific fraud and they brought charges against the University of Pittsburgh, all without first mentioning their affiliation. The University of Pittsburgh suspended Needleman for a couple of years. He was investigated by the National Institutes of Health, and at the end of the day—that day being four or five years later—he was fully vindicated. Since that time he’s won the Charles Dana Award for public health. He’s won the Heinz Award in the Environment. He’s renowned as an environmental hero (pdf), but people in the industry did their best to destroy that man.
Do you ever worry that someone will come after you?
Earlier I was relatively protected because I was working for the government. And I’ve always had options. I’m a licensed pediatrician. I could hang out my shingle. I’ve always felt that it was more important to do the right thing than to worry about what someone was going to do to me.
You are now involved in your largest effort yet, the National Children’s Study. What is that about?
The study is going to follow 100,000 children from early in their mothers’ pregnancies to age 21. The children will be selected from 102 counties across the United States. The plan is to recruit babies as close as possible to conception. We’re hoping to get a pretty complete picture of what’s in the mom’s body during the pregnancy, get breast milk samples, cord blood samples at the time of delivery, and then repeated samplings as the child grows up. We’re learning more and more about the environmental causes of diseases like ADHD, asthma, autism, cancer, and birth defects. The hope is that the National Children’s Study will enable us to pin down some associations that we’re beginning to suspect and probably uncover some new stuff. Genetics sets the stage but the environment is the trigger, and with all the untested chemicals in the environment, we’re conducting a vast uncontrolled experiment and children are the guinea pigs.
What do we know so far about autism and the environment?
There have been three or four very high-quality studies that have tried to link thimerosal exposure in vaccines to autism, and none of them found anything. I know people have said it could be a vulnerable subgroup of children that’s buried in the larger group. Maybe. Who’s to say it’s not there. All I can say is that right now there’s no evidence that thimerosal causes autism. On the other hand, there are lots of reasons to think that something in the environment must be causing autism. The disease runs in families to some extent, so you know there’s a genetic component. But then you’ll have kids with no family background, so clearly environmental things trigger the disease. We just haven’t been smart enough yet to recognize them.
Do you think the National Children’s Study could change that?
I’ll be looking at the links between autism and known neurotoxins, like lead, mercury, and pesticides. If the autism rate is indeed one in 150, then a population of 100,000 will give us about 650 to 700 kids with autism, which will be about the largest collection of autistic children ever put together.
What about ADHD?
We’ll be in an even stronger position with ADHD because it’s more common than autism, and we’ll have several thousand ADHD kids.
The study has a high price tag—$2.7 billion over 25 years. Critics have called this unacceptably high, especially when federal funding is stagnant. How do you respond?
Look at the enormous cost of diseases of environmental origin in children—which we’ve calculated at about $55 billion each year for the 4 million babies born in this country. And that’s looking only at four diseases where we’ve established environmental connections and we have cost data—asthma, lead poisoning, cancer, and learning disabilities. Compared with the cost of these diseases, the cost of the study is minute.
Can we do anything now to mitigate deficits from exposures experienced long ago?
There’s nothing we can do to reverse the damage that’s already been done. I recommend against taking chelating agents. Yes, they get the lead out of your body, but they are known to damage the kidneys and are of no proven benefit. Better to ward off brain decline by staying mentally active and using your brain. Read. Physical exercise keeps the brain healthy. Social networks are very important. People who have lots of friends age much more gracefully than people who are isolated. A general prescription would be to eat well, exercise regularly, have a lot of friends, and laugh.
