Over 350,000 chemicals, chemical mixtures and plastics used in common products like winter gloves, toys and electronics are contributing to soaring rates of diseases like diabetes and cancer in kids, as well as conditions like autism and ADHD, a consortium of prominent doctors and researchers have warned.
In a January letter published in the prominent New England Journal of Medicine, about two dozen experts warned that the widespread use of synthetic chemicals in consumer goods is harming children. They called for stronger rules to force the testing and monitoring of new chemicals as they enter the market. But Canada and the U.S. only regulate a handful of these products and manufacturers can use most of them with impunity — even though the chemicals are routinely found in humans.
"Everyone in this group was alarmed by the concerning trends in children's health and the need for more attention to address this really important societal problem," said contributor Tracey Woodruff, an expert on reproductive health and the environment at the University of California, San Francisco.
"We need much more comprehensive regulations if we're going to protect kids from the ways that they're being exposed now to these known and emerging harms," said Cassie Barker, toxics program director for Environmental Defense. "Parents shouldn't need to access a testing lab to know whether or not the products that they're buying for their kids are safe."
Over the past 50 years, childhood cancers have increased by 35 per cent while male reproductive birth defects have become twice as frequent. Childhood asthma and obesity have increased three- and four-fold, respectively. About one in six kids has a neurodevelopmental disorder like ADHD or autism.
Many of these conditions are linked to exposure to synthetic chemicals while in utero or as a very young child, with the impacts only becoming evident years or decades later. Yet regulations for chemicals — when regulations exist — typically don't take these long-term risks into account, the letter warns, with “almost no postmarketing surveillance for longer-term adverse health effects.”
The problem is poised to worsen. Production of these chemicals is growing by about three per cent annually and is projected to triple by 2050 if nothing is done, exacerbating already widespread pollution and human exposure.
That growth is entwined with the oil and gas industry, Woodruff explained. Many of the most harmful and ubiquitous chemicals — for instance PFAS, phthalates or bisphenol-A (BPA) — are made from fossil fuels and integrated into plastics. People are exposed to the chemicals when they use the products or ingest microplastics, which have become ubiquitous in food and water.
As the world curbs its use of oil and gas for transportation, heating and electricity, fossil fuel producers are banking on increased demand for plastics and other petrochemicals. Determined to protect those profits, petrochemical companies have spent years aggressively lobbying against stricter rules on synthetic chemicals and plastics, Woodruff said.
Regulations that target classes of chemicals, instead of individual products, are key because they prevent companies from replacing banned chemicals with new, slightly different but similarly harmful ones, she said. Canada has taken steps toward this approach: in 2023, federal officials proposed rules on PFAS, a family of grease- and water-resistant chemicals linked to cancer and other health risks. But last July, the government backtracked under industry pressure and excluded one of the largest categories of PFAS from its proposal.
When asked about the consortium's warning, Health Canada representatives pointed Canada's National Observer to federal guidelines for toxic products in children's toys on a webpage that hasn’t been updated in three years. The rules restrict the amount of some phthalates in toys; how much lead they can contain; bans them from containing a handful of toxic substances; and prohibits substances like cadmium and arsenic in toy coatings.
Still, Barker said those rules aren't proportionate to the scale and severity of the problem.
"We've lost focus on the real threats to children and their health," she said. "We're in this era of talking about red tape [but] children's health isn't red tape."
Comments
To say nothing about the many synthetics used in clothing, beyond mitts and gloves. Walking into a mall clothing store these days you'll be breathing in fibres flown off into the air as fluff from the many synthetic sweaters, shirts, scarves and hoodies.
The thing is, that if one looked for the research way back 30-40 years ago and more, it was already established that many common products were toxic. But trying to figure out what was safe was like shooting at invisible targets around the corner, in the dark.
I wouldn't be surprised, when all the dust settles, that the incidence of things like the lower IQ, autism, and immune system disorders turn out to be caused or exacerbated by fossil fuel products and by-products as well.
The latest fossil fuel lobby's ad on CTV, touting the ubiquity of fossil-fuel products in our lives, would give people pause, if they tried to imagine life without them.
I'm old enough that I remember life without many of them, but already by the time I was old enough to go to school, there were plastic toys and a few household products, but they weren't ubiqitous yet in consumer goods.
When I was still in primary grades, fossil fuel and related industries distributed advertising booklets through schools (even rural schools -- but then 80% of the population was rural). It appealed to teachers because it had an "alphabet" of products advertised.
It appealed to kids because it was colorful, and real-world.
By the time I was in highschool, kids pretty much all knew the phrase "better living through chemistry" ... hair spray, synthetic fabrics and scented nail-polish and lipstick were used by the vast majority of teenage girls. The boys stuck to Bryl-Creem.
I have become interested in Parkinson’s disease, now far more common than it used to be. As far as I can tell it is a disease of modern civilization - nobody understands its cause. It seems that many things may bring it on, including exposure to trichloroethylene, a common cleaning fluid, exposure to paraquat, a common weed killer, and concussion. On the other hand drinking coffee may reduce your likelihood of getting it. Read “Ending Parkinson’s Disease” by Ray Dorsey and others. Maybe we should all live in old houses with old furniture and wear old clothes until the effects of all the chemicals are understood. (but the house base must be sealed against radon leakage). The only toys I remember from my childhood were made of wood, though the paint may have been toxic.