(DRAFT)
Chemicals Normally Found in Contemporary Breast Milk that is Typical in
Developed Countries,
and
Autism, Fertility Declines and other Apparent Effects of those Toxins
by
Donald P. Meulenberg
Introductory
Summary:
The
greatly increasing numbers of those diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder
(ASD, often referred to simply as autism) are well known, as is the fact that
this disorder affects more than four times as many males as females. Related
to that, there has been a major decline in fertility levels taking place in
most advanced countries, causing serious concern in those countries due to the
declines of the younger age groups that are depended on to fund the nations’ social
security systems. Both of these developments appear to be very much related to
an identifiable underlying cause, as will be presented in this paper.
The hormone that is produced
by the male testicles, testosterone, is known to be critical to development of
the infant brain, in addition to its later reproductive-system role. There are
certain neurological toxins that have been high or increasing rapidly in the
environment in recent decades that are known to cause testicular atrophy (hence
reduction of testosterone) or to otherwise harm mental development:
dioxins, PCBs (which are related to dioxins), DEHP, biphenyl A (BPA), PBDEs,
certain pesticides, and diesel emissions. (see Section 1.2)
Apparently those chemicals reach the developing fetus and infant principally as
a result of their long-term build-up in the body of the future mother. In
addition to effects on the fetus, the toxins can also affect a postnatal infant
at critical stages of neurological development via breast milk in which they
are concentrated. There is ample evidence (and no apparent disagreement) that
these chemicals are ingested in many-times greater quantities by breastfed
infants than by formula-fed infants or by adults. (Section 1.2.d)
Also, prevalence of breastfeeding, especially extended breastfeeding, has been
greatly increasing in recent decades as autism and other male mental impairment
have been increasing. Aside from their importance to neurological development,
testosterone levels obviously also have an effect on birth rates, which have been
falling sufficiently in high-breastfeeding countries as to cause potentially
serious long-term problems in those countries.
Organizations and government
agencies that promote breastfeeding do so partly on grounds that breastfed
children are believed to have fewer of various illnesses than bottle-fed
children have. Two generations ago the case in favor of extended, exclusive
breastfeeding was valid. But the world has changed since then. This paper
will present considerable evidence showing that, in fact, the lifetime
physical health effects of extended breastfeeding by most women in developed
countries are currently unfavorable. This isin addition to the
apparent effects of breastfeeding in causing harm to mental development and reductions
in fertility.
Evidence
will be presented in this paper showing the following:
Very strong correlations
between high rates of autism and high rates of breastfeeding in many
specific instances: in various countries, in various U.S. states,
amongvarious demographic groups, with various parental
characteristics, and with variation in birth order:
a) In every advanced
country in which breastfeeding is known to be very high, autism has also been
found to be very high (if autism data are available for that country) (Section 1.2.s.5); in the European countries with low
breastfeeding rates, autism rates are either known to be comparatively low or
(where no data are available) there is good reason to believe they are low
(Section 1.2.s.4);
b) the three U.S. states that are
highest in autism are also among the highest in breastfeeding rates (Section 1.2.s.7, 1.2.x.1); of the seven U.S. states that have the lowest rates of
breastfeeding, every one of these seven also has an unusually low rate
of autism (Section 1.2.x.5);
c) there is a 50% higher rate of
breastfeeding among U.S. whites than among blacks, corresponding with a roughly
50% higher rate of autism among whites than among blacks (Section 1.2.s.3);
d) higher prevalence of autism is
strongly associated with higher parental education levels in countries with
only moderate breastfeeding rates, and breastfeeding is nearly twice as
prevalent among college graduates or mothers of higher socio-economic status as
among less-educated or lower-status mothers in those countries; in the
only country with almost universal breastfeeding for which recent
detailed autism data are available (Denmark), there is no such parental
educational-level difference in autism rates; no education-level
difference in breastfeeding apparently = no education-level difference in
autism. (Section 1.2.s.1.a);
e) older mothers are more likely to breastfeed, and to
do so for longer periods; and there is a 20% increase in risk of autism
with each 10-year increase in parent’s ages (Section 1.2.s.1.b);
f) the Mormon Church is
apparently the only major Judeo-Christian church to specifically teach its
members that they should breastfeed their infants; in the most in-depth
study yet of autism prevalence at various locations in the U.S., the white
(almost all-Mormon) children in a group of over 2000 Utah children were found
to have an autism rate that is over three times as high as the average white
(mostly non-Mormon) groups in the other thirteen locations
studied (Section 1.2.s.2);
The above are only some
of many associations
that have been found.
Proponents of breastfeeding point to the presumed benefit
to the infant of the immune cells that are transmitted in breast milk. This transmission
was helpful before modern sanitation came into existence, and still is beneficial
where modern sanitation does not yet exist. But in most parts of developed
countries, the benefits are probably only very short term, because those
antibodies fend off organisms that would otherwise provide stimulus to the
infant’s immune system to properly develop after birth. A web page of the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration describes favorably the theory that the
infant’s immune system needs exposure to germs in order for the system
to develop in a way that enables it to launch its own defenses against
infectious organisms.
Of
great relevance here is the “hygiene hypothesis”
described in a web page of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to
which proper infant development depends on “the necessary
exposure to germs required to “educate” the immune system so
it can learn to launch its defense responses to infectious organisms…. In the period immediately after
birth the child’s own immune system must take over and
learn how to fend for itself. The “hygiene hypothesis” is supported by epidemiologic studies….”
Average life expectancies in
low-breastfeeding countries are longer than in high-breastfeeding countries in four
out of five major world regions. (Section 1.2.p.1) The only region in which higher
rates of breastfeeding correlate with higher life expectancy (and then only to
a minor extent) is Sub-Saharan Africa;
Compared with people over age 15
in higher-breastfeeding countries, about 18% fewer over-age-15 residents in
low-breastfeeding European countries report a long-standing illness or health
problem (Section 1.2.p.2);
Pertussis (whooping
cough) and salmonellosis are diseases that cause many tens of
thousands of deaths worldwide annually, principally among children under five
years of age; in data reported for the EU, EEA and EFTA, the European
countries with the highest rates of breastfeeding had rates of those diseases fifty
times as high and over twice as high, respectively, as the countries with
the lowest rates of breastfeeding; type 1 diabetes, another serious, sometimes fatal
disease, is twice as high among children in European high-breastfeeding
countries as in European low-breastfeeding countries (Section 1.2.p.2);
Regarding this map of PCB
exposure in the western U.S., bear in mind that dioxins and PCBs (which are two
closely-related categories of neuro-developmental toxins) from the environment
become concentrated in breast milk. (Section 1.2.d) For more on the subject shown in
this map, and for the complete map, see Section 1.2.x.1.
1/800,000thof
an ounce:
The amount of a PCB-containing product administered per day to pregnant or
lactating female monkeys that was found to cause the offspring to be
hyperactive and retarded in learning ability. (Section 1.2.a)
600,000tons: The amount of PCBs produced in the U.S. between 1930 and 1977, which
became part of considerable electrical equipment and appliances that are still
in use (often leaking) and that are heavily present in landfills, from where the
toxins can be released to the atmosphere or water supplies. (Section 1.2.a)
30 timeshigher: The effective
concentration of PCBs taken into infants’ bodies in breast milk, compared with
the concentrations that entered the mothers’ bodies, according to one study.
(Section 1.2.d)
4½ timeshigher: The
average PCB levels in children who had been breastfed for at least 6 weeks,
compared with those of children who had been formula-fed, at3½ years of age, according to a study in the
Netherlands. (Section 1.2.d)
1among several: PCBs among other known
developmental toxins typically contained in breast milk. (Section 1.2.d)
10
times lower:
The
toxicity-equivalent concentrations of dioxins in formula-fed infants at 11 months of
age, compared
with infants that were breast-fed for six to seven months, according to a
German study. (Section 1.2.d)
Note that the first year or so of life includes the “window” during which
critical development of the brain takes place, if it will ever take place.
(Section 1.2.b.1)
70% decrease in a
mother’s body burden of dioxins over a two-year period while she was
breastfeeding twins, as found in a U.S. study that praised the beneficial
effects of breastfeeding (see Section 1.1.b.6)
?? increase in
neuro-developmental dioxins in her infants as a result of the above, during the
neurologically most vulnerable periods of their lives, while their brains are
rapidly growing. To get some idea of quantities and toxicity that are relevant
here, review some of the numbers shown in bold above, starting with 1/800,000th, and
also see below.
Half as
high:A
fourth child’s risk of autism, as compared with that of a firstborn, on average.And
the odds of being diagnosed with autism continuously decrease from first to
later children. Infants later in birth order are less likely to be breastfed,
they are breastfed for shorter periods on average, and the milk they receive
has toxin levels that have been substantially reduced as a result of excretion to
earlier-born infants during previous breastfeeding. (Section 1.2.s.1.c);
2+timesas high: The percentage
of children diagnosed with ASD who had been exclusively breastfed for at least
four weeks, as compared with the percentage of children in the general
population who received that much breastfeeding, using data from what is
apparently the only published study that includes this kind of information. (Section 1.1.b).
Some chemicals typically
present in breast milk are known to cause de-masculinization of
male test animals and (in fewer cases) masculinization of female animals (Section
1.2.d). Studies
with human children have provided verification of the de-masculinizing effects
of some of these chemicals on humans. (Section 1.6.b)
Possible results of those effects are as follows:
1) The eight Western European
countries that have the highest rates of breastfeeding have an average
fertility (birth rate per woman) of only 1.59. In contrast with those
low fertilities in the high-breastfeeding countries, the two
lowest-breastfeeding countries of that region have birth rates of 2.01 and 2.08
per woman; and the four next-lowest-breastfeeding countries have an
in-between average fertility rate of 1.78 (see Section 1.1.b.2);
2) Certain de-masculinizing
chemicals are more highly concentrated in typical breast milk in the U.S. than
in other countries: PBDEs (at levels 10 to 100 times as high as in
Europe -- Section 1.7.3) diesel emissions, and dioxins
(Section 1.9.4). The percentage of 25-34-year-old
American men never married more than quintupled between 1970 and 2008 (Section 1.2.w), over the same four decades during
which breastfeeding rates increased several-fold (Figure 1b). Aside from births to
unmarried women (41% of all U.S. births currently) and births to immigrant
women, the current U.S. birth rate is only about 1.1 per woman; and even that
very low fertility rate is supported to a significant extent by means of
considerable spending on assisted reproductive technology (Sections 1.1.b.2, 1.2.w).
3) Japan and South Korea have
unusually high breastfeeding rates (Section 1.2.p.1), and their births per woman are only
1.39 and 1.23 (CIA World Fact Book).
4) In several U.S. cities in areas
that CDC surveys have found to have very unusually high rates of breastfeeding,
informal but fairly thorough research has found that there are unusually large
numbers of people who lack interest in heterosexual sex. (Section 1.2.v)
Japan’s relatively recent
very high breastfeeding rate followed a low rate that prevailed before the
1980’s (Section 1.2.b.2-3); in
a development that might not be coincidental, national alarm has
arisen in Japan about the effeminate nature and lack of interest in
heterosexual sex on the part of a very high percentage of the young men who
have been coming of age two decades or so after that transition to a high rate
of breastfeeding.
The case of Japan brings to
mind the analogy of the canary in a coal mine, except that in this instance the
sign of what may be starting to happen in the mine is not small. Also, there
are already other signs in the coal mine of new, related matters of concern
elsewhere in the developed world (briefly mentioned in the indented sections
above, with details later in this paper). What has been occurring in Japan
relates not merely to that country’s very high rate of breastfeeding but also
to the probably-unusually-high levels of toxins in breast milk in Japan in
recent decades, resulting from the fact that the region is both very industrial
and densely populated. But exposures to the chemicals that are probably behind
the effects in Japan have been increasing in the developed world in general,
both from their sources in the environment (many details will be provided,
including in Section 1.9)
and by means of their concentrated excretion to infants as breastfeeding rates
have been increasing.
Much has been said in favor
of breastfeeding, and much can be said in rebuttal of the evidence that is used
to support that position. The Surgeon General of the United States, although a
strong supporter of breastfeeding, acknowledges that essentially all of the
studies that have found benefits in breastfeeding have been (non-randomized)
“observational” studies, in which causation is not proven. Those studies made
comparisons between groups that are dissimilar in crucial respects.
Bottle-feeding mothers are very disproportionately likely to be of low income
and to smoke, and those factors are well-known to contribute to the same
illnesses that breastfeeding advocates instead attribute to formula feeding.
If the researchers make a pretense of adjusting for those biasing factors,
there appears to be no reason to find the adjustments to have been sufficient
to compensate for the magnitude of the effects of the low income conditions and
smoking. Probably because of the near-impossibility of making proper
adjustments when comparison groups are dissimilar, the U.S. Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality apparently does not even recognize the validity
of the making of such adjustments. (For details, see Section 1.1.b.4)
Aside from ingestion via
breast milk, there are other probable avenues by which infants can ingest or
absorb substances that could result in non-normal mental developments. Those
include (1) ingestion of typical soil or dust, containing concentrations of
dioxins and other toxins (Section 2.4),
(2) absorption of certain widespread chemicals through the skin (Sections 1.2.b.1, 1.6.b),
and (3) breathing of air containing recently-prevalent toxins (Section 1.4).
All of these can interfere with activity of male testosterone, which is
known to be important to neurological development (Section 1.2.b.1).
Some of these other probable sources of neurological deviations are also dealt
with in this paper.
The following should be
pointed out regarding the seriousness of some of the problems being discussed
here: According to years-old data from the CDC, over 35,000 children are born
in the U.S. every year who will probably eventually be diagnosed with Autism
Spectrum Disorder alone (the rate has risen substantially since then).
Estimates of the average total lifetime cost of caring for a mentally-impaired person
with ASD have varied between $3.2 million and $4.7 million. (c)
Those impaired by autism are much less than half of the children currently
reported by the Census Bureau to have “serious difficulty” concentrating and
remembering (a), and many or most
within that much larger and increasing impaired group will also end up being
burdens on their parents and on society for their entire lives. A high
percentage of those children who are not judged to be impaired have probably
nevertheless been developing to a level well below their genetic potentials, as
a result of exposure to these same toxins at levels lower than had been
ingested by those who became seriously impaired.
Proposed
Remedial Actions: Mothers should be extremely wary of
the likely effects of breastfeeding if they have been receiving typical
exposure to the environments in developed countries, especially if they have
been eating a typical, omnivorous diet. For parents-to-be who can plan well
ahead, the ideal action might be for the woman (years before pregnancy) to
adopt a diet that mainly avoids the meat, dairy products, fish, and snack foods
that are high in animal fats, which are the main sources of dioxins, mercury
and other developmental toxins into her body, so that there could be a better
chance of her being able to feed her future infant good-quality breast milk,
and also to minimize effects of toxins on the fetus during gestation. Other
ways to protect future nursing mothers and developing infants from neurological
toxins include keeping them away from known sources of toxins (including
well-travelled highways, railroad tracks and airports, and downwind from
wildfires), aggressive publicity discouraging eating by infants of foods known
to contain high levels of dioxins and/or mercury (especially ground beef and
foods high in animal fats), thorough air filtration and frequent removal of
dust (especially in areas where infants could be kept most of the time during
critical stages of their brains' developments), refraining from enclosing the
infant male scrotum in (possibly dioxin-contaminated) bleached disposable
diapers, separation of infants from tobacco smoke, and minimizing exposure of
infants to possible ingestion or absorption of soil and of DEHPs contained in
soft plastics. Keeping infants away from PVC flooring appears to be a good
idea. (Section
1.6.b) Practicality
of unusually good air filtration during periods of bad air could be improved by
focusing more research on "critical windows of sensitivity" during
which the developing brain has been found by scientific research to be
especially vulnerable to effects of toxins. Many more suggestions for remedial
actions will be presented later.
This author's personal bias,
of a kind that many people object to: I believe that, where
there is reasonable doubt about the safety of a substance to which people are
exposed in the environment, the benefit of the doubt should be on the side of
trying to minimize human exposure to that substance. In presenting my concerns
to various people, some have pointed out that there isn't conclusive proof that
the substances in question cause the harm that I am concerned about. They are
likely to recommend that high standards of evidence should first be met
(involving research that could take place only over many years, requiring
funding, personnel and/or equipment that may or may not ever be available)
before attempts should be made to discourage a usage or activity that is
seriously in question. In line with that kind of orientation, at least two pesticides,
endosulfan and dicofol, had been in use in the U.S. since the 1950's before a
study by researchers with the state of California found autism to be several
times higher than average among infants residing in areas where it was used.
Not long after that, following a half-century of widespread use (and unknown
numbers of lives harmed), the EPA disallowed the registrations for those two pesticides.
Also bear in mind that the causal association between smoking and lung cancer
was merely suspected for decades before evidence was finally provided that
conclusively proved the connection, following unknown thousands of avoidable
lung cancer deaths in the intervening years. In the case of Thalidomide,
identification of that particular chemical’s harmful effects was made
relatively easy by various factors including the facts that the effects were
quickly very conspicuous and also were traceable to one single chemical. But
even then, it still took over two years and 10,000 malformed babies before
general sale of Thalidomide was stopped. With the environmental toxins that
have apparently been causing mental impairment in recent decades, verifying
them as causes of harm is greatly complicated by the years of delay between the
exposure and the subsequent observability of the effects, and by the relatively
small percentage of all children who have been conspicuously
impaired. This author’s position, based on the above: We should not wait for
a conclusive breakthrough discovery before taking constructive steps, if we see
things in the environment that appear to be probable sources of serious
problems, and if something can reasonably be done about them.
Do you have comments about
the contents of this website? The author is eager to
hear from you if you have any criticisms to make of any specific passages
contained here, if you feel that what is said is not well-supported by the
evidence provided. Please be specific about which statements are not supported
by the evidence. Respond to dm@pollutionaction.org
Part I
Section 1.1.a A preview:
What is in the Environment (as well as What is Eaten, which Contains Substances
from the Environment) Makes a Difference. Toxins in Mild Doses from the
Environment and Food Build Up in the Mother’s Body over Many Years and Become Concentrated
in Breast Milk.
Figure
1
Section
1.1.b Reasons to Suspect Breastfeeding as a Possible Cause of the Increase in
Male Mental Impairment
Breast milk contains high
concentrations of toxins of kinds that are known to harm neurological
development. (This will be explained in detail, with considerable scientific
evidence, in Section 1.2)
Most of those chemicals have been increasing in the environment in recent
decades, and human consumption of meat (one of the three principal sources for
absorption into human bodies of some of those toxins) has more than doubled in
the U.S. in the last 50 years. (Section 1.2.d)
There are many associations between high or low rates of breastfeeding and high
or low levels of mental impairment. (These connections are previewed in the
indented sections above and are explained in detail later.)
A study of interest (Whitely
and colleagues) was conducted regarding 1189 children age 3 to 11 formally
diagnosed with various forms of Autism Spectrum Disorder, residing in the U.K.
and Republic of Ireland, drawing on records received between 2002 and 2007.
The records showed that 65% of the children with those conditions had
been “exclusively breastfed” for over four weeks. (Trends in Developmental, Behavioral
and Somatic Factors by Diagnostic Sub-group in Pervasive Developmental
Disorders: A Follow-up Analysis, pp. 10, 14 Paul Whiteley ( Department
of Pharmacy, Health & Well-being, Faculty of Applied Sciences, University
of Sunderland, UK), et al.
Autism Insights 2009:1 3-17 at http://www.la-press.com/trends-in-developmental-behavioral-and-somatic-factors-by-diagnostic-s-article-a1725) The authors took only
minor notice of the 65% figure, apparently because of comparing it with a
figure (54%) thought to represent U.K. breastfeeding in general; but
that 54% figure was unrealistically high for the general UK population, since
it came from a study (Pontin and colleagues) of breastfeeding by mothers who
were largely from “more affluent families”, in the words of that study’s
authors; more affluent mothers are well known to breastfeed at unusually
high rates. For breastfeeding prevalence data that would apply to the general
U.K. population, the authors of the latter study referred the reader to (1) a
2005 study that showed a 33% rate at the end of
the first month; note in Figure 1.9
(later) that breastfeeding rates in the U.K. by 2005 (the year of the study
that found the 33% rate) had risen significantly just since the years of the
births of most of the children whose data would have been reported in the
Whitely study;(Patterns of breastfeeding in a UK
longitudinal cohort study, Pontin et al., School of Maternal and Child Health,
University of West of England, Bristol, UK) and (2) for a probably
still more relevant comparison figure with reference to the Whitely study,
Pontin et al. also refer the reader to Infant Feeding 1995
(Foster et al.), which they say shows a 21%
figure for exclusive breastfeeding for the next period following the first
month; examination of that book reveals that the 21% figure would apply
at about eight weeks after birth, and that a figure in the upper 20%’s would
apply at just after four weeks.
The reader should remember
from just above that the Whitely study found 65% of
the 1189 U.K. children studied with ASD had been exclusively breastfed for over
four weeks. That figure appears to be over twice as high as what the
comparable percentage for exclusive breastfeeding would have been in the UK’s
general population at the time when the studied autistic children were
infants. This provides good reason to suspect that exclusively breastfeeding
an infant for over four weeks is an extremely strong risk factor associated
with autism. If any reader can think of any other reason why children with
autism would have been twice as likely as the average child to have been
exclusively breastfed for over four weeks, other than as a result of a causal
relation between the breastfeeding and the autism, please inform this author of
your idea, at dm@pollutionaction.org .
The above is just the
beginning of the evidence that strongly implicates breastfeeding as a possible
cause of autism. See the first indented
section in the introductory summary, above, for a preview of the
other evidence.
(It would be very helpful if we could make a comparison such as the above using data from the U.S. There are least two major organizations in the U.S. that are doing in-depth, long-term research on causes of autism, both of which (in response to our inquiries) have indicated that their research may at some time include the question of breastfeeding, but they have no data to share at this time (responses of April 18 and May 3, 2012 from the MIND Institute of California regarding its CHARGE study and from the CDC regarding the SEED study). The CDC said that they are not currently conducting breastfeeding analysis but may do so in the future.
Section 1.1.b.1 Breast
Feeding Increasing While Mental Disabilities among Young Males have been
Increasing
Figure
1b
Prevalence of breastfeeding
has increased considerably in the U.S. since the 1970's (see Figure 1b),
rising especially rapidly during the 1970’s and ‘90’s. During those same
decades, mental impairment rates among males born during that period (not
merely those with autism) increased substantially.(1)(source
of Figure 1b:The Surgeon General’s Call to Action
to Support Breastfeeding 2011 U.S. Public Health Service Office of the Surgeon
General at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/breastfeeding/calltoactiontosupportbreastfeeding.pdf)
Some other countries have
also been going through increases in breastfeeding rates, following an
initiative by the World Health Organization in the mid-1970’s to promote
breastfeeding. See Section 1.2.b.2
regarding Japan’s transition from low-breastfeeding to high-breastfeeding
during that period, leading (at least chronologically, and very possibly
causally) to a generation of young men a high percentage of whom could
apparently be described as effeminate. Japan is also currently among the
countries with the highest rates of autism in the world (Autism and Developmental
Disabilities Monitoring Network Surveillance Year 2006 Catherine Rice, PhD et
al, National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, CDC, at
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5810a1.htm ) and
also with one of the lowest birthrates in the world.
See Figure 1.9 for
ample illustration of the general upward trend in breastfeeding rates in recent
decades in developed countries, and bear in mind that reported autism rates
have also been rising dramatically in most countries during the last two
decades. That same general growth in breastfeeding is also seen in the chart
in Section 1.2.s.6,
but there is also a clear demonstration in the latter chart of how stable the
U.K.’s breastfeeding rate was in the years before 2000. Then bear in mind
that, of the various international data showing growth in rates of autism in
recent decades, a study in only one country (that this author has been able to
find) determined that autism had not been growing within a part of that country;
and that country was the U.K.; that study referred to children whose
infancies would have transpired largely during the pre-2000 period of a stable
breastfeeding rate. (Details in Section 1.2.s.6)
The above should be grounds
to be concerned about breastfeeding, given the neurodevelopmental toxins known
to be increasingly concentrated in most human breast milk in major parts of
developed countries in recent decades; high-quality scientific evidence
about the concentrations and the developmental toxicity of chemicals in
typical modern breast milk is so extensive (even after considerable effort to
condense it) that it must be placed later in this paper, rather than getting
bogged down in so much sheer volume at first. Suffice it to say at this point
that government agencies that advocate breastfeeding do so while in no way
disputing the evidence that breastfed infants receive unusually high
concentrations of chemicals that are known neuro-developmental toxins. But
they feel, based on their interpretations of selected studies, that the
benefits of the breast milk are so great as to outweigh the risks from the
toxins contained therein. So a logical place for this paper to start is in
critically examining the claims about health benefits of breast milk and the
studies on which those claims are based.
Section
1.1.b.2 A Brief Look at Apparent Effects of varying Levels of Breastfeeding on
Fertility Rates in Europe:
The
declining birth rates in most of Europe, to far below replacement levels, have
been of serious concern partly because of the rapidly declining populations of
younger people who will be paying into the countries’ social security systems,
and partly because of the increasing lifespans of the retirees who are
supported by the declining younger population. Various theories have been
advanced as to why birthrates have declined so substantially, and the
assumption always seems to be that the low birth numbers have been entirely
intentional. However, in a 2006 Eurobarometer survey by the European
Commission, women were asked how many children they would like to have, and the
average result was 2.36. (No Babies? -- Declining Population in
Europe Russell Shorto, The New York Times Magazine June 29, 2008)Aside from couples’
intentions, human mating and pregnancies are also inevitably heavily influenced
by non-intentional factors that people are much less likely to discuss:
sexual attractions between males and females (or possibly lack
thereof), the strength (or weakness) of
the male sex drive, and the sperm content of
male semen.
Male-female
attractions and male sexual potency are in turn heavily influenced by male
hormones and/or by the health and normalcy of the male reproductive system.
According to reports issued by the CDC and the EPA, dioxins (which are highly
concentrated in typical breast milk -- see Section 1.2.d)
have been found in tests with laboratory animals to cause testicular atrophy,
impaired testosterone synthesis, feminization of male sexual behavior,
de-masculinization of males, and alterations of the developing male
reproductive system. (more details in Section 1.2.b)
PBDEs, which have anti-androgenic properties (Section 1.7.1)
have been rapidly increasing in breast milk in recent decades (Section 1.7.3).
Many new pesticides have been introduced into use in recent decades;
some are known to have anti-androgenic properties, some are known to
de-masculinize male test animals or masculinize female animals (Section 1.6.b),
and at least some pesticides are known to be excreted in breast milk. (Being
breastfed in infancy and adult breast cancer risk among Japanese women Y.
Minami/ M. Kawai (Division of Community Health, Tohuku University Graduate
School of Medicine) et al. Cancer Causes Control, 2012) Various
studies have confirmed the applicability to humans of the animal studies that
demonstrate effects of some of the increasingly-prevalent chemicals that are
known to be contained in breast milk; testosterone-producing cells were
vulnerable to exposure to phthalates, and “incomplete virilization in infant
boys exposed to phthalates” was also observed. (see Section 1.6.b)
In line with what has been
learned from extensive research about toxins known to be typically concentrated
in breast milk, it is worth looking at the map of Western Europe with shadings
according to rates of breastfeeding and fertility rates in the various
countries.
Fig
1.1B
Using
data from the CIA’s World Fact Book of 2011, these countries can be grouped
according to their numbers of births per woman (see “Fertility Rates” map on
right):
Medium
fertility rates, shown in olive: France
- 2.08, Ireland - 2.01, United Kingdom - 1.91.
Lower
fertility rates, shown in brown: Netherlands
- 1.78, Luxembourg - 1.77, Norway - 1.77, Denmark - 1.74, Finland - 1.73,
Sweden -1.67, Belgium - 1.65, Portugal - 1.51, Spain - 1.48, Switzerland -
1.47, Germany and Austria - 1.41, Italy - 1.40
Obviously these maps don’t
show the many variations in breastfeeding and fertility rates that exist among
these countries. It should be noted that, within the “higher-breastfeeding”
group, the two countries with the lowest breastfeeding rates in that group (Luxembourg
and the Netherlands -- see Figure 1.9)
have the highest birthrates within the “lower birthrate” group. Aside from
those two, the Scandinavian countries have higher birthrates than most in the
lower-fertility group, and their birth rates are almost certainly affected by
government-paid subsidies to childbearing in those countries. “In
Scandinavia, thanks in part to state support, the more children a family has,
the wealthier it is likely to be….” In Norway, the birth of a
child brings a government payment of about 4,000 Euros (over $5000, as of
April, 2012); and mothers are entitled to 12 months off work with 80% pay or 10
months with full pay, paid for by the government. (Russell
Shorto, in “No Babies? -- Declining Population in Europe” The New York Times
Magazine, June 29, 2008). In Sweden, each parent is entitled to 18
months of government-paid leave. Public day care is also heavily subsidized. (BBC
News website, Mar. 24, 2006) Other European countries also offer
accommodations to childbearing, but the Scandinavian subsidies stand out;
those of Ireland, France and the U.K. are far less generous. Also, average
breast milk in Norway, Sweden and Finland, because of the low population
densities of those countries, may be lower in toxins than is typical in the
rest of Europe.
It is worth trying to
determine which is more influential in causing Europe’s declining birth rates
-- couples’ intentions, or the possible declines in masculinity, male sex drive
and male reproductive viability. The declines in European birth rates to below
replacement level seem to have caught the public’s attention only in the last
decade or so. The only birthrate statistic for the early 1990’s that this author
has found so far is for Sweden in 1992, indicating a birth rate of 2.1 per
woman at that time. (BBC News website, March 28, 2006).
One might ask what might conceivably have come about in the last two decades that
could have caused couples to intentionally plan on fewer children. The typical
suggested motivations -- financial concerns, or women’s worries about conflict
with work -- don’t sound like things that would have first come about or
increased substantially in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. On the other hand, in
the environment of the
latter part of the 20th Century there were major increases in levels of
chemicals that are known to de-masculinize males and harm their
reproductive capacities, and rates
of breastfeeding (known to deliver concentrations of most of those chemicals to
suckling infants) increased greatly beginning in the 1970’s and rose rapidly in
Europe during the 1980’s. (see Section 1.2.p.1)
So the
children who were being breastfed at greatly increased rates during the 1970’s
and 1980’s, with breast milk containing rapidly-increasing levels of
de-masculinizing chemicals, have been filling the ranks of those of
reproductive age in the first decade of the 2000’s.
There
are good reasons to look beyond the general assumption that the decline in
birthrates has been voluntary, supposedly resulting from women seeing conflicts
with employment or whatever.A 2008 New York Times
article
quoted an analysis of recent studies (especially regarding contemporary
Europe) that
showed that “high fertility was associated with high female labor-force
participation… working mothers are having more babies than stay-at-home moms….
80 percent of French women (France has Europe’s highest birthrate) between ages
25 and 50 are employed.” (Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of
Pennsylvania quoted byRussell
Shorto, in “No Babies? -- Declining Population in Europe” The New York Times
Magazine, June 29, 2008) Humans have to remember that, despite our
advanced civilizations and modern ways, we are still biologically like the rest
of the animal kingdom in ways that greatly affect rates of procreation. We
should reflect on the fact that many chemicals that came into prevalence in the
environment in the late 20th Century are known (based on many tests
with animals, and also on some human studies) to have effects that reduce
sexual activity and potency. Male-female attractions have probably been
reduced in comparison with those of earlier generations, and even when physical
mating does take place, pregnancies may be following at lower rates than in
earlier times. If such things were occurring, who would notice and report
about those changes? The young people who are the ones who would normally be
procreating have no basis for comparison; if their attractions to the
opposite sex were less than had been the case for earlier generations, how
would they or anybody know that? And, if a given amount of sexual activity
were to unintentionally result in fewer pregnancies than would have occurred in
earlier generations, would anybody notice and report about that?
Regarding
possible lessening of attraction between the sexes, one may want to look in
census data for clues, such as the fact that, in the 25-34-year-old age group
in the U.S., the percentage of men never married more than quintupled between
1970 and 2008. (see Section 1.2.w)
Regarding a possible reduction in pregnancies following a given amount of
sexual activity, one may see a clue in the fact that a very high percentage of
American couples who want a child (likely over half -- see Section 1.2.w)
are unable to conceive. Even with considerable artificial assistance in
conceiving, native-born American women have a birth rate of only about 1.1
when counting only births to married women, according to data taken from the
2010 Census. (Births to unmarried women, 41% of all births currently, and to
immigrant women are preventing population decline. See
Section 1.2.w)) These
outcomes would have been completely predictable if one were to merely think
about the known effects of certain chemicals that have been increasing in the
environment; some of those chemicals are concentrated in breast milk,
and in some cases the concentrations are known to have increased greatly.
There appears to be no particular reason to think that intentional avoidance of
pregnancy has been behind the recent decline in birthrates. On the other hand,
there are excellent reasons to believe that increases in ingestion of
de-masculinizing chemicals by developing infants a generation ago would be
strongly affecting current birthrates. See the
pair of maps above.
The “de-masculinizing”
effects that may well have been occurring are not effects that would ordinarily
call attention to themselves in human males. Possible reduced mating activity
and 10%-15% smaller male reproductive organs, while observable in animals in laboratory
conditions, could not normally be readily observed in human males. But
de-masculinization of
most young males in Japan during recent years, following Japan’s rapid increase
in breastfeeding rates in the 1980’s, has been so conspicuous
that no studies have been necessary to observe it. According to a Japanese
government study conducted in 2010, 36% of males aged 16 to 19 surveyed
described themselves as “indifferent
or averse” towards having sex, and that percentage has
been rising rapidly in recent years. 60% of young Japanese men identify with a
social category whose most obvious characteristics seem to be effeminate
behavior and lack of interest in heterosexual sex. (see Section 1.2.b.2-3)
So we see an outcome in Japan
that may be merely a more extreme case of what has been happening elsewhere in
the developed world. Japan is both very industrial and densely populated, and
is also downwind from considerable, polluting Chinese industry, which means
that its typical breast milk contains unusually high concentrations of
developmental toxins. And its rate of breastfeeding is at the very highest
level, matched among developed countries only by a very few (Norway, Sweden,
Finland, Denmark, and possibly Germany and Switzerland -- see Section 1.2.p.1)
where pollution levels are almost certainly lower than in Japan. (South Korea
probably also shares the top ranks). So most present-day young Japanese men
received during their infancies what is probably just a more potent form of the
same toxins that European young men received in their infancies during the
1980’s. The
de-masculinizing effects that are conspicuous in Japanese young men (probably
having resulted to a great extent from toxins transmitted in breast milk) could be present in milder form in
many young men in many other developed countries,
especially in the countries with high breastfeeding rates and low birth rates.
Note in the above pair of maps that the European countries with high breastfeeding
rates a generation ago are almost entirely the same countries that have low
birthrates today.
The U.S. is another place to
look for comparison. Breastfeeding rates in the U.S. have not been as high as
those of the high-breastfeeding European countries, but the contents of typical
U.S. breast milk have been much higher in at least certain developmental toxins
(PBDEs and probably dioxins) than has been the case in European breast milk.
(see Sections 1.7.3 and 1.9.4).
As mentioned, in the 25-34-year-old age group in the U.S., the percentage of
men never married more than quintupled between 1970 and 2008; obviously
there are various causes for that, but any decline in male testosterone levels
and sex drive would clearly be expected to have had a significant influence on
that. In connection with that trend, note (in Figure 1.b)
that the breastfeeding rate in the U.S. as of the 1980’s had recently increased
to well over 50%, following a very large and rapid increase during the 1970’s.
As mentioned, the number of births per U.S. native-born woman is now only about
1.1, if considering only births to married women. In order to keep up even
that very low birth rate, Americans have been going to great expense in
utilizing Assisted Reproductive Technology to achieve pregnancy. Again,
de-masculinization of most young men such as has taken place in Japan has not conspicuously
taken place in the U.S., but a close look can reveal some signs along those
lines. This author, assisted by a school-age observer, has noticed that the
percentage of 17-year-old boys who could grow a beard seems to have declined by
40% or so in the last four decades.
“Studies in three cities
(Boston, MA, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Turku, Finland) demonstrate a significant
secular trend in serum testosterone … these studies suggest that testosterone
has declined around 1% per year for the past 40 to 50 years.” (Fetal
and postnatal environmental exposures and reproductive health effects in the
male: recent findings Shanna H. Swan, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
University of Rochester, School of Medicine 2008)
Section 1.1.b.3 A Critique
of the Claims and Studies about Possible Health Benefits of Breastfeeding
As promoters of extended
breastfeeding point out, breastfeeding transmits immune cells and antibodies
from the mother's immune system to the baby, which help protect the infant from
bacteria. But it should be kept in mind that by far the greatest protection
the human body can have against pathogens in the environment is a
properly-functioning immune system, which works by means of pathogen-fighting
blood components produced by that individual's own immune system. Of
great relevance here is the “hygiene hypothesis”
described in a web page of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, according to
which proper infant development depends on “the necessary
exposure to germs required to “educate” the immune system so
it can learn to launch its defense responses to infectious organisms…. In
the period immediately after birth the child’s
own immune system must take over and learn how to fend for itself. The
“hygiene hypothesis” is supported by epidemiologic studies….”(http://www.fda.gov/biologicsbloodvaccines/resourcesforyou/consumers/ucm167471.htm).
A
study found on the NIH’s website discusses “the microbial exposure
which may be critical for immune priming” and suggests it would be
helpful to re-name “hygiene hypothesis” as “microbial deprivation
hypothesis.” (Clin Exp Allergy. 2006 April; 36(4): 402–425. Blackwell
Publishing Ltd Too clean, or not too clean: the Hygiene Hypothesis and home
hygiene SF Bloomfield et al.) In the early days of our species when
there were no standards of sanitation, and when other possible infant foods
would often have been contaminated, immune cells from the mother would have
been helpful in promoting the health of the infant. But for most infants in
developed countries today, that kind of protection from environmental
challenges is probably actually harmful to the infant’s long run health. By
providing antibodies from an external source, breastfeeding repels the
environmental organisms that would otherwise be providing “the necessary
exposure to germs required to “educate” the immune system so
it can learn to launch its defense responses,” in the words of
the FDA’s respectful summation of this hypothesis.
More data will be provided later (Section 1.2.p.1), but suffice to say here that, in four of the five regions of the world in
which comparison is possible, countries in which breastfeeding is low have
longer average lifespans than the countries in which breastfeeding is high. Only in Sub-Saharan Africa is breastfeeding associated with
longer lifespans, and the difference there is less than one year. As will be
shown in the appendix, the evidence presented for benefits of extended
breastfeeding is very much subject to error resulting from the drawing of
essentially all of its data from dissimilar comparison groups, in
non-randomized studies. All of the “associations” found in the studies could
well be traceable to the lower income conditions and household smoking that are
known to be disproportionately characteristic of households in which bottle
feeding takes place. Other evidence provided by major international
organizations shows not only longer average lifespans in low-breastfeeding
countries but also far lower rates of important, often fatal, predominantly
childhood diseases. (Section 1.2.p.2)
Aside
from fending off microbes that would otherwise provide natural stimulus to the
infant’s own immune system to develop, there is excellent evidence that known
typical contents of breast milk are harmful to the very sensitive developing
immune system. As related in section 1.2.d,
typical breast milk is high in various developmental toxins, and especially high
in dioxins. According to a researcher reporting on a State of California
website, “The developing thymus (which is a crucial part of the
immune system) is a system that is remarkably sensitive to TCDD (dioxin).” His
team’s research found that fetal mice, after exposure to dioxin in the range of
one 200-thousandth as large a dose as adult mice received, had about as much effect in
the thymus as the adults had. And it appears that even such a tiny
dose has an effect of suppressing the immune system. (Development and Maturation of the
Immune System: Vulnerability to Toxicants at http://oehha.ca.gov/public_info/public/kids/pdf/Holladayed.pdf, p. 8)
Section
1.1.b.4 Various Things are Wrong in “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to
Support Breastfeeding”:
There is a great deal that
can be said in rebuttal of the evidence presented in the above-mentioned Call
to Action. A summarized rebuttal is presented just below, but this paper’s
more complete statement on that matter has been made into Appendix
1
(following Section 3.2) for the following reasons: (1) Proper presentation of
the case requires several pages of text that many readers would find boring;
(2) even if one accepts the evidence in the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to
be valid, the conclusion drawn by the Surgeon General that breastfeeding should
be promoted is an improper conclusion, for reasons that will be presented
shortly. Here follows a very brief summation of the contents of Appendix 1:
(1) “Natural” doesn’t
necessarily mean healthful; water from local rivers or ponds is also a
“natural” source of drinking water for humans, but that doesn’t mean that it’s
good for humans to drink such water in modern-day congested, developed regions;
typical breast milk in major parts of present-day developed countries contains
high concentrations of multiple developmental toxins, many times more
concentrated than in alternative infant feeding materials; that is well
established from reputable sources, and apparently no authoritative source
disagrees with that.
(2) At least one of the
findings presented in favor of breastfeeding appears to be outright misquoted
from the study that is cited.
(3) The Surgeon General
inconspicuously points out that most of the studies on which her case depends
are observational studies (in which the comparison groups are not randomized)
and she acknowledges
that there is therefore no proof that formula-feeding is a cause of the
illnesses that are indicated. But that single, page-2
acknowledgement is vastly overshadowed by bold headings and many statements of
“health risks” that are presented as results of failure to breastfeed, giving
the incorrect impression that there is conclusive scientific evidence that the
associations mentioned are true.
(4) Low income and/or
tobacco smoking are very well established as strong causal factors behind
essentially all of the adverse health outcomes that the Surgeon General alleges
to be results of formula-feeding; bottle feeding is also conclusively
recognized to be very disproportionately prevalent among low income women and
among mothers who smoke; it is entirely likely that the “health risks”
alleged by the Surgeon General are not at all results of formula feeding, but
are instead results of an infant’s being in a low-income household or in a home
in which parents smoke, where bottle feeding is also far more likely.
(5) Observational studies,
such as are being relied on by the Surgeon General, are recognized to be
subject to false conclusions, and proper use of such studies does not include
basing major public initiatives on them. That is especially true if the
comparison groups are known to be dissimilar, as was the case in the studies
cited by the Surgeon General. And that is most especially true if the
comparison groups are dissimilar due to underlying factors (low income and
parental smoking in these cases), which
factors are well known to be capable of causing adverse health outcomes such as
the Surgeon General attributes to breastfeeding.
The evidence provided is
not sufficient to be a proper basis for a call to action by the Surgeon General
of the United States that, in effect, promotes heavy exposure of infants to concentrations
of known developmental toxins. Especially if there is
good evidence of widespread negative effects from precisely such exposure (see Introductory Summary, indented
sections). The reader is encouraged to go to Appendix
1
for more detail.
Section
1.1.b.5 Even IF the Surgeon General’s Evidence about Health Benefits to the
Child were Strong, would those Benefits Outweigh the Probable Harm Resulting
from Breastfeeding?
Probably not. The Surgeon
General makes no attempt to address the many effects that are occurring in the
world that can very plausibly be traced back to toxins that are known to be
high in breast milk, as presented in this paper. Those probable, serious
harmful effects (rapidly growing mental impairment among male children (see
Sections 1.2.d, 1.2.sff)
and loss of fertility in countries that are trying hard to keep populations
from declining (Sections 1.2.v-w)) are at
least as well substantiated by evidence as the benefits she
attributes to breastfeeding. The benefits she alleges to result from
breastfeeding are principally regarding child health; and even if true,
there are many excellent reasons to believe that theoverall
health of the person actually suffers
very significantly from breastfeeding. (Section 1.2.p.1)
Longer average life expectancies in countries in which extended breastfeeding
is relatively uncommon, in four out of five major world regions, is only part
of the reason. The Surgeon General’s evidence for benefits of breastfeeding,
as weak as it is, applies
only to a very limited number of the many different possible illnesses; for
excellent evidence that several
illnesses she did not mention are far less prevalent in low-breastfeeding
countries than in high-breastfeeding countries, found by this author with very
little effort, see Section 1.2.p.2.
Considering the serious,
life-threatening illnesses that are more prevalent in countries in which
breastfeeding is higher, the shorter average lifespans in most
high-breastfeeding countries than in low breastfeeding countries, and the
minimal quality and selectiveness of the evidence for health benefits of
breastfeeding, one should not place great value on the side of health benefits
of breastfeeding for the infant.
Section 1.1.b.6 Other
Health Benefits Alleged to Result from Breastfeeding
Unlike the presumed benefits
to the infant claimed to result from breastfeeding, the benefits to the mother
are somewhat more likely to be real, for the following reason: As
related earlier, some important environmental toxins collect in fat within the
body, therefore they become concentrated in the breast. In a Japanese study of
breast cancer risk, the authors pointed out regarding certain widely-used
pesticides, “Organochlorines, which are poorly metabolized, accumulate in the
human body via food intake, leavingbreastfeeding
as the primary means of excretion.” (Being
breastfed in infancy and adult breast cancer risk among Japanese women Y.
Minami/ M. Kawai (Division of Community Health, Tohuku University Graduate
School of Medicine) et al. Cancer Causes Control, 2012) It
is very possible that accomplishing that excretion is beneficial to a mother’s
long-term health (although the
above study of breast cancer risk did not find any such benefit). A
U.S. study found especially high benefits accruing to a mother who breastfed
twins for two years, finding a decrease of about 70% in the mother’s body
burden of dioxins over the two-year period. (Chemosphere. 1996 Feb;32(3):543-9. Decrease in
milk and blood dioxin levels over two years in a mother nursing twins:
estimates of decreased maternal and increased infant dioxin body burden from
nursing. Schecter A, Papke O, Lis A, Ball M, Ryan JJ, Olson JR, Li L, Kessler HDepartment of Preventive
Medicine, State University of New York, Health Science Center-Syracuse,USA.) That
may be beneficial to the health of the mother, but one needs to consider
that this resulted in high levels of neuro-developmental toxins’ being ingested
by the infants while they are going through a period of rapid
development of their brains, before their brains’ barriers to toxins have
developed. One study of dioxin concentrations in infants of various birth
orders found that, the closer the infant had been to first in
birth order, the higher the dioxin concentrations in the deceased infants’
tissues, “thus showing that the mothers can decontaminate themselves
by breast feeding.” (more details in Section 1.2.s.1) Obviously there’s no need
to think about the effect those excreted developmental toxins are having on the
vulnerable, developing infant, who is ingesting them while passing through his
or her only possible period for potentially normal neurological growth. See
Section 1.2.d for more detail concerning
the high levels of various developmental toxins that are absorbed by infants
who have been breastfed, in amounts many times higher than in infants who have
been bottle fed.
As beneficial as this
excretion of toxins is to the mother, how many mothers want to accomplish this
by means of feeding developmental toxins to their infants, at the most
vulnerable times of the infants’ lives?
The last sentence should be
carefully re-read if the reader hasn’t already stopped to think about it.
It is possible to excrete
breast milk (and the toxins contained in breast milk) without feeding it to an
infant.
Another benefit claimed for
breastfeeding is that it builds a mother-child bond. But, as nice as that
sounds, one should consider the long term effect, especially for male infants.
The reader is encouraged to read in Sections 1.2.b.2-3
about the mostly-effeminate (or at minimum mostly non-masculine) generation of
young Japanese men that became conspicuous in recent years following Japan’s
changeover during the 1980’s to a very high level of breastfeeding. Be sure to
notice what is quoted about the typical attachments of these young men to their
mothers. But, even for girls, is it conceivable that there is such a thing as
a person’s being too attached to one’s mother? There should be ample other
opportunity during the many years of childrearing to develop a sufficient bond
between mother and child.
Section
1.2
Section
1.2.a PAHs, Dioxins, and BPA acting as Mutagens or Endocrine Disruptors
In essentially
the words of the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, with
emphasis added: The proper development of infants depends on the timely
action of hormones, particularly sex steroids; interfering with such
actions can lead to a wide array of effects that may include altered sexual and neurobehavioral functions. Such effects can occur as a result of exposure to
certain chemicals during fetal life or later via
maternal milkor other direct exposure. (ATSDR web
page Public Health Statement for DDT, DDE, and DDD, September 2002, Section 3.2.2.6)
Dioxins
and certain PAHs (Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons) are categories of chemicals
widely distributed in the environment that are implicated as sources of
neurological impairment. The specific means by which they cause harm is by
acting as "endocrine disruptors"
(in the cases of dioxins, BPA and at least one PAH) or as mutagens (in the case
of some PAHs). A web page of the National Institutes of Health says that endocrine
disruptors are "chemicals
that may interfere with the body’s endocrine system and produce adverse developmental,
reproductive, neurological, and immune effects in both humans and
wildlife. …. ." (emphasis added) The determination of dioxins and
dioxin-like substances as being endocrine disruptors is well established. At
least one PAH appears to be clearly in the category of endocrine disruptors; screening
of other chemicals for endocrine disruption properties is a very incomplete,
ongoing process, as of October, 2011.(http://www.epa.gov/oscpmont/oscpendo/ ) )
In addition, some PAHs have been identified as mutagens, which can have
adverse effects on the ways organs including the brain develop.
The EPA's web pages and
documents on dioxins and PAHs point out major sources of dioxins and
PAHs, as follows:
(a) dioxins
are unintentional byproducts of several industrial chemical processes and of
most forms of combustion, including fuel emissions, forest fires, and
waste combustion, and are also found in weed killers used on agricultural
lands;
(b) PAH's are also
unintentional products of typical forms of combustion, including cigarette
smoking and residential wood burning.
(c) BPA appears to be absorbed
by humans primarily via food packaging.
Quoting from the NIH's web page on endocrine
disruptors, "Endocrine disruptors …may mimic or interfere with the function
of hormones in the body. Endocrine disruptors may turn on, shut off, or
modify signals that hormones carry,…. In 2000, an independent panel of
experts convened by NIEHS and NTP (National Toxicology Program) found that
there was credible evidence that somehormone-like chemicals can affecttest animals’ bodily functions at very low levels — well below the “no
effect” levels determined by traditional testing......People may be
exposed to endocrine disruptors through …. the diet,air, skin,
and water" (emphasis added) (h)
Continuing,
"Research shows that endocrine disruptorsmay pose thegreatest
risk during prenatal and early postnatal development when organ and neural
systems are developing. Endocrine disruptors can bind to
a receptor within a cell and block the endogenous hormone from binding. The
normal signal then fails to occur andthe
body fails to respond properly. Examples of chemicals that block or antagonize hormones are
anti-estrogens andanti-androgens…. (They also can) interfere or block
the way natural hormones or their receptors are made.....”
According to the Committee
on Developmental Toxicology of the National Academy of Sciences, ”Agents that
interact with one or more of these receptors and are known to produce abnormal
development include ……dioxin
(TCDD). The mechanism by which TCDD induces developmental toxicity has been
studied extensively (for a review, see Wilson and Safe 1998) and is one of the
best understood. It ….. alters the expression ofseveral dozen
genes, one or more of which mightresult
in an adverse developmental outcome."
(i) (emphasis added) Given
that there are various different genes that guide the growth of different parts
of the brain, exposure to a toxin that ”alters the expression of several dozen
genes" can help explain why the autism spectrum disorders and other
neurological damage can take many different forms.
From one of the EPA's documents on dioxins, (j) "Some of the effects of dioxin and related
compounds such as …. changes in hormone levels andindicators of
altered cellular function have been observed in laboratory animals and
humans at body burdens comparable to exposures at or
near levels to which segments of the general population are exposed." It will be explained in the next section that any effect of
changing hormone levels can be hazardous to development of the brain. Later in
the same EPA document, it is spelled out that the adverse impacts that can
occur as a result of relatively typical exposure to dioxins include impacts on
"developmentaland/or
reproductive biology". The
authoritative recognition that (probably harmful) effects of dioxins have been
observed in humans at or near levels of substantial human exposure is of
special significance in light of the following: A study in the Netherlands has
found that breast-fed infants have a 50-fold
higher daily dioxin intake than adults after adjusting for body weight. (aa8).
“There
is considerable literature documenting the toxic effects of dioxins on the male
reproductive system. Prenatal and lactational exposure of male rats to
TCDD (dioxin) profoundly
disturbed the developing male reproductive organs….
spermatogenesis was inhibited, sexual
behavior was feminized and demasculinized…. The effects were
elicited by a single maternal oral dose of TCDD on day 15 of pregnancy [ED50
approximately 0.16 pg/kg; at this dose, TCDD had no discernible effect on the
mother. Most of the effects were found at the lowest dose level tested (0.064
pg/kg)….”“All of the best evidence available points with some
certainty to a rising
tide in Europe and many other countries of human male reproductive disorders involving sperm counts (and probably
sperm quality)….” (p. 764) “The most fundamental change has
been the striking decline in sperm counts in the ejaculate of normal men; recent
evidence from Paris indicates that this decrease amounts to about 2% per yearover the last two decades.
The result is that many otherwise normal men now have sperm counts so low that their
fertility is likely to be impaired.” (p. 768) (Emphases added)
(Male
Reproductive Health and Environmental Xenoestrogens Jorma Toppari,et al.
Environmental Health Perspectives - Vol 104, Supplement 4 - August 1996)
The U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and
Disease Registry says that dioxins are normally found in the environment in
"… ash, soil, or any surface with a high organic content, such as plant
leaves." (k) The
ATSDR and the EPA point out that dioxins are released by municipal solid waste
and industrial incinerators, hospital waste incinerators, backyard burning, vehicle
exhaust (mainly of diesel vehicles), emissions from oil- or coal-fired power
plants, soil erosion and surface runoff. Note that most of the above sources
are related to population density and combustion processes.
The EPA reports
that major sources of dioxins in the atmosphere have declined greatly in recent
decades as a result of regulatory efforts, but dioxins are extremely persistent
in the environment, especially in soil. Regulatory
efforts succeeded in reducing various sources of dioxins, but backyard burning
(including its typical major component of plastics trash, which contributes to formation
of dioxins) is difficult to control. So backyard burning has become the
largest source of dioxin releases in the U.S. environment as of the latest EPA
inventory (for year 2000)(above source, Table 1-4). The
worst effects of the pollution generated would be on infants and child-bearing
women living in the areas near where the burning is done, but the dioxins
released would also enter the food chain of the general population (this
burning is mostly done in rural areas). The emissions released would also be
deposited on soil, water supplies, and in the form of dust, to which all
infants downwind could be exposed.
BPA (Bisphenol A) is
another recognizedendocrine disruptor, to which
people including future mothers and nursing mothers are especially exposed via
its use in plastic packaging of food and drinks, including in linings of metal
cans.
Production of BPA in the U.S. increased over 100-fold between 1991 and 2004. The
National Toxicology Program (NTP) has “some concern” for effects
on the brain, behavior, and prostate gland in
fetuses, infants, and children at current human exposures to
BPA. The U.S. Geological Survey is “confident” that adult exposure to BPA
affects the male reproductive tract, and that long-lasting effects in response
to developmental
exposure to BPA occur in thebrain, male
reproductive system, and metabolic processes. (ToxTown
of National Library of Medicine, at http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/text_version/chemicals.php?id=69)
In addition to possible or known endocrine-disruption
properties, at least some PAHs are
known to be potentmutagens(EPA/600/8-90/057F May 2002, Health Assessment Document for
Diesel Engine Exhaust, Table 2-22. National
Center for Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, EPA).
In
addition, even after some PAHs degrade, many of their derivatives, also,
"have been found to be highly
mutagenic." (same EPA source, p. 2-90)
Mutagens should be of special concern because they can affect the descendants
of a person who outwardly appears to be unaffected. Later in this paper there
will be various references to possible effects of environmental toxins on
pregnant women and developing infants, and for brevity the possible effects
on the genetic material in future parents of both genderswill not be mentioned at the
same time. But it should be kept in mind that mutagens couldbe
affecting genes of both men and women now in ways that may not be apparent in
them but which could be expressed in their future children.
Aside from the general knowledge about the
presence of dioxins (and therefore endocrine disruptors) in many typical types
of combustion emissions, research has specifically observed endocrine
disruption resulting from exposure to diesel exhaust, which contains dioxins
(see Section 1.4).
A number of studies indicate that dioxins and dioxin-like
compounds (which include some types of PCBs) decrease circulating
thyroidhormone levels, which can impair the
brain development of offspring. "Even low levels of dioxin or PCB
exposure during the perinatal period can greatly influence neurological
development" in this way and "can cause irreversible
neurological damage." (Industrial Health 2000, 38,
259–268 Review Article: The Effects of Dioxin on Reproduction and Development
Junzo YONEMOTO National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan p. 262; Glorieux
et al., 1988; Rovet et al., 1987; Haddow et al.,
1999)." (Prioritization of Toxic Air Contaminants -- Children's
Environmental Health Protection Act (State of California), October, 2001).Most major sources of releases of PCBs to the
environment were discontinued in 1979, which helps explain the major decline in
mental impairment among girls born in recent decades. But they are extremely
persistent in the environment and (along with other variations of dioxins and dioxin-like
chemicals) are still very significant in harmfulness. As of 2006, the EPA
reported that "one-third of general population TEQDFP (dioxin toxic equivalency)
exposure is due to PCBs."* *(EPA/600/P-03/002F, November
2006: p. 11-28) Field studies have provided
evidence that impaired reproduction and immune function in seals were caused by the presence of PCBs
in the food chain. (Reijnders, P.J.
(1986) Reproductive failure in common seals feeding on fish from polluted
coastal waters. Nature, 324, 456–457.)
To illustrate the potency of some of these developmental
toxins, it is worth considering a test performed on rhesus monkeys with Aroclor
1248, a commonly-used commercial product that contained PCBs. According to the
U.S. ATSDR, Aroclors were “useful in a wide variety of
applications, including dielectric fluids in transformers and capacitors, heat
transfer fluids, and lubricants…. PCBs are combustible liquids, and the
products of combustion may be more hazardous than the material itself.”(from the ATSDR website
page on Aroclors)Other common uses of PCBs included
fluorescent light ballasts and plasticizers. (http://www.deq.state.or.us/lq/cu/nwr/PortlandHarbor/docs/SourcePCBs.pdf) “In
rhesus monkey infants whose mothers were or had been exposed to Aroclor 1248 during
gestation and lactation, behavioral testing showed hyperactivity and retarded learning
ability…. These effects were reported at doses of about 0.006
mg Aroclor 1248/kg bw/day to the mothers.” (Ahlborg UG,
Hanberg A, Kenne K. Risk Assessment of Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs).
Environmental Report in the Nord Series. Nord 26. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of
Ministers, 1992.)Assuming a recognized
average weight of 5.3 kg (12 pounds) per female monkey,
this works out to 0.032 mg per monkey per day, or a dose of less than one
800,000th of one ounce of Aroclor per day per
gestating/lactating female monkey. When considering the effects of 1/800,000th
of an ounce of a PCB-containing product, also bear in mind that 600,000tons of
PCBs were produced in the U.S. between 1930 and 1977, that they are very stable
and are contained in considerable equipment that is still in use (and sometimes
leaking); they are also heavily present in landfills, which are a major
source of emissions of toxins to the atmosphere (especially during fires), not
to mention the landfills’ drainage to water supplies. Although PCBs are no
longer produced in the U.S. and have recently been banned in most countries,
their continued presence in imported products is open to question. Also, indoor air in houses with floors finished with
PCB-containing wood finish have been found to contain high levels of PCBs (Environ Health. 2008; 7: 2. Published
online 2008 January 17. doi: 10.1186/1476-069X-7-2 Rudel et al; licensee BioMed Central
Ltd. PCB-containing wood floor finish is a likely source of elevated PCBs in
residents' blood, household air and dust: a case study of exposure Ruthann A
Rudel, et al.) And, at what seems to have been a typical rate of wide
use of a chemical for a half century or more before determining that it is too
toxic, one may reasonably wonder about the safety of the materials that are now
being used in place of PCBs. (Yes, most of the thousands of chemicals
introduced into use in recent decades have not been tested for safety.)
To review:
Endocrine disruptors and mutagens can produce adverse neurological effects,
especially during the period when the brain is developing. Some of these
effects can take place at or near relatively frequently-occurring background
levels. Infants are often likely to ingest or absorb toxins at far higher
levels than adults, adjusted for body size.
Section 1.2.b.1 The Special Significance of Testosterone/Androgens in
Development of the Brain, and Window(s) of Sensitivity
It
is important to look into the specific hormones that, when subject to the
effects of endocrine disruptors, can fail to perform important functions in
neurological development. According to one expert, "Sex steroid hormones
(testosterone in males, estradiol and progesterone in females) play a role early
in brain development in the "organization" of neural circuits…
A wide variety of neural processes are influenced by sex steroid hormones,
including neurogenesis, …growth of the neuronal cell body,
dendritic growth, differentiation and synapse formation….and neuronal
excitability. "(l)
(italics added)
According
to another specialist, B.S. McEwen, ”Gonadal, adrenal, and thyroid hormones
affect the brain directly, and the sensitivity to hormones begins in embryonic
life…. ….any agent that disrupts normal hormone secretion
can upset normal brain development. Likewise, exogenous substances that
mimic the actions of natural hormones can also play havoc with CNS (central
nervous system) development and differentiation." (m) It
may be noteworthy that gonadal hormones are the first of the various types
mentioned by the author regarding their importance to the developing brain.
Other authors (S.B. Klein and B.M. Thorne) (n) point specifically to testosterone for the way it "clearly
affects brain development." They refer to the "critical period for
the testosterone organizational effect"which apparently can take place only within a limited window of
time while the brain is developing.They cite observations of male rats that are
castrated after birth to remove their normal principal source of testosterone,
followed by injections of testosterone at various later times. Injections of
testosterone during the first two days after birth were effective in leading to
some specifically male rat behavior when adulthood was reached. But the
effectiveness of the replacement hormones in promoting normal male brain
development rapidly declined to "little effect" when not administered
until 13-14 days after birth. Other researchers have said that "Androgens are thought to organize the male brain" (o) (testosterone is one of the androgens).
McEwen points out that testosterone has a developmental
influence on the cortex (the part of the brain that plays
a key role inmemory, attention,
perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness).(m)Klein and Thorne also
cite observations by Rhees and colleagues (1990) and Davis and colleagues
(1995) of structural differences in adult rats' brains depending on
presence or absence of testosterone at specific stages of early infancy.
(It should be pointed out here that, although testosterone is a predominantly
male hormone, females also have some testosterone in their bodies, and it is
important to development of the female brain also; just less so than in males.)
The validity of the concept of "critical windows of sensitivity"
during neurological development is also accepted by the National Research
Council of the National Academy of Sciences (p), and by authors writing for the EPA (q).
Wigle et al. refer to bimolecular research showing the dependence of fetal and child
development on a complex orchestration of genes in specific cell types
at different times.(r)
The importance of testosterone in infant
brain development may help explain why far more boys than girls become mentally
disabled, since testosterone's production is extremely vulnerable to disruption
in male infants. It is produced in endocrine glands (testicles) that are uniquely
exposed to effects of toxins in air, water, and diapers, often shielded on
almost all sides by nothing more than a thin, permeable enclosure which
provides only minimal protection from microscopic substances in the surrounding
area. All of the other endocrine glands have far greater shielding from
environmental toxins. Exposure of the testicles to toxins from the environment
is greatly amplified during the critical brain development period by the fact
that infants are normally bathed in tubs, promotingsoaking into the
scrotum of substances that may have been (a) deposited into the tub from the
air, cleaning agents, or runoff from shower curtains, (b) gathered onto the
infant's body from the air, dioxin-containing diapers or soil, and/or (c)
brought in via the water supply. The same exposure of the testicles to dioxins
(and other toxins) could take place when a boy spends time in a swimming pool
or pond into which the toxins have settled out of the atmosphere, or in which
neurological toxins (such as bromine – see below) are used as disinfectants.
When considering the last sentences above, it
is worth remembering from the preceding text the following:
(a) dioxins and at least one PAH are endocrine disruptors, which are known to (among other things) interfere with secretion
of hormones;
(b) Endocrine disruptors can be absorbed from
the environment through the skin, and
(c) “…any
agent that disrupts normal hormone secretion can upset normal brain
development."
Fig. 1.2
Should
it be surprising that four to five times as many boys as girls are diagnosed
with autism (u), considering
that
a)
development of the brain depends on the undisrupted effects of certain hormones
(see early paragraphs of this section), and
b)
those specific, crucial hormones are produced in boys in a location that is
uniquely and extremely vulnerable to harm by external toxins?
In an article authored by a PhD at the CDC, it was pointed out
that some
recent studies have identified male-to-female ratios of autism as being double
the four-to-one ratio often indicated in older studies.(t). That provides reason for added focus on toxins that specifically
affect male infants more than females.
Although the above discussion focuses mainly on the very early
life of a child (since that is the period of greatest neurological
development), it should be pointed out that development of the brain continues
into early adulthood <<ref>>, which means that serious attention
should also be paid to minimizing time during which the scrotum of a developing
boy soaks in water that could contain dioxins, which is to say most outdoor
pools and lakes. The same applies to bromine, which is a known neurological toxin (http://www.hpa.org.uk/webc/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1246260027938
(HPA is Health Protection Agency of the UK) BromineToxicological Overview) that has been coming into wider use as a
substitute for chlorine in swimming pools and spas. Like dioxins, bromine can
be absorbed through the skin. (www.newsmaxhealth.com, Dr.
Brownstein) Even chlorine, since it is reactive, might well be harmful to testosterone (and
therefore to development of the brain) if it soaks through the thin protective
layer of skin surrounding the scrotum.
Aside from their
role as endocrine disruptors in general, dioxins are known to affect male
endocrine glands specifically, that is to say affecting the source of the
testosterone that is essential to normal infant male brain development. According
to another CDC report, dioxins have been demonstrated in animal
studies to have effects including neurotoxicity,
teratogenicity (causing birth defects), altered transcription of genes, altered
thyroid function, and testicular atrophy. (National
Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals Dioxin-Like Chemicals:
Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-dioxins, Polychlorinated Dibenzofurans, and Coplanar
and Mono-ortho-substituted Polychlorinated Biphenyls Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention Atlanta, GA Accessed at
http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/data_tables/DioxinLikeChemicals_ChemicalInformation.html
Page updated April 2010) According to researchers for the EPA,
"In
tests by at least two different research teams, dioxins were found to have
effects on the male reproductive systems in rats tested, as follows:
impaired testosterone synthesis, and possibly central
nervous system sexual differentiation, feminization
of male sexual behavior." (Environmental
Endocrine Disruption: An Effects Assessment and Analysis, by Thomas Crisp et
al, EPA, in Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 106, Feb. 1998,
Supplement. P.27) " Scientists at the University of
Wisconsin, on the basis of testing of rats, found that "if TCDD (dioxin) interferes
with any of (various) processes during late gestation and/or early neonatal
life, it could irreversibly demasculinize and
feminize sexual behavior…in male rats in adulthood.(Developmental
and Reproductive Toxicity of Dioxins and Related Compounds: Cross-Species
Comparisons" Richard E. Peterson et al, School of Pharmacy and
Environmnental Toxicology Center, Univ. of Wisconsin EPA/600/J-93/470
Critical Reviews in Toxicology, 1993) "In mammals,
postnatal functional alterations involving learning behavior and
the developing
male reproductive system appear to be the developmental events
most sensitive to perinatal dioxin exposure."(Crisp
et al., p. 324)
Most of the research cited
above was based on testing of laboratory animals, but there has also been
research that found de-masculinization of human males resulting from infant
exposure to similar toxins. (Section 1.6.b)
Dioxins have been found in bleached paper products, which include
disposable diapers, usage of which has been becoming far more widespread during
the same recent decades during which autism has also been increasing rapidly.
In that regard, keep in mind again that
a) dioxins and some other endocrine disruptors can be absorbed
through the skin, and
b) glands that produce hormones which are important to male brain
development are uniquely exposed to toxins that can be absorbed through skin.
Section 1.2.b.2 Reasons
for Special Concern about the De-masculinizing Effects of Various
Recently-Prevalent Toxins: Reduced Mental Development that Depends on
Testosterone, and the Case of Japan
There
are good reasons for special concern about the above-mentioned effects that
have been demonstrated in tests with animals, quite aside from what first comes
to mind. The de-masculinizing effects observed in test animals are almost
certainly a sign that testosterone levels had declined. As indicated in
Section 1.2.b.1,
testosterone is an essential ingredient for normal brain development, and it
would be especially important for development of the male brain. When
we see that mental impairment in children has gone from gender-equal to twice
as high for males during recent decades (, and also that academic performance
of young males has deteriorated (see Section 1.2.b.4-5),
we should see special reason to look into anything that could be affecting
neurological development in males specifically.
The
above declines in young human males are what one would expect from the scientifically-observed
de-masculinizing effects of recently-widespread toxins, combined with knowledge
of the importance of testosterone in mental development. But the probable
effects on males go well beyond development of mental abilities, as will be explained.
Japan (with a long-term breastfeeding rate that is among the very
highest in the world – see Section 1.2.p.1)
would be a logical country to look at for an especially sensitive demonstration
of effects of toxins that are widespread in modern developed regions, since
that country is both densely populated (ten times the density of the U.S.) and
industrial. According to a 2010 article in The Atlantic, “Japan is in a
national panic over the rise of the “herbivores,” the cohort of young men who
are… gardening, organizing dessert parties, acting cartoonishly feminine, and
declining to have sex.” (July/August 2010 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE The End of Men By Hanna
Rosin)
The literal translation applied to the Japanese word for the young men who fit
this description is “grass-eating boys,” and lack of interest in sex is a
consistent theme in descriptions applied to them. (Herbivorous
men, where's the beef? www.japantimes.co.jp ; Wall
Street Journal January 13, 2011, No Sex, Please, We’re Young Japanese Men Yuri
Tomikawa)Multiple surveys suggest that about 60 percent of young Japanese men —
in their 20s and early 30s — identify themselves as herbivores. The lead
character in a popular television show has secret passions that include sewing,
baking and crocheting clothes for his stuffed animals. (NPR,
Nov. 25, 2009) A Japanese
advertising-affiliated consulting company applies the 60 percent figure to men
in their early 20s and a roughly 42 percent figure to those men aged 23 to 34,
indicating a gradual transition that may have been taking place as the
present-day young men were developing as infants during the 1980’s and early
1990’s. These men are also described as “often close to their mothers.” “They're
more likely to buy gifts for their mothers than for their significant
others."(New York Magazine, Oct. 25, 2010 Japan
Now Ruled by Gentle Metrosexual ‘Herbivores’ By Nitasha Tiku) “Men
are now leading purchasers (in Japan) of hair products, make-up, fashion
accessories and manicures.” (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japans-generation-xx-1704155.html June
13, 2009)As
part of the considerable national discussion about
this development (with special concern due to Japan’s current very low birth
rate and shrinking population since 2005), there is much speculation about
possible causes: “poor communication skills,” or result of “efforts to
make the workplace more egalitarian,” among others (Slate: The Herbivore's Dilemma Japan
panics about the rise of "grass-eating men," who shun sex, don't spend
money, and like taking walks. Alexandra Harney, June 15, 2009).
The trends are as noteworthy
as the basic figures. According to a study conducted in September 2010 and
published by the Japan Family Planning Association (a government agency),36% of males aged 16 to 19 surveyed described
themselves as “indifferent or averse” towards having sex,
and that figure was twice as high as the result of the same survey conducted only
two years earlier. And that 36% figure compared with only 6% of
30-to-34-year-old men being disinterested in sex. (above-cited WSJ
article).
The head of the agency conducting the survey, speaking on Japan’s national
public radio station, provided his own explanation: “The findings seem to
reflect the increasing shallowness of human relations in today’s busy society.”
Yes, that must be the
reason, plummeting sexual desire in young males must be attributable to a
reduced search for deep meaning in human relations. Or could it be the “poor
communication skills”? Then again, it might be the egalitarian workplace.
Other observers’ suggestions include the effect of a lagging economy, or
rebellion against the ways of the previous generation. (Surely it’s clear that
a soft economy or rebellion against the parents’ generation normally leads to
mass loss of interest in sex, isn’t it?) Why not think about the fact that certain chemicals widespread in a
densely-populated, industrial environment (and concentrated in
breast milk in such an area)
have been found in tests with laboratory animals to cause de-masculinization?
(see Section 1.2.b.1,
near end of section, and Section 1.2.d)
This should be especially of interest to the country that may have had the
highest rate of extended breastfeeding of any developed country in the world in
recent decades (see Section 1.2.p).
There is nothing else on a par with laboratory tests with animals as a means of
predicting effects of chemicals on humans. The animals have basically
the same organs that humans have, and such testing is recognized to be good
(though sometimes imperfect) at predicting the effects that specific chemicals
will have on humans. Is there any reason to think that the
scientifically-observed effects of these chemicals are not presently
showing up in humans, given that these chemicals have been increasing in the
environment and are concentrated in breast milk?
Section
1.2.b.3 Time Trend of Breastfeeding in Japan, as Related to Birth of a Generation
of mostly-Effeminate Young Men
After World War II, breastfeeding
in Japan became rare. In 1974-75, the Japanese government in cooperation with
the World Health Organization began promoting breastfeeding. By 2001, Japan’s
long-term-exclusive breastfeeding rate had become one of the highest in the
world (see Section 1.2.p.1)
Deference to authority is very deeply engrained in Japanese culture, so
unusually great compliance with the government’s promotion of breastfeeding
should not have been surprising. In trying to estimate what the curve of the
transition from low- to high-breastfeeding looked like (in absence of actual
historical data), we can consider the following: An observer writing in
2003 pointed out (regarding the grandmothers visiting with the new Japanese
mothers who were breastfeeding in 2003) that “now most grandmothers (in Japan)
have no breastfeeding experience” (Breastfeeding trend in
Japan: Japanese Culture and Breastfeeding Cynthia D. Payne, IBCLC, quoting Hiroko Hongo, MSW, IBCLC and Kazue Nakamura
MD, IBCLC Report from the 2003 LLLI Conference From: NEW
BEGINNINGS, Vol. 20 No. 5, September-October 2003, pp. 181, accessed at http://www.lalecheleague.org/nb/nbsepoct03p181.html); looking
back a generation from 2003, this implies that breastfeeding was still
relatively rare through most of the 1970’s and probably not widespread even
into the early 1980’s. But it should be safe to assume that Japan’s transition
to a high rate of breastfeeding was well underway by the mid-to-late1980’s,
since it had reached a very high level by 2001.
In
assessing the likely effects of breastfeeding, environmental factors can be
even more important than actual rates of breastfeeding, in that they determine
the levels of toxins that are built up in a woman’s body by the time she
excretes those toxins in breast milk (see Sections 1.2.u, 1.2.w). Japan,
smaller than the state of California but second in the world in use of fossil
fuels (as of the 1980’s), is both very industrial and congested, meaning high
levels of environmental toxins are emitted close to a high percentage of the
population. Japan’s atmosphere suffers not only from what is domestically
generated but also from pollution drifting over from China. In 1984 it was
reported that Japan had more than 85,000 recognized victims of environmental
pollution, with an estimated rate of increase of 6 percent a year. A 1989
survey found that 52% of Japanese citizens felt that environmental pollution
was as bad as or worse than in the past. (U.S. Library of Congress, at http://countrystudies.us/japan/49.htm).
So
it is probably safe to assume that, by
the mid-to-late 1980’s, consumption of breast milk by Japanese infants was well
on its way to becoming among the very highest in the developed world. And it
is almost certain that typical breast milk in Japan at that time would have
included unusually high and growing levels of neuro-developmental toxins,
including toxins that are known to cause de-masculinization of males. (These would have been toxins of the
same types that became concentrated in breast milk in most developed economies
during recent decades, just in higher quantities in Japan -- see Sections 1.2.a, 1.2.b.1, 1.9). And then, 20+ years later, a generation of young
Japanese men has grown up who are mostly effeminate. Should that be a
surprising outcome? Do people really have to grasp for implausible,
non-biological explanations for the decline in masculinity such as
“increasing shallowness of human relations in today’s busy society,” or “poor
communication skills”?
1.2.b.4 Other International Trends probably
Related to Exposures of Children to Chemicals that are Increasing in the
Environment
As
mentioned, testosterone levels have been found to be lowered in laboratory
animals by exposure as infant animals to certain toxins that are concentrated
in breast milk and that have been increasing in the environment in developed
countries. (see Sections 1.2.a, 1.2.b.1, 1.9)
Testosterone is also known to be important in development of the brain,
especially the male brain. (Section 1.2.b.1) In
the United Kingdom, a considerable national discussion started in the
mid-1990’s about the “genuine problem of under-achievement among boys,” quoting
the then Secretary of State for Education. “Her Majesty’s Chief
Inspector (said) that the failure of boys was
‘one of the most disturbing problems we face in the whole educational system’ ”
(https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/RR636.pdf)
Data
regarding a “science reasoning test” that has been given over a 30-year period
to 11- and 12-year-olds in the U.K. is of interest. On one question, boys showed a 69% decline in correct
answers over those years, while girls showed only a 37% decline.
The author relating this pointed out that, although the drop in correct answers
to this particular question was especially dramatic, “the
overall pattern as between results at the beginning and the end of the study,
and between boys and girls is similar for the other questions in the test.” (http://www.hepi.ac.uk./files/41Maleandfemaleparticipation.pdf,
see item 69 also). This is very much in line with reports about
development among boys in the U.S. (see the introductory summary) As explained
earlier, the effects of neuro-developmental toxins that have been increasing in
the environment in recent decades affect infants in general, but (by especially
affecting testosterone levels and the mental development that depends on
testosterone) they affect males more than females.
Performance
in school is clearly related not only to intelligence but also to ability of a
child to concentrate and pay attention to his work. Spending on ADHD
medications for use by children under age 5 increased 349% between 2001 and
2004, and use of those medications among all children was increasing at the
rate of 23% per year. (The Minds of Boys: Saving our Sons from
Falling Behind in School and Life, Gurian and Stevens, Jossey-Bass, 2005, p.
215)
Summing up the situation, Gurian and Stevens (who may have studied the matter
more than any others) state, “Overall, it’s clear that something is going on
among our children, especially our sons, in the areas of brain
disorders…. Over two thirds of children labeled learning-disabled
and 90 percent of
children labeled behaviorally disabled are boys.
As the learning or behavioral disability becomes more severe, boys constitute
an increasingly higher statistical number.” (Gurian et al, pp. 216, 219)
About a third of all boys in U.S. schools are considered to have a learning or
brain disorder. (judging from the statement in Gurian and
Stevens that just under one-quarter of students are considered to be in those
categories, about 70% of whom are boys, which would mean that .7 x 24 =
17 out of 100 total students would be boys with the problems, or one third of
boys).
Other
international data point in the same direction. According to the Programme for
International Student Assessment, 2009, the differences between 15-year-old
boys and girls have become especially high in Norway, Sweden and Finland,
reaching an average 50.2-point difference in favor of girls (on a test with
average scores of about 500) in reading, interpretation and evaluation tests,
compared with an average difference of only 33 points among students in France,
Belgium and Northern Ireland (information for Ireland was not provided, so data
for Northern Ireland is used here in its place). Note that the first group,
with the higher gap between boys and girls, is in the highest-breastfeeding
group of western European countries (see Figure 1.9),
and the second group, with the smaller gap, is a low-breastfeeding group of
countries. In math
and science, the former average advantage that boys had in aptitudes in those
subjects has given way to a 2.8-point average advantage in favor of girls in
the high-breastfeeding Western European countries. Boys in the equivalent
low-breastfeeding countries have held onto an 11.5-point average advantage over
girls.(http://www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/publications/NPDZ01/NPDZ01.pdf)
1.2.b.5 Probable Effects
visible in Higher Education
In almost all countries of
the OECD, women have caught up with and surpassed men in
enrollment in higher education since the 1990s.(Education
at a Glance 2008 OECD INDICATORS Chart C4-3 www.oecd.org/edu/eag2008) The
inequality has continued to increase in recent years, at least in the U.K.
(U.K. HEPI report, item 84)OECD members were ranked in order of how far women exceeded men in
their countries’ enrollments in higher education. The group of four European
countries that are lowest in breastfeeding (Ireland, France, UK and Belgium)
had an average position of fifteenth from the top in this
ranking (indicating smaller male-female differences in enrollment), whereas the
three highest-breastfeeding countries (see Figure 1.9) had an average rank of fourth from the highest.Norway, the
country with the top-of-the-chart breastfeeding rate, also had the
very highest ratio by which women in any country exceeded men in higher
education enrollment.(Education
at a Glance 2008 OECD INDICATORS CHART
C4.3www.oecd.org/edu/eag2008)
But
the male-female differences in enrollment in higher education may well
understate the actual differences between the two sexes in present-day mental
abilities. In an American study published in 2006 of the growing female
advantage in college completion, the authors observed that “the female
advantage over males is largely attributable to the superior performance of
women in college…” They point out that this generalization applies less
to certain minorities than to whites, but the general finding is clear that
females “do better in college.” The authors point out that this performance
advantage starts in middle school and high school, but only becomes especially
conspicuous in college via ”the higher dropout rate from 4-year colleges for
males.” Tracing the history of male-female mental differences, they point out,
“Using data from six U.S. national probability samples spanning 1960 through 1992,
Hedges and Nowell (1995) found … a gradual
reduction of the male advantage in math and science tests
and no reduction in the female advantage in tests of reading and writing
ability.” Given recent trends, college admissions officers “are considering affirmative
action for male applicants.” (The Growing Female Advantage in College
Completion: The Role of Family Background and Academic Achievement C. Buchanan
et al., American Sociological Review, Vol. 71, No. 4 Aug. 2006) That
sort of thing may have been contributing to keeping the female-male enrollment
ratios from becoming even more imbalanced than they already are, in most
countries, at the expense of admitting a significant number of males who aren’t
able to succeed at university-level work.
1.2.b.6
Possible Effects of these Toxins in Leading to Alternative Sexual Orientations
or at least Reduced Signs of Masculinity
In
various countries of the developed world, extremely close associations are
found between high levels of breastfeeding and apparently-high levels of
homosexuality. Section 1.2.v
provides details about the many associations that appear to indicate effects of
toxins known to be concentrated in breast milk in contributing to non-normal
sexual orientations. One observer has found many examples in current American
pop culture of absence of traditional masculinity in the principal male
characters depicted in American movies, advertising and novels. (July/August 2010 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE The End of Men By Hanna Rosin) Informal observations by this author and a
recruited observer have led to a very tentative finding that just over half as
many 17-year-old boys in the U.S. currently would be able to grow a beard as
was the case in the 1960’s. See Section 1.2.b.3
about the new generation of very conspicuously un-masculine young men in Japan.
Section 1.2.c Even Low Exposure to Dioxins can Cause
Developmental Harm: Media attention
regarding dioxins normally centers on their cancer-causing
effects (which are either "known" or "probable" depending
on which particular governmental body is speaking). But close reading of the CDC's
web pages on dioxins will reveal statements indicating that dioxins are also closely
connected with developmental harm, even at low doses. "The results of the oral animal studies
suggest that the most sensitive effects (effects
that will occur at the lowest doses) are immune,
endocrine, anddevelopmental
effects." (found at
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/phs/phs.asp?id=361&tid=63 , Section 1.5)The CDC web page continues:
"It is reasonable to assume that these (effects of low dioxin doses on
development, as observed in animals) will also be the most sensitive effects in
humans."
In
addition to the previously-mentioned special vulnerabilities of infants to
toxins in general, their brains are particularly subject to damage by dioxins in
particular, for the following reason: Dioxins are "lipophilic" (attracted
to fat, which is the major content of nerve tissue, including the brain).
"Lipophilic xenobiotics (chemical
compounds foreign to the organism) may more readily penetrate the central
nervous system in infants and young children until the
blood-brain barrier reaches maturity in the third year of life." (The
symptoms of autism are typically observable before age 3, so the brain may well
have already been permanently damaged by incoming toxins before the blood-brain
barrier has matured.) Also, "...infants may have decreased
excretion and clearance of xenobiotics, prolonging half-life and potentially
increasing toxicity." (parenthetical expressions added) (Protecting
Children from Harmful Chemical Exposures Chemical Safety and Children’s
Health Prepared by: IFCS FSC Working Group Chaired by Hungary Chemical
Safety in a Vulnerable World IFCS/FORUM-IV/11 INF 7 October 2003 FORUM IV
Fourth Session of the Intergovernmental Forum on Chemical Safety Bangkok,
Thailand, p. 9 accessed at
http://www.who.int/ifcs/documents/forums/forum4/en/11inf_en.pdf)
Section
1.2.d Breast Milk as a Source of Toxins to Infants:
<<coordinate
w/ Sec. 1.9.11, 1.9.9>>
An EPA document estimates that an average
breastfeeding infant receives 20 to 60 times the dioxin toxic equivalency
compared with an average adult. (http://www.cqs.com/epa/exposure/part1_v1.htm)
According
to the National Academy of Sciences, a leading U.S. government regulatory
agency points out regarding dioxin exposure from breastfeeding that "the
average daily intake by the infant over the first year of suckling would be 87
times the adult daily intake." The NAS apparently saw no reason to
disagree with that estimate. (National Academies Press: Health
Risks from Dioxin and Related Compounds: Evaluation of the EPA Reassessment (2006), Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology, National
Academy of Sciences; the original source is not quoted directly because it is
part of a draft, not for quoting)As
indicated in Section 1.7.3,
one study found that PCBs in breast milk received by infants were effectively
received in concentrations 30 times as high as the concentrations in the food
ingested by the mothers. Also in that section is presented information about
PBDEs in breast milk growing very rapidly in recently decades and being
especially high in the U.S. "Breast-feeding for 6 months
or more is predicted to result in an accumulated (dioxin) exposure 6 times
higher than a formula-fed infant during the infant's first year of life.." (EPA Home/Research/Environmental
Assessment: An Evaluation of
Infant Exposure to Dioxin-Like Compounds in Breast Milk) Also note the following quote from a web page of the State of
California OEHHA: "Current background levels of human
exposure to dioxins in particular are within the range at which various toxic
responses have been observed in animals." (in Prioritization
of Toxic Air Contaminants - Children’s Environmental Health Protection Act,
October, 2001: Dioxins)Current
background levelsof dioxins therefore are such that toxic
effects can be expected in humans, based on studies with animals. And
breastfeeding infants, with their special vulnerability as their brains are
developing, and with their incomplete defense mechanisms, are receiving exposure
that vastly exceeds that of the average adult. Not to mention the fact that
some humans are far more sensitive to toxins than others.
A
German study produced data in line with the above, finding that intake of
dioxins was up to 50 times higher in breast-fed infants compared with
formula-fed, and also that high proportions of the dioxins were intestinally
absorbed by the breastfed infants. At 11 months of age, the
dioxin toxicity-equivalent concentrations in the formula-fed infants were less
than 25% of maternal values and about 10
times lower than in the infants that were breast-fed for
six to seven months.(Intake, fecal excretion,
and body burden of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans in
breast-fed and formula-fed infants. Abraham
K,
Knoll
A,
Ende
M,
Päpke
O,
Helge
H.
Children's Hospital, Virchow-Klinikum, Humboldt-Universität Berlin, Germany).
In
order to appreciate the fact that typical breast milk in nursing mothers
these days is very different from that in earlier times, one should be
aware of the following:
1)
Estimates from various studies suggest that rates of dioxin deposition in the
environment (mostly from the air) increased
more than 10-fold between1930s and the
late 1960s. (Regulatory
Toxicology and Pharmacology, 37 (2003) 202 217 Dioxin risks in
perspective: past, present, and future Hays and Aylward at
http://acdrupal.evergreen.edu/envirohealth/system/files/Dioxin+risks+in+perspective.pdf
) Mercury
deposition has also increased substantially, and continues to rise. Chemical
“body burden” studies found 167 different contaminants in
the blood and urine of nine adult volunteers and an average of 200 contaminants
in umbilical cord blood samples from each of 10 babies. In addition to
pesticides, plastics and industrial chemicals, other compounds detected in
these studies include solvents of all kinds, and waste byproducts from burning
coal, fuel, and garbage. (Challenged
Conceptions: ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMICALS AND FERTILITY" 2005, a publication
of Stanford
University School of Medicine, p. 4)
2) The American Toxic Substance and Disease Registry says
that "eating food, primarily meat, dairy products, and fish, makes up more than 90% of the intake of CDDs (dioxins) for the
general population." (http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=363&tid=63)
Farm
animals and fish ingest and build up dioxins in their tissues largely as a
result of what they eat, meaning vegetation and sediment onto which the
greatly-increased levels of dioxins and mercury from the environment have been
deposited; in addition there is "biomagnification" as toxins
are passed up the food chain (via animal products included in the feed of farm
animals, and also via smaller fish being eaten by larger fish).
3)"Meat consumption has
more than doubled in the United States in the last 50 years." ( "Paying
a Price for Loving Red Meat" in Personal Health, by Jane E Brody, New York Times: April 27, 2009)
4)
Regarding dairy products as sources of dioxins, it should be emphasized that
fat is the component of animal matter to which dioxins especially gravitate.
Therefore butter, eggs, most cheeses, and whole milk, as well as lard (commonly
found in bakery products) are very much on the list of significant sources of
dioxins in a typical diet. The average dioxin content per ounce of dairy foods is
much higher than in earlier times, following the increases of the toxins in the
environment. That is especially important for people whose typical meals are
high in dairy fat content, such as (a) those who eat typical Scandinavian
diets, and (b) children and others who eat meals consisting to a great extent
of pizza or other foods with high cheese content or other animal fat content.
Some agencies downplay the significance of the extraordinarily
high dosage of dioxins received by infants in breast milk, pointing out that,
if one looks at that dosage spread out over a typical 70-year lifespan, it
becomes a relatively minor addition to the typical total lifetime exposure to
dioxins. The problem with that viewpoint is that permanent, life-impairing
damage can occur during infancy while effective exposure levels are many times
higher than the later lifetime average, early levels that are especially high
in relation to the infant's immature defense mechanisms and vulnerable stage of
neurological development.
Dioxins are far from the only neurological toxin of concern
contained within breast milk. Quoting from page 12 of the above IFCS FSC
Working Group paper,"Heavy
metals such as methylmercury and leadare
also secreted in breast milk." "Several toxic effects on the thyroid
system or on neurodevelopment have been reported in
experimental animals exposed to PBDEs. It
is likely that human exposure is predominantly through the ingestion of
contaminated food and/or mother's milk." ((Shokuhin
Eiseigaku Zasshi. 2004 Aug;45(4):175-83. PubMed – NCBI Polybrominated
diphenyl ether flame retardants in foodstuffs and human milk. Akutsu K, Hori
S. Osaka Prefectural Institute of Public Health: 1-3-69, Nakamichi,Osaka
537-0025, Japan) Remember from Section 1.2.b.1 that
increases or decreases in thyroid levels have been reported to "cause
irreversible neurological damage" during development of the brain. Also
note, as will be mentioned in Section 1.7.1,
that samples of breast milk
in the U.S. were found to have levels of PBDEs 10 to 100 times as high as
those found in humans in Europe. Also note in Section 1.7.1 about
anti-androgenic, testosterone-reducing
effects of PBDEs.
Bromine is
another neurological toxin excreted in breast milk (CAS
No: 7726-95-6)Health-based Reassessment of Administrative Occupational
Exposure Limits, Committee on Updating of Occupational Exposure Limits,a committee of the Health Council of the Netherlands);
bear in mind that a mother could absorb bromine through her skin while in a
pool or spa treated with bromine as a disinfectant.
Pesticides
also, including some that are used residentially, have been widely found in
breast milk. (http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/docs/2001/109p75-88lakind/abstract.html
Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 109, No.1, Jan. 2001). Section
1.6 will provide details about
connections between various pesticides to which fetuses and infants are exposed
and (a) autism, (b) other changes in social behavior and brain
development, (c) attention deficit disorders and hyperactivity disorders, (d)
feminization of males and (e) masculinization of females.
Most
of the research that has found developmental harm to result from exposure to
these chemicals was based on tests with animals, but “the
chemical structures of hormones and their receptors are very similar among
vertebrates, including humans. A chemical that binds with an estrogen receptor
in mice is almost certainly going to bind with an estrogen receptor in people.”
(Challenged Conceptions:
ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMICALS AND FERTILITY" 2005, a publication of Stanford
University School of Medicine, p. 10)
Section 1.2.p Possible
Effects of Variations in Breastfeeding Levels, viewed Internationally
Section
1.2.p.1 Possible Effects On Lifespans and Health in Five Major World Regions
Human breast milk is known
to have several ingredients that are especially nutritious for human infants,
and various alternative milk formulas for infants are thought to have
disadvantages by comparison. Two generations ago the case would probably have
been strong in favor of extended, exclusive breastfeeding. But the world has
changed since then.
An article in Scientific
American aptly refers to “that most essential proof
of robustness—the power to stay alive.” (November
2010, “Why Women Live Longer”). By that
standard, which seems reasonable, more breastfeeding apparently takes a back
seat to less breastfeeding in all major regions of the world in which
comparisons can reasonably be made except Sub-Saharan Africa. But other health
measures will also be presented later showing that breastfeeding does not
provide overall health advantages over the course of a lifetime.
Fig.
1.8
Among
nations, low rates of breastfeeding apparently do not detract from long-term
health, and may even help:
Irish
breastfeeding rates are by far the lowest in Western Europe and North America. French and Belgian
rates are second and third from the lowest in this measure of "ever
breastfed." (chart from OECD Family database www.oecd.org/els/social/family/database)
See below for how long-lived
the Irish, French and Belgians are in relation to other countries, including
the countries that are high in breastfeeding rates.
Fig. 1.9
This chart from the World
Health Organization’s website shows long-term data indicating Norway and Sweden as European
countries with very high
breastfeeding rates. Finland’s data on this chart appear
significantly below the top levels, but an “expert study” carried out in 1984
found Finland’s breastfeeding rates to be the highest in Europe at that time. (Verbreitung,
Dauer und zeitlicher Trend des Stilles in Deutschland, Bundesgesundheitsblatt
Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz. 2007 May-Jun;50(5-6), p. 624) Germany’s
rates aren’t shown in this chart, butdata
from a German study show that country’s 3-month breastfeeding rate to look like
very much like a smoothed-out version of Finland’s for the years 1985-2005. (same
document,Abb. 2). Separate
WHO data indicate that, for the stricter standard of exclusive
breastfeeding for six months, Germany andJapan
have what may be the developed world’s highest known breastfeeding rates at six
months after birth (both considerably exceeding Finland’s rate; such
data not available for Norway or Sweden). (http://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=9200&theme=country). Japan’s
2005 “ever-breastfed” rate of about 97%, as shown in Figure 1.8, should also be
noted. Switzerland’s
rates also aren’t shown on this chart, but a 1994 study showed that 92% of
Swiss mothers initiated breastfeeding and by four months 48% were exclusively
breastfeeding, both of which figures place that country in the higher breastfeeding
category.
(Breastfeeding in countries of the European Union and EFTA: current and
proposed recommendations, rationale, prevalence, duration and trends Agneta
Yngve et al., Public Health Nutrition: 4(2B), p. 641)
Denmark, Portugal, Spain,
and Austria, are all (at least until recently) a step below the highest level,
which we will call “medium high.” Italy appears to have gone through a
transition from medium low to medium high. Note that, by the early 1990’s, Denmark
appears to have reached the highest-level group by this particular measurement,
but has only one data point indicating that; however, the 2005 standard
for “ever breastfed” (figure 1.8) shows Denmark to be second only to Norway, at
98%.
France,
Ireland, Belgium and the UK are shown here as having low
rates. There is obviously not much data here for France and
Ireland, but the LaLeche League’s website’s data shows Ireland’s breastfeeding
rates to be by far the lowest of any European country for which they provide
data, and it shows France as being the only country that is close to Ireland’s
bottom rank for breastfeeding percentage at initiation. Figure 1.8 (above)
from the OECD shows that also. Luxembourg
and the
Netherlands, being a step above the low group, form a
grouping that we will call “medium low.”
Since practices like breast
feeding are part of culture, passed down through the generations, we will be
looking at data such as these and considering it to be reasonable to think
that, when considering a large number of countries, breastfeeding rates for
high-breastfeeding and low-breastfeeding countries were on the average also
either relatively higher or lower in years that preceded the
currently-available data. The rationale is summed up in the principal
conclusion of a study with 909 participants in France (researchers were seeking
ways to encourage breastfeeding in France but were finding resistance resulting
from deeply-ingrained cultural feelings): "The results of this
study showed a strong impact of society and cultural norms on feeding choice." (Birth. 2008 Dec;35(4):303-12. Attributions of breastfeeding
determinants in a French population. Hernández PT, Callahan S.).
There was a
rapid upward trend in breastfeeding prevalence in Europe during the 1980’s and
1990’s, as shown in Figure 1.9. As is seen in Figure 1b, the 1970’s were a period of rapid growth in the U.S. rate of
breastfeeding, and the period of increases in other western countries also
began in the 1970s. (Tides in Breastfeeding Practice,
M.M. Coates, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, LLC p. 62-63) Norway’s rate doesn’t appear to have increased in Figure1.9, but that is only because the data on this chart don’t go back
far enough in the case of Norway; a separate WHO document states that
Norway’s rate in 1969 was only 25%-30%, rising to 80% by 1985. (Fleischer Michaelsen K et al., Feeding and Nutrition of Infants
and Young Children: Guidelines for the WHO European Region, with Emphasis on
the former Soviet Countries. Copenhagen, World Health Organization, 2003)
If formula feeding of
infants were to be a long-term disadvantage to health, the average lifespans of
Irish, French, Belgian and UK citizens would be expected to be below average.
But that is not at all the case. According to the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency's "World Fact Book", the average of the life expectancies at
birth for those countries (at 80.4) is longer than the
average for the European Union countries (79.8), and also slightly higher than
the 80.2 average of the ten medium-high and high-breastfeeding-rate European
countries.
(For reference
to U.S. data, (a) all of those countries' life expectancies are
significantly longer than that of the U.S., and (b) the U.S. has a
substantially higher rate of breastfeeding than that of Ireland, France,
Belgium or U.K.)
Average
lifespans for the high vs. low breastfeeding groups in other major world
regions will be presented here, using breastfeeding data mainly from the
website of the LaLeche League and average lifespan data from the CIA’s World
Fact Book. Middle East and North Africa: the 6 countries with the
lowest breastfeeding rates, ranging from 5% to 18%, have an average lifespan of
73.7; the two countries with the highest rates (both 56%) have an average
lifespan of 71.7. Asia: the 6 countries with the lowest rates,
ranging from 2% to 24%, have an average lifespan of 72.5; the six countries
with the highest rates (including South Korea), ranging from 53% to 99%, have
an average lifespan of 70.3. Latin America: the 4 lowest-breastfeeding
countries, ranging from 5% to 19% (excluding the tiny, atypical former British
colony, Belize), have an average lifespan of 75.6; the three highest-breastfeeding
countries, with rates of 33% to 77%, have an average lifespan of 73.8. Eastern
Europe is not considered here on the grounds that the post-Soviet-era
disruption would have excessively reduced the meaningfulness of any data, and
the available data are conflicting. North America does not have enough
separate countries to allow valid comparison. That leaves Sub-Saharan
Africa, where the six high-breastfeeding countries (with rates ranging from
52% to 90%) have an average lifespan of 57.0, barely exceeding the average
lifespan of 56.4 for the 17 countries with breastfeeding rates ranging from 1%
to 14%. The advantages of breast milk over the locally-available alternatives
in much of Africa might have been expected to lead to a more significant lead than
that.
The reader is
invited to carefully consider the above and to try to think of any reasons why
the data don’t imply an advantage to less breastfeeding as opposed to
more, in most of the world. There might be underlying causes that explain the
differences, just as there are underlying factors that lead separately
to both the low breastfeeding and the high illness rates in the same households
in the studies cited by the Surgeon General. It was easy to find the
underlying conditions (low income and smoking) that explained why there were
not necessarily cause-and-effect relationships in most (possibly all) of the
cases of the “health risks” alleged by the Surgeon General. When considering
the average lifespan data, remember what was explained in Section 1.1.b.2 about the probable long-run benefits of having an immune system
that has received moderate challenges during an infant’s development and has
therefore been stimulated to develop while it can best do so. That is to say,
an immune system that received stimuli that weren’t preemptively overcome by
externally-originating substances (antibodies in breast milk) before the
infant’s own developing immune system received stimulation. This author
eagerly solicits any reader’s thoughts as to what else could be
underlying causes of the nearly world-wide indications of beneficial effects of
bottle-feeding. Please send any thoughts to dm@pollutionaction.org .
Only Three
Countries appear to Compete with Norway and Sweden for having the Highest
Long-term Breastfeeding Rates in the Developed World:
Before leaving
this section and Figure 1.9, we should focus on which countries hold the very
top ranks in breastfeeding rates in the developed world: As
of this writing, data equivalent to that of Figure 1.9 is not available for Japan,
but Figure 1.8 shows Japan close to the top with about 97% “ever
breastfeeding”, and 2001 WHO data related to a far stricter standard
(“exclusively breastfed for the first six months of life”) is available,
according to which Japan has a 21% rate, much higher than the equivalent 15%
rate for high-breastfeeding Finland; no “exclusively-breastfed for six
months” data is available for Norway or Sweden. (http://apps.who.int/ghodata/?vid=11200&theme=country) In
the absence of comparable data for those other countries, note that Japan could
be essentially tied for the highest position in the “exclusively breastfed for
1st six months” rate among the developed countries for which this
data is available. And that is combined with an almost-at-the-top position at
initiation. This is especially significant in that Japan is industrial, has
unusually high population density (10 times that of the U.S.), and is downwind
from the pollution of eastern China, meaning that exposure of women to Japan’s
environment will almost certainly cause breast milk in that country to have
very unusually high concentrations of neuro-developmental toxins. See Section 1.2.b.2
regarding what many people consider to be a very bad outcome in Japan,
chronologically following Japan’s transition from low breastfeeding to high
breastfeeding.
As indicated early in this
section, Germany (at 22%) also holds a very
top-level position according to the 6-month exclusive breastfeeding standard.
One study indicates a very
high rate for South Korea as
of 1979: “Of these countries (including South Korea) the percentage of
ever-married women who had breastfed in the last closed interval was between
94-99%... South Korea also has the highest level of breastfeeding.” (Breast-feeding
in some developing countries Ahmad
M.
Egypt
Popul Fam Plann Rev. 1979 Jun-Dec;13(1-2):168-86.) Another
study, published in 2007, estimated 20% exclusive breastfeeding after six
months, which is very high for that type and duration. (Public
Health Nutrition: 11(3), 225–229 DOI: 10.1017/S136898000700047X Breast-feeding
in South Korea: factors influencing its initiation and duration Woojin Chung1
et al.)
Section
1.2.p.2 Some Additional Examples that Shed Light on Breastfeeding’s Alleged
Health Benefits to the Infant
This chart is of special
interest because it highlights the kind of thing that is omitted from the
Surgeon General’s listing of conditions that are associated with bottle
feeding. The Surgeon General points out that type 2 diabetes is
higher among bottle-fed children. As mentioned, she failed to acknowledge that
low-income conditions in the bottle-feeding group could well be the underlying,
real cause of that elevated level of diabetes type 2. Another logical question
that comes up is, what about type 1 diabetes? This chart shows the answer
to that question. The high-breastfeeding Scandinavian countries can’t be
missed, bunched at the high end of the type 1 diabetes rates, in this data set that
is omitted from the Surgeon General’s presentation. The average incidence for
the higher-breastfeeding countries is 25.1, and if it’s restricted to the
highest-breastfeeding countries, the incidence is 36.08. (no data for
Switzerland and Austria) The average incidence for the lower-breastfeeding
countries is 17.95 (no data for Belgium and Luxembourg) Does this give
a clue about how evidence is selected
or excluded on the basis of whether or not it leads to
the pre-determined conclusions of the proponents of maximum breastfeeding?
There are obviously numerous illnesses that were also not
included among those listed by the Surgeon General in
the comparison between bottle-fed and breast-fed children, and this chart may
provide insight into the kind of data that would be found for many
conditions that didn’t make it onto the list.
Other effects of
breastfeeding. The Surgeon General presents
data, as subject as it is to error, only concerning associations between certainphysical conditions and bottle feeding. That is certainly not for lack
of studies trying to find associations between mental development and
bottle feeding vs. breastfeeding. The various studies on this subject have apparently
generally failed to find benefits to mental development resulting from
breastfeeding. In that regard, the reader should bear in mind that a finding
that “breastfeeding
is not protective” is apparently as far as studies in this area are ever expected
to depart from finding breastfeeding to be beneficial. (see Section 1.1.b.5)
That is probably also as far as studies in this area ever do go away
from finding beneficial effects of breastfeeding, no matter how far a thorough processing
of the data would lead if the analysis weren’t brought to a halt upon finding
no beneficial effect of breastfeeding. So it is important to look at whatever
data can shed some light on the matter.
As mentioned
elsewhere, the state that has the second highest rate of autism in the United
States, at two times the national average rate (Oregon), has the second highest
rate of breastfeeding in the U.S. (see Section 1.2.x.1) The states with the highest and third-highest rates of autism
in the U.S. (Minnesota and Maine -- Sections 1.2.s.7, 1.2.x.1), and the state with the highest level of autism in the entire
southern half of the U.S. (California), are also among the states that are
highest in breastfeeding rates. Every one of the seven U.S. states with
the lowest rates of breastfeeding are in the bottom third of states ranked
according to prevalence of autism. (Section 1.2.x.5) The country that may have the highest rate of breastfeeding in
the developed world (Norway) also has what may be the highest prevalence of
autism in the world. The other countries that are highest in breastfeeding are
also at the highest levels of autism in the world. (Section 1.2.s.5) African-Americans on the average have a rate of breastfeeding
that is half as high as that of whites, and their average rate of autism is
half as high as that of whites. (Section 1.2.s.3) Other associations indicating probable harmful mental effects
of breastfeeding can be found in Section 1.2.s. Japan is also one of the highest-breastfeeding/high-autism
countries, but a different kind of mental development among most of its young
men, 20+ years after a transition to a high level of breastfeeding, is of even
greater concern to that country. (Section 1.2.b.2)
Pertussis is
also known as whooping cough. (These charts provide the only compilations of
this data that are readily available on the internet as of April 16, 2012.)
Pertussis is
estimated to cause 295,000 deaths per year worldwide. (Bettiol S, et al. (2010). Bettiol,
Silvana. ed. "Symptomatic treatment of the cough in whooping cough". Cochrane
Database Syst Rev (1): CD003257. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003257.pub3. PMID20091541) The CDC’s
web page on pertussis shows that by far the greatest incidence of pertussis is
amonginfants
less than one year old (which is the group that
clearly includes those most closely affected by
breastfeeding). And that
age group includes those “who are at greatest risk
for severe disease and death” from this disease, according to the CDC.
The average rate
of reported cases of pertussis for the higher-breastfeeding countries (except
Germany and Switzerland, for which no rates are given) is 17.03, and the
average for the three highest-breastfeeding countries
(Norway, Sweden and Finland) is 43.9.
By contrast, the
average rate for the lower-breastfeeding countries is 8.025, and the average
for the four lowest-breastfeeding countries (Ireland, Belgium, U.K. and France) is 0.83.
The reader
should stop and think about this. A disease that causes hundreds of thousands
of deaths per year, especially affecting those who are under one year old, with
a reported incidence in the highest-breastfeeding European countries fifty
times as high as in the lowest-breastfeeding countries. And this is just one
of many associations of breastfeeding with negative outcomes.
(Charts and data
from European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, http://ecdc.europa.eu/en/publications/Publications/1111_SUR_Annual_Epidemiological_Report_on_Communicable_Diseases_in_Europe.pdf)
The CDC’s web
page on salmonellosis points out that “the rate of diagnosed
infections in children less than five years old is about five times higher than
the rate in all other persons,” and that about 400 people die every year in
the U.S. alone from this illness. So it is clearly a serious disease, and it
is another one that
affects those who are most closely affected by breastfeeding or
formula feeding.
The higher-breastfeeding
countries (except for Switzerland and Spain, for which no data are given) had
an average salmonellosis rate of 35.39 per 100,000, and the four
highest-breastfeeding countries had an average rate of 49.25. The
lower-breastfeeding countries (except Netherlands) had an average rate of
25.08, and the four lowest-breastfeeding countries had an average rate of 22.85.
In the chart
below, adults in the low-breastfeeding countries (Ireland, UK, Belgium, France)
reported “good or very good health” in a slightly higher overall average
percentage than adults in the high-breastfeeding countries of Sweden, Norway
and Finland. Although the difference was rather insignificant, at least it should help lay to rest the idea that breastfeeding is beneficial
to the child overall. Also, using a standard that is more specific than that
first one, and less subject to under- or over-reporting depending on
psychological factors, the average percentage reporting “Long-standing illness or health
problem” in the low-breastfeeding countries was 28.7, compared with 35.3 for the
high-breastfeeding countries. That is a very
large difference, especially in that (a) it draws its data from data provided
by major international organizations, and (b) this lower level of illness
applies to average lifespans in the lower-breastfeeding countries that are at
least as long as the average for the higher-breastfeeding countries (Section 1.2.p.1).
The above
illustrations show that the alleged health benefits of breastfeeding are very
dubious at best. Think about these in addition to the fact that average life
spans are longer in the higher-breastfeeding countries than in the
lower-breastfeeding countries in four out of five major world regions. Also
bear in mind that (a) the Surgeon General inconspicuously acknowledges that
essentially all of the “risks” that she relates to formula-feeding are in
question, given that there could be causes other than breastfeeding for the
“associations,” and (b) there are other factors (low income and smoking)
that are known to lead to all of the health conditions in question, which
factors are known to be very disproportionately prevalent among the people who
are less likely to breastfeed.
Section 1.2.r
Review of Some Pros and Cons of Breastfeeding in a 21st Century
Industrialized Country, on the part of Women Who have been Eating a Typical
Diet: There are good reasons to look into the
fact that high rates of autism in certain countries and U.S. states coincide
with unusually high rates of breastfeeding in those same countries and states.
The uniformly low rates of autism in the U.S. states with the lowest rates of
breastfeeding should add weight to the need for a serious re-examination of the
widespread promotion of breastfeeding. The higher rate of autism in the white
ethnic group, compared with autism rates that are either certainly lower or
probably lower in ethnic groups with low breastfeeding rates, adds still more
reason to doubt the desirability of general breastfeeding promotion.
Breastfeeding is more common among more highly-educated women, and autism is
more common among the children of more highly-educated women. All of those
geographical, national and social data would be enough by themselves to raise a
major red flag. The logical next step is to see if there is scientific
evidence showing that contents of breast milk are capable of causing harm to
neurological development. See the considerable content earlier in this paper
providing exactly that, as regards breast milk in current, more polluted
times. And then look at the history of the recent decades concerning changes
in rates of breastfeeding and rates of mental impairment in male children
during those years. <<provide chart>>
One of the various studies
finding health benefits in breastfeeding points to the significantly lower
rates of colds, cases of diarrhea, ear infections, and doctor visits among
infants that are breast fed. And they point out that health care providers
should therefore have an interest in encouraging breast feeding, which may well
be true. If the burdens of dioxins, mercury and PBDEs in contemporary women's
bodies were the same as they were in the middle of the 20th century,
such promotion would be beneficial to infants. But they aren't, and it isn't.
Many women probably tend to
think that, since their foremothers may have breastfed for long periods and
their children turned out well, and since breastfeeding is widely encouraged,
then that must mean that breast feeding is risk-free. But high levels of
dioxins, mercury, and PBDEs in the environment, and therefore in breast milk,
are a relatively recent development. Researchers cite various studies
suggesting that rates of dioxin deposition in the environment increased more
than 10-fold between the 1930's and the 1960's (Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 37
(2003) 202 217 Dioxin risks in perspective: past, present, and future
Hays and Aylward at http://acdrupal.evergreen.edu/envirohealth/system/files/Dioxin+risks+in+perspective.pdf).
Bear in mind that dioxins are essentially a product of many typical forms of combustion,
requiring presence of a source of chlorine as part of the burning, such as is
included in the plastics waste that skyrocketed in the U.S. environment in the
mid- and late-twentieth century. Mercury is released by combustion of
mercury-containing materials, especially ones such as in coal, which has been
increasing rapidly with growing populations and industrialization in various
parts of the world; since airborne mercury drifts around the globe,
considerable emissions from Asia's rapidly-expanding, polluting industries, and
from ships going back and forth, are in the U.S. air supply and in the water
habitat of fish. PBDE's are something new in recent decades. All of the above
mean that breast milk today is very different from that of earlier periods. New
releases of dioxins by U.S. industry have declined recently, but other sources
that closely affect humans (especially diesel emissions) have increased greatly
at the same time. Dioxin-containing soil is often ingested by infants,
and is partly ingested by farm animals after which the dioxins become part of
meat and dairy products; dioxins are almost certainly continuing to
increase in a major part of the environment due to the extremely long lives of
dioxins in soil, even though they are increasing
less rapidly than in earlier decades. A long-term,
mostly-vegetarian diet is apparently the only way for a woman to avoid major
buildup of dioxins and mercury within her body. Minimizing breathing of air in
the vicinity of electronic devices (especially where ventilation isn't good)
might be the only way to avoid buildup of PBDEs.
As was pointed out with
several international examples earlier (Section 1.2.p.1),
countries in which breastfeeding is relatively rare have average life
expectancies longer than countries in which breastfeeding is more common, in
every world region in which valid comparisons are possible except for
Sub-Saharan Africa. But the case against claims of health benefits from
breastfeeding is much stronger than that. The people whose lifetimes have been
forming the basis for current average life expectancies were breastfed at a
time before environmental levels of dioxins and other toxins had come anywhere
near their present levels. Dioxins, which accumulate in the body over the
years, are also very much associated with usually-adult diseases (especially
cancer) (see
www.epa.gov/dioxin/). So present day breastfeeding, by mothers
with body burdens of dioxins that are typical in modern industrial countries,
would be getting infants off to a start in accumulation of toxins that could
lead to disease decades later. (Remember from Section 1.2.d the
quote from the National Academy of Sciences about a breastfed baby during its
first year effectively receiving 87 times the average adult dosage of
dioxins.) National life expectancy comparisons drawing data mainly from death
reports of people born before 1960 understate the probable effects of
breastfeeding vs. bottle-feeding currently, since they don't reflect the
greatly increased typical present-day levels of persistent toxins in breast
milk. It would only be prudent to assume that the current increased level of
toxins, when combined with additional, accumulating exposures to toxins later
in life, would have long-term effects of kinds that scientific studies have
found to be caused by those toxins. Additional apparent neurological
effects of breastfeeding (greatly increased autism, lowered mental capacities
especially among young males, and unusually large numbers of people with
non-traditional sexual preferences) have already been presented.
Section
1.2.s Connections between Varying Rates of Breast Feeding, Parental
Characteristics, and Autism Prevalence
Section
1.2.s.1.a Socio-economic status (SES) in the U.S. and
U.K. is related to both
far higher rates of breastfeeding and substantially higher rates of
autism.
Education and income are
associated with autism in the U.S. and the U.K.:
An in-depth study of autism in California "…showed autism clusters to be
highly associated with the education of the parent population" (meaning
higher autism in areas with higher educational levels). The research team
looked at many other environmental factors that could have been associated with
formation of the clusters, but found that "…none of the effects approach
the magnitude of parental education." The authors pointed out that
services for the autistic were available regardless of income, so ability to pay
was not seen as something to reduce use of autism-treatment services by
less-educated families. The authors also pointed out that the association of
higher parental education with autism had also been found in two other studies
in the U.S. and in one study in the U.K. (Geographic Distribution of
Autism in California: A Retrospective Birth Cohort Analysis Karla C. Van Meter
et al., Autism Research 3: 19–29, 2010) In a U.S. study
published in 2007 (Bhasin and Schendel), it was found that median family income
was positively and significantly associated with autism prevalence. (Parental
age and autism: Population data from NJ at
http://paa2008.princeton.edu/download.aspx?submissionId=80822)
But there are apparently no
such associations in Denmark or Sweden: The authors of the above
California study pointed out that, whereas their study and other studies in the
U.S. and the U.K. found a positive association of high parental education with
autism, that same relationship was researched but not
found in two studies carried out in Denmark. (Oxford Journals aje.oxfordjournals.org Am. J.
Epidemiol. (15 May 2005) 161 (10): 916-925. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwi123 Risk
Factors for Autism: Perinatal Factors, Parental Psychiatric History, and
Socioeconomic Status Heidi Jeanet Larsson et al J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2005 Sep;46(9):963-71. Effects of
familial risk factors and place of birth on the risk of autism: a nationwide
register-based study. Lauritsen MB, et al.) Another
study since then has researched the same topic and also
not found a
positive association of socio-economic status with autism in
Sweden, according to a study published in 2012; in fact,
in this study of about 5000 cases of autism in Stockholm county, the
researchers concluded that lower socio-economic
status seemed to be associated with a risk of autism in offspring. (Rai
D. et al. Parental socioeconomic status and risk of offspring autism
spectrum disorders in a Swedish population-based study. JAACAP. 2012;
51: 467-476)
Why
should the above observed differences exist? Higher
educational levels and/or socio-economic status is associated with autism in
some countries, but in other countries there was either no such association or
it was in the opposite direction. The authors reporting on the above
differences speculated about possible differences between the countries in
means of ascertainment of autism, or variations in forms of ASD in different
countries. But there is a perfectly logical explanation that is based in
science, which nobody seems to have considered. There is ample evidence, including
from the EPA, that breast
milk contains toxins that are known to harm neurological development and that
have been greatly increasing in the environment and in breast milk in recent
decades; it is also known that breastfed infants receive many times higher
doses of these toxins than formula-fed infants.
(see Section 1.2) This author has
done very considerable research on this topic and has never seen any
responsible expression of disagreement (that is, from a scientist, researcher,
or official) with the substance of the previous sentence.
It is also known that,in the U.S., mothers of low socio-economic status
(SES) are far less likely to breastfeed than mothers with higher SES, by
differences of nearly 2 to 1, compared with college
graduates. (http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/data/NIS_data/2000/socio-demographic.htm
Also The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding 2011 U.S.
Public Health Service at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/breastfeeding/calltoactiontosupportbreastfeeding.pdf,
p. 8)
The U.S. Surgeon General provides data (p. 8 of her Call to Action)
showing that mothers receiving WIC (low-income) supplements breastfeed at a 38%
lower rate at six months after birth than mothers who are not eligible for the
subsidies. Research cited by the Surgeon General also points out that “income
is associated with breastfeeding regardless of race or ethnicity.” (Surgeon
General’s Call to Action, 2011, p. 9). The same kind of
difference applies in the U.K.,
as evidenced by the following quote, referring to breastfeeding in England and
Wales in 2000: “Mothers in higher occupations were also more likely to be
breastfeeding at 6 weeks; 60% compared with 28% of lower occupation mothers.” (at
http://www.northamptonshireobservatory.org.uk/docs/doc_Breastfeeding-in-the-East-Midlands.pdf_151937220606.pdf) An Australian
study found that “breastfeeding rates at 3 months varied from 75%
in middle class Bayside to 33% in less advantaged Brimbank,” which was in line
with other comparisons by socio-economic status. (J. Paediiitr. Cliihl Health (2()00) 36,164-168 Rates
of breastfeeding in Australia by State and socio-economic status: Evidence from
the 1995 National Health Survey S DONATH and LH AMIR The Key Centre for
Woirien's Heatth. University of Melbourne. Melbourne. Victoria. Australia)
Therefore it is obvious that fewer infants of low-SES parents in
the U.S., U.K. and Australia would receive the high concentrations of
neuro-developmental toxins that are contained in breast milk. By
contrast, in the
Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland), almost every
mother breastfeeds, at least initially (see Section 1.2.p.1);
and their rates of breastfeeding are still very unusually high after three and
more months. There seems to be no data indicating lower rates of
breastfeeding among mothers of low SESin the Nordic
countries. It appears that, when (after the early period)
breastfeeding becomes less universal, the decline may not be among the same
groups as in the U.S. and U.K.; whereas in the U.S. and U.K. later
children are likely to be breastfed for shorter periods (see below), the
opposite was found to be the case in a Norwegian study.(Lande, B., et al. (2003), Infant feeding practices and
associated factors in the first six months of life: The Norwegian Infant
Nutrition Survey. Acta Paediatrica, 92: 152–161. doi:
10.1111/j.1651-2227.2003.tb00519.x)Apparently infants from all sectors of
society in the Nordic countries receive the same exposure to the developmental
toxins in breast milkat least at first, and
probably later also. Therefore
it should not be surprising that it has been found that autism rates in those
countries are:
(a)
uniform across socio-economic strata, and
(b)
very high, since (unlike the norms in countries with lower
breastfeeding rates) typical infants in no sectors of their societies have
reduced exposure to the developmental toxins in breast milk. See later in this
Section concerning the very high autism rates in Nordic countries. An autism
rate for children in the U.S., at about half the rate that appears to be
prevalent in the Nordic countries, has been well publicized. In the
historically relatively low-breastfeeding U.K., autism among children is
reported to be about 1% (http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/some-facts-and-statistics/statistics-how-many-people-have-autism-spectrum-disorders.aspx), which
is even less than half that of the high-breastfeeding countries.
It would at first thought
seem to be only logical that, as has been the case in some countries, autism
rates would be no higher among high-SES
mothers than among low-SES mothers, and should if anything be expected to be
lower. After all, parents with higher SES are likely to have reached those
levels to a great extent (in a modern market economy) through above-average
mental and/or social abilities;genetically,
children of higher-status parents should be expected to have at
least the same
freedom from mental and social impairment as children of lower-status parents.
And that appears to be
exactly the way it is in countries (such as Denmark and Sweden) in which there are no differences in
breastfeeding rates according to SES levels.
The seemingly-contradictoryoutcome of lower autism rates among children of
lower-SES parents has apparently been found only in those countries in which
breastfeeding rates are known to be unusually low among low-SES mothers.
As mentioned, it is established and not disputed that breastfed infants receive
far higher dosages of certain known developmental toxins than bottle-fed
infants receive. This is a perfectly logical explanation for a phenomenon
that appears to have no other good explanation. However, there are widespread
and very strongly-held views that “breast is best,” so it is understandable
that scientists have not ventured into what this author considers to be the
correct explanation for a serious problem.
Section
1.2.s.1.b Parental age and breastfeeding:
In a U.K. study, finding the same relationship that has been found in previous
surveys, it was found that an average of only 58% of mothers under age 20
breastfed, compared with 87% over age 30. (Infant Feeding Survey 2010:
Early Results A survey carried out on behalf of the NHS Information Centre by
IFF Research, University of York, UK, Section 2.2.1) In
an Australian study, it was found that breastfeeding at six months was
positively associated with older maternal
age, with “Adj OR per 5 year increase in age 1.58…,”which sounds like a greatly
increased breastfeeding percentage with each additional 5 years of age.(Factors associated with
breastfeeding at six months postpartum in a group of Australian womenDella A Forster et al. International Breastfeeding
Journal, 2006 1:18)
On the subject of the
association between parental age and autism, one report (ANRV305-PU28-21
ARI 22 December 2006 7:53 The Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum DisordersCraig
J. Newschaffer et al., Drexel Univ. School of Public Health)
cited six studies finding a direct association between parental age and at
least one form of autism. This report also cited two studies that were said
not to find such an association. Of those two studies that failed to find the
association, one was very small (61 participants) (Juul-Dam
N, Townsend J, Courchesne E. 2001. Prenatal, perinatal, and neonatal factors in
autism, pervasive developmental disorder-not otherwise specified, and the
general population. Pediatrics 107:E63), and the other was a
study of Danish children. (J Autism Dev Disord. 2001 Jun;31(3):279-85. Obstetric complications and
risk for severe psychopathology in childhood.Eaton WW, Mortensen PB, et al. Department of Mental
Hygiene, Johns Hopkins University) In that regard, bear in
mind that breastfeeding is very high in Denmark, so that (unlike in the U.S.
and the U.K.) infants of younger parents are as likely as children of older
parents to be breastfed. So it appears to be clear that higher rates of
breastfeeding are associated with parental age only in those countries in which
breastfeeding doesn’t reach the essentially-universal level.
To sum up preceding
paragraphs:In some countries, older mothers are more
likely to breastfeed, and they are also likely to breastfeed for longer
periods, compared with younger mothers. In those countries,
children of older mothers are much more likely to be autistic than children
of younger mothers. However, in the only comparison involving a country in
which all mothers are about equally likely to breastfeed, there was not found
to be an association between parental age and prevalence of autism.
In a U.K. study, it was
found that mothers of first babies were more likely than mothers of later
babies to breastfeed in every country of the U.K. (England, Wales, Scotland,
and Northern Ireland), with an 8% higher average likelihood of
breastfeeding the first baby. (Infant Feeding Survey 2010: Early
Results A survey carried out on behalf of the NHS Information Centre by IFF
Research, University of York, UK, Section 2.2.1). Another data set,
from the U.K. Department of Health for 1995, shows a 17% decline in rate of
breastfeeding rate between the first and later births. (at http://www.doh.gov.uk/public/infantfeedingreport.htm,
p. 8)Apparently
many women experience pain or other difficulties in breastfeeding, which
results in not breastfeeding subsequent babies. In a Canadian study, it was
found that “not having previous breastfeeding experience predicted its
continuation,” which is to say that later
babies, if breastfed at all, will normally be breastfed for a shorter period
than a first baby. (Factors Influencing Full Breastfeeding in a Southwestern
Ontario Community: Assessments at 1 Week and at 6 Months Postpartum Tammy J. Clifford, PhD Human Lactation, 2012)
First babies in countries
with moderate or lower rates of breastfeeding are not only (a) more likely to
be breastfed, and (b) likely to be breastfed for longer periods, but they are
also (c) fed much more
potent doses of developmental toxins. The mother’s body burden
of persistent toxins is partially excreted in breast milk; with each
succeeding baby, the mother’s lifetime accumulation of toxins has been reduced
by breastfeeding of the preceding baby. A study of breast cancer
risk factors published in 2008 looked into concentrations of dioxins that were
measured in various tissues of 27 infants that had died unexpectedly;
information was provided by the parents about birth order and breastfeeding
history of the infants. It was found that the closer the infant had been to
first in birth order, the higher the dioxin concentrations in the deceased
infants’ tissues, “thus showing” (according to the study’s authors) “that the mothers can decontaminate themselves
by breast feeding.” (Dioxin emissions from a municipal
solid waste incinerator and risk of invasive breast cancer: a population-based
case-control study with GIS-derived exposureJean-François Viel, et al. International Journal of Health Geographics, 2008, Volume 7, Number 1, 4) Having observed that, the authors had no
hesitation about encouraging breastfeeding as a means of “decontaminating”
the mothers, even after seeing clear evidence that the excreted toxins were
absorbed by the infants, in direct proportion to the excretion from the
mothers. “Because of the well-known beneficial effects of breast feeding and
considering the results of the present study, this type of infant nutrition can
be recommended without any restrictions.” This is an illustration of the
blinders that many people in health fields are wearing, which allow them to
only see breastfeeding’s benefits, without ever seeing a possible dark side to
its promotion.
To sum up preceding
paragraphs: Babies later in birth order are less likely to be breastfed,
they are likely to be breastfed for shorter periods, and the levels of toxins
in later breast milk will be lower as a result of the earlier breastfeeding’s.
And those babies are much less likely to become autistic than babies earlier in
both order, by wide margins. This follows the same kind of pattern seen with
parental age and parental socio-economic status.
Section
1.2.s.2 Other Social Differences: Rural
women are also less likely to breastfeed. (Tides in Breastfeeding
Practice, M.M. Coates Jones and Bartlett Publishers, LLC Undated, but it
refers to 2007 as "now")
Religious teachings of a
kind that could be leading to high rates of autism:
The Mormon (Latter Day Saints, or LDS) Church promotes breastfeeding, as
indicated by quotes including the following:
“Our Heavenly Father made
the mother’s body so it could produce milk…. It is better for babies than
milk from animals.” “Breast milk and feeding has many advantages:” (followed
by nine reasons and six testimonials). (http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Curriculum/mpandrs.htm/latterday%20saint%20woman%20b.htm/homemaking.htm/maternal%20and%20infant%20care%20lesson%2022.htm) In
the “Basic Manual for Women,” intended also to provide materials for use by
those teaching Mormon lessons, promotion of breastfeeding is prominent. (http://www.lds.org/manual/the-latter-day-saint-woman-basic-manual-for-women-part-a/lesson-23-nutrition-for-mother-and-baby?lang=eng&query=breast+feeding+infants)
As clear as the church’s teachings are, at least as important in this case is
how conscientious Mormons typically are in following their church’s teachings
(as indicated by the expectation of tithing and the high frequency of young
men becoming missionaries for two years). Substantial search by this author
has failed to bring up evidence of any other Judeo-Christian religion that
specifically promotes breastfeeding. Effects of this promotion of
breastfeeding can be seen in the fact that the state of Utah, about 60%
Mormon, had the third-highest rate of breastfeeding in the United States in
the CDC’s 2000 survey; the margin of error of the sample/survey was
such that Utah could well have been first if a higher percentage of the
population had been surveyed.
Utah
has an autism rate that is extraordinarily high --
one child out of 47 according to 2008 data. (http://www.utahautismregistry.com/2008-asd) By
contrast, overall ASD prevalence for the United States as of 2008 was reported
to be one out of 110, although that figure was in 2012 updated to be one out of
88. By comparison with either national figure, one out of 47 for Utah clearly
merits serious attention. But it becomes even worse as one looks closer. In
the 2008 Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) study in Utah,
it was found that one
out of 25white
children in the Utah study area had ASD (see the 40 out of 1000 figure in this
snippet). (Community Report From the Autism and Developmental
Disabilities Monitoring (ADDM) Network Prevalence of Autism
Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) Among Multiple Areas of the United States in 2008,
Funded by CDC) Considering the disproportionate male-female
ratio of autism, that works out to about one out of 17 white boys.
The authors withheld the
identity of this location from their report, but there is apparently only one
place in Utah that fits the data provided in the ADDM report, which is West
Valley City: (1) about 2000 students in a single-year age group (U.S.
Census 2000 data), and (2) the lowest proportion of whites in the state (the
percent of white 8-year-olds in the ADDM study area was even lower than West
Valley City’s white percentage, but West Valley’s white percentage is the
lowest in Utah, and only one other city or county in Utah even comes close to
such a low percentage of whites).
95% of Mormons in Utah
identify themselves as white (Gender gap widening among Utah Mormons, but why? Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune Dec 14 2011),
53.25% of the residents of the apparent ADDM study city are identified as
Mormon, (bestplaces.net/religion) and
53.7% of that city’s residents are white (Census Bureau Quickfacts).
So it appears likely that almost
all of study area’s whites are Mormon, and probably almost none of the area’s non-white
residents are Mormon. This should be borne in mind as one sees
in this snippet from an ADDM publication that, in this study location, ASD prevalence is six times as high
among whites (basically meaning Mormons) as
among other ethnicities in the very same city (basically meaning non-Mormons).
The ASD rate for whites for
this Utah location, 40 out of 1000, also stands out in relation to the
data for whites in the other thirteen ADDM study locations. That average for
all of the other thirteen sites is 12.8 per 1000. So the
essentially-Mormon population has an autism rate that is not only six times
that of non-Mormons in the same city, it is also over three
times as high as the average autism rate of whites at all thirteen
other U.S. study sites.
There are only two other
sites that are even as much as half as high in autism
prevalence among whites as the Utah study site. The problem here is not a
problem of whites, and it is not a problem in Utah’s environment (see Figure 1,
as well as the data for Utah non-whites). It is a problem that is probably
traceable to something that is distinctive in Mormon teachings. (See beginning
of this section.)
The reader should stop and
think about the ratios noted above, combined with the fact that the four-out-of-100 rate of white
(Mormon) autism in
this study location exceeds the highest ASD rate reported for any country in
the world. The
only known national rates that even approach this percentage are countries in
which breastfeeding is nearly universal (Norway, Sweden, Finland,
Denmark and South Korea -- see Section 1.2.p.1). Mormons appear to be the only major
religious group that specifically promotes breastfeeding to its members.
And, equally importantly, most Mormons are apparently very observant of their
religion’s teachings. See Section 1.2.d
concerning the toxins known to be concentrated in breast milk that are harmful
to neurological development.
Fig. 1.3
Section
1.2.s.3 Ethnic differences:
The CDC shows rates of
breastfeeding among blacks or African Americans at
6 and 12 months after birth as being about half as high as among whites (http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/data/NIS_data/2000/socio-demographic.htm
).
According to another source, breastfeeding among blacks after the first days is
even lower than half of the rate among whites: “Not only have Black
women initiated breastfeeding at roughly half the rate of White women, but the
majority of Black women who do breastfeed introduce formula to their infants
while still in the hospital.”(Am J Public Health. 2003 December;
93(12): 2000–2010. Low Breastfeeding Rates and Public Health in the United
States Jacqueline H.
Wolf, PhD) And autism rates among blacks are also generally about
half as high as among whites, as reported by many sources.
Hispanics: At
least two studies have found breastfeeding rates among Hispanics to be
consistently lower than among whites: (Colley and colleagues,1999; Ryan and
colleagues,1991).(Breastfeeding Initiation and Duration:A 1990-2000 Literature ReviewCindy-Lee Dennis, RN, PhD, in JOGNN in
Review, Vol. 31. No. 1) Note in Figure 1.3 that ASD rates
among U.S. Hispanics are also lower than those of whites. (Lower autism among
Hispanics could also relate to a diet that is typically higher in grains and
beans, with less dioxin-containing meat and fish compared with the typical American
diet.)
A CDC survey
reported breastfeeding rates in California to be about 18% lower among
Hispanics than among whites. In
line with that, the state of California reports that
36% of Californians are Hispanic, but only 28% of those with diagnoses of
autism are Hispanic. (http://www.dds.ca.gov/Autism/docs/AutismReport_2007.pdf)
(The only individual-state breakdown of Hispanic vs. white rates
of breastfeeding that this author has found so far is for California.)
Irish breast-feeding rates, at least at initiation, are the lowest of
any major people in Western Europe or North America, with the closest second
being France. (See Figures 1.8 and 1.9; Also data provided by LaLeche League for Northern Ireland,
accessed at http://www.lalecheleague.org/cbi/bfstats03.html, in line with data
for Dublin area from: Public Health Nutrition. "Breast-feeding
practices in Ireland", Tarrant RC, Kearney JM., School
of Biological Sciences, Dublin Institute of Technology, Republic of Ireland,
accessed at Proc Nutr Soc. 2008 Nov;67(4):371-80. Epub 2008 Aug
20.) And Irish rates of autism also
appear to be unusually low. Irishhealth.com reports autism prevalence in
Ireland to be one out of 166
(Research to
determine autism incidence [Posted: Fri 03/04/2009 by Deborah Condon www.irishhealth.com]), well under 1%, which is very low
compared with the only known rates for the high-breastfeeding countries. (see
Section 1.2.s.5)
In the historically
relatively low-breastfeeding U.K., autism among children is reported to
be about 1% (http://www.autism.org.uk/about-autism/some-facts-and-statistics/statistics-how-many-people-have-autism-spectrum-disorders.aspx),
which is again very low as compared with the known (and reasonably estimated)
rates in the high-breastfeeding countries.
French breast-feeding rates
are also very low (see Section 1.2.p). The most recent
data that this author has been able to find for autism rates in France is for
1997, which found a prevalence of one out of 613 children.(J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 1997 Nov;36(11):1561-9. Autism and associated medical
disorders in a French epidemiological survey. Fombonne E et
al., Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM),
Paris.) In
2010, a blogger wrote, “Just one bit of anecdotal evidence: I’ve been
living in France for 25 years (I’m a lapsed American), and only once have I
seen or even heard of an autistic child in my entourage… I’ve never even heard
of autistic kids, and my wife was long involved in school issues.” (kirkmcon 25 Mar 2010 at http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/vaccination-are-we-number-1/) It is entirely
possible that the major reason why there is no more recent autism data for a
large developed country such as France is that autism is not the serious
problem in France that it is in most other developed countries.
Belgian
breastfeeding rates are also very low (see Section 1.2.p). But
no data seem to available regarding autism rates in Belgium. Again, there are
various possible explanations for the lack of data concerning autism in
Belgium, and one very plausible reason is that the problem is unusually rare in
that country.
Section
1.2.s.5 High Breastfeeding / High Autism Countries:
South Korea’sbreastfeeding
rate appears to be very high. (Section 1.2.p.1)
In the CDC’s “Summary of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) Prevalence Studies” (at
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html”), a 2011 study of over
55,000 7-to-12-year-old South Korean children was indicated as having found a
2.64% prevalence of ASD. Of all countries’ autism rates for which data have
been made public, only top-breastfeeding Norway has an autism rate as high as
this rate for South Korea (those two countries’ rates appear to be virtually
identical).
Fig. 1.9
Autism
symptoms were identified in an exceptionally high 2.7% of children in Norway in
one study, as indicated in an article by a researcher with the CDC. (Autism and Developmental Disabilities
Monitoring Network Surveillance Year 2006 Catherine Rice, PhD et al, National
Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, CDC, at
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5810a1.htm ) In
that regard, note the line at the top of this chart, which is the breastfeeding
rate for Norway. A blogger calling herself “Norwaymom” wrote, “Norway has a near 100% breastfeeding rate and most mothers nurse
throughout their 48 week long maternity leave.”(July 29, 2009 at http://autism.about.com/b/2009/07/28/autism-caused-by-breast-milk.htm)
Japan was
another country indicated by the above-cited CDC author as having an unusually
high rate of autism; Japan’s breastfeeding rates are also very high.
(Section 1.2.p.1)
Sweden’s
very high rate of breastfeeding is conspicuous on this chart. The only studies
that have apparently been published regarding autism
in Sweden applied to children studied in 1992 and 1994, and the averaged rate
from those studies was the highest rate ever reported for any
country that applied to the years preceding 1995.
Denmark
appears (in this chart) to have reached the high-breastfeeding category by the
early 1990’s. The only published study of autism prevalence in Denmark applied
to children observed in the 1994-1999 period, and at that time Denmark had the highest autism rate
of all countries for which studies of
prevalence up
through the 1990’s are available. (data
from CDC Summary, cited above)
The only available data for
autism in Finland are as follows): “In
Finland, there are approximately 50,000 people with autism spectrum disorders.”(from
The
Finnish Association for Autism and Asperger´s Syndrome (at
http://www.autismiliitto.fi/files/570/Association.pdf) dated 12/2008) Considering
that Finland’s population is about 5 million, and that an extremely
disproportionate number of those with ASD are typically those born just in the
last two decades, the percent born since 1995 who have been becoming autistic could
be 3% of the population of children born since 1995. For Switzerland,
breastfeeding rates are not shown here, but they are very high (See Section 1.2.p.1);
there are also apparently no figures for autism among children in Switzerland,
but Der Bund newspaper (Switzerland’s third largest) estimated in 2011 that 1%
of the entire population has autism. (Autisten
mit Spezialbegabungen ersetzen indische Informatiker von Hans Galli.
Aktualisiert am 21.10.2011) As in the case of Finland,
going by the general trend that the vast majority of those diagnosed with
autism have been born in the last 15 - 20 years, 1% of the entire population
could mean 3% of the recently-born children. For additional insight into how
major the problem is in Switzerland, one can go to Google/Switzerland and do a
search for “autismus in der Schweiz” and see many listings of websites
of organizations devoted solely to dealing with problems of autism, which one
would not necessarily expect for such a relatively small country.
For
the only remaining European country in which breastfeeding is known to be high,
Germany, there does not seem to be information available about autism
prevalence. There is a major organization in Germany that is devoted to
dealing with problems of autism, but in their website’s only section that deals
with prevalence, they have to acknowledge lack of data for Germany and instead
can only provide statistics from the U.S., Canada and the U.K. (http://w3.autismus.de/pages/startseite/was-ist-autismus.php)
To
sum up, in every advanced
country in which breastfeeding is known to be very high, autism has also been
found to be very high if autism data are
available for that country.
Section 1.2.s.6
Breastfeeding and Autism BOTH being Unusually Stable during the Same Time Period
in the UK The reader should notice in this chart the conspicuous
stability in the rate of breastfeeding in the UK in the years leading up to
2000, in contrast with the general upward trend or high levels in most
countries. The general upward trend is also obvious in the variations of this
chart presented earlier. In connection with the unusual stability in the
breastfeeding rate in the UK before 2000, it should be mentioned that there was
a study in the UK that is sometimes referred to by those who hold that autism
hasn’t really been increasing, because it found that there had not been an increase
in autism in a certain town in the UK among children born in the years
preceding 1999. (Pervasive Developmental Disorders in
Preschool Children: Confirmation of High Prevalence Suniti Chakrabarti, M.D.,
et al. Am J Psychiatry 2005;162:1133-1141. 10.1176/appi.ajp.162.6.1133) A
study that failed to find increasing prevalence of autism for any time period
during the last two decades appears to be unusual if not unique; and it
may be more than coincidental that this study was done in a country in which
the prevalence of breastfeeding had also not been increasing during the
relevant period.
Fig. 1.4a
Section
1.2.s.7 Certain High- or Low-Autism U.S. States
The maps shown here (files from the Wikimedia
Commons, apparently
drawing on U.S. Census 2000 data. Found
in Wikipedia under "Maps of American Ancestries"),
indicating concentrations in Minnesota of descendants of Norwegian and Swedish
immigrants, help illustrate apparent effects of different levels of
breastfeeding by mothers with alternative dietary habits. (German ancestry is
also high in Minnesota, and Germany’s rate of breastfeeding is also very
high.) As could have reasonably been predicted from the fact that
breastfeeding rates are culturally influenced and very unusually high in the
above three countries, Minnesota is at the very highest level in breastfeeding;
it was ranked third highest among U.S. states in a CDC national survey of
breastfeeding at six months after birth, but the margins of error in the
sampling were such that the true rate could very easily have been the highest
in the U.S.(CDCNational Immunization Survey, 2000)
Knowing the developmental toxins concentrated in the breast milk of the typical
U.S. mother (see Section 1.2.d),
and knowing other factors contributing to high levels of toxins in Minnesota
(to be presented later), it should not be surprising that prevalence of autism in Minnesota is the highest in
the U.S. (IDEA data, averaging years 2005-2008
-<<show more detail>>) And not just moderately
higher than the average: More than twice as high as the median for the
U.S. states.
When observing the above,
remember also that two of the mother countries, Norway and Sweden, both with unusually high rates of breast
feeding, were found to be extremely high in autism (Norway
and Sweden). (Autism data for Germany has not been found by this author.)
With a breastfeeding rate
even higher than that of Minnesota, the state with the very highest rate of breastfeeding in
the U.S. is Oregon,
which
also has the
second-highest rate of autism in the U.S., at almost
exactly twice the national median.
Section
1.2.t Dietary and Other Factors that Tie in with Breastfeeding, affecting
Toxin Levels in the Milk
As has been noted, diet
(mostly animal-based fats) is considered by the EPA and ATSDR to be the source
of about 90% of the average body burden of dioxins. Typical Scandinavian
cuisine would normally only add to the levels of dioxins in breast milk
consumed by infants in Minnesota. Recipes for favorite traditional Norwegian
dishes (easily found with a web search) show very high animal-fat content,
especially butter. Swedish cuisine is very similar to that of Norway (http://recipes.wikia.com/wiki/Swedish_Cuisine). An
article in The
Canadian Physician(VOL 39: January
1993)refers
to ”the
very high level ofcholesterol and fat
in the normalScandinavian diet." The
only comment found on the subject of intergenerational transmission of culinary
traditions includes the following: "WHEN
I WAS OLD ENOUGH MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER STARTED TO TEACH ME THE OLD WAYS OF
COOKING IN SWEDEN ….TODAY AT 59 YEARS OLD I STILL MAKE THOSE DISHES THAT MY
GREATGRAND MOTHER TAUGHT ME AS A YOUNG CHILD."(same source as above) That sort of maintenance of cultural traditions
would be especially likely to hold sway in communities where there are
concentrations of people with common ancestry (as shown in the above maps),
along with Lutheran church festivities and other vehicles that promote
continuation of an ethnic heritage. It also makes sense that a diet high in
fat -- an excellent source of energy for keeping warm, which promotes comfort
during long, cold winters in the (very northern) old country -- would be
continued in a new cold domicile in the U.S.; Minnesota has 17 of the nation's
coldest 21 cities with populations over 50,000 (City-Data.com) Supply
of dairy products in Minnesota is also very ample, keeping prices down and
encouraging consumption: The region consisting just of Minnesota and
its neighbor Wisconsin produces more milk than any of the other three USDA
regional groupings of major dairy states in the eastern and southern two-thirds
of the U.S. (USDA data found at http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/err47/err47b.pdf)
So it is probably safe to
assume that consumption of dairy products and fat is unusually high in
Minnesota. And knowing what was stated earlier about dairy products and
animal-based fats as sources of dioxins in humans, it is very likely that dioxin
content in typical breast milk in Minnesota is unusually high. That could only
contribute to the likelihood that the high level of breastfeeding in Minnesota
is causally connected with that state's place at the very top of U.S. states in
prevalence of autism.
As pointed out earlier
(Figure 1.3 and accompanying
text), rates of autism among Hispanics are significantly lower than among
whites. That is partly associated with what is probably a lower rate of
breastfeeding among Hispanics, and partly connected with the way the Hispanic
diet differs from the typical American diet, which in turn affects the levels
of toxins in the typical Hispanic breast milk. Compared
with whites, Hispanics are reported to purchase less dairy products and
snack foods, such as potato chips, candy, and cakes. (At
http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Pre-Sma/Regional-Diet-American.html) Remember
from above the importance of dairy products and fats (such as are at high
levels in most snack foods) as sources of dioxins in the diet.
Section 1.2.u The Case of
Washington State: Back to the subject of regional variations
in diet and the effect of those variations on toxins in breast milk:Prevalence
of breastfeeding in Washington state is very high; but reported autism
rates in this case (although above average) are much lower than those reported
for Minnesota and Oregon, departing from the simplified pattern that has been
discussed so far. There are good reasons for this deviation, as follows:
1) Noticing the
far lower levels of Norwegian and Swedish ancestries in Washington than in
Minnesota, it is reasonable to expect dioxin ingestion from dairy fat
consumption to be much lower in that state;
2) Regarding the
other largest sources of dioxin and mercury body burdens (meat, dairy products
and fish), it is significant that there are over 2-½ times as many vegetarian
restaurants per million population in Washington as in Minnesota (www.happycow.com
and U.S. Census Bureau data);
3) Regarding the
general environmental pollution that underlies toxin levels in much of
Washington's food supply, and regarding the pollution levels that affect what
mothers and infants in that state breathe, absorb and ingest directly, note the
following:
The State of
Washington is very unusually strong in preventing pollution:
-- Bearing in mind that residential wood burning is a known
substantial source of emissions of dioxins, particulate matter and lead, as
contained in the air immediately around breastfeeding mothers and infants, note
that Washington prohibits outdoor wood boilers and has very strict regulations
about other residential wood burning; there are residential "burn
bans" if pollution exceeds a certain level.(aa19). A search for
regulations on websites of other state governments' environmental agencies
(especially including the high-autism states) yields nothing of similar
restrictiveness. Three of Washington's publications regarding wood smoke
pollution are of such recognized quality that they are recommended reading even
on a state environmental website from distant Minnesota.(aa12)
-- A
detailed 2010 study of pollution levels in Washington's Puget Sound found that
most contaminants were at far lower levels than had been projected, some by as
much as 99%; and the study's lead researcher concluded that "Regulations
and increased public focus on pollution prevention appear to be paying
off."(aa13)
-- The above are merely examples, which are probably representative
of many other aggressive actions taken by the Washington Department of Ecology
that promote low levels of toxins in the environment. And it is unlikely that a
state's environmental department would be so unusually active and effective unless
many of the state's citizens were supportive of efforts to reduce pollution.
There should
be little doubt that such unusual legal requirements (and probable public
involvement) have substantially reduced emissions of developmental toxins in Washington.
And those actions appear to stand out in comparison with the lack of such
measures on the parts of the states that, in contrast with Washington, have the
very highest rates of autism.
So
therefore the association of autism with high levels of breastfeeding obviously
needs to be refined. High levels of autism appear to be associated with high
levels of breastfeeding in an area if
there are reasons to expect women's body burdens of dioxins and mercury to be typical
or high in that specific area.
Section
1.2.v Possible Sexual-Orientation Effects of Dioxins and other Endocrine
Disrupters in Breast Milk
Before introducing another
set of possible causes and effects, this author will explain his personal
position on the subject of alternative sexual orientations. I vigorously oppose
any limitations on or disrespect shown toward any person based on that person’s
personal preferences or behavior that causes no harm to others or to the
environment. However, I also realize that most parents would like to know which
kinds of infant feedings are associated with specific sexual-orientation
outcomes as the child matures; and I see it to be in the general
interest that most infants in advanced countries develop in a way that leads to
their eventually procreating. For those reasons, I present the following
(which further relates to the previously-mentioned concern about the known
de-masculinizing effects of chemicals that are contained in breast milk):
In 1981, Norway
became the first country in the world to enact anti-discrimination laws
protecting gay men and lesbians under both civil and criminal legislation.(http://www.glbtq.com/social-sciences/norway.html
)
This "first" was not for lack of a Christian influence in that
country; the Church of Norway claims about 86% of the population as
baptized members.(http://www.kirken.no/english/engelsk.cfm?artid=5730).
It is very possible that it was merely a bow to political reality in a democratic
country with a large gay population. Probably many voters (if not themselves
homosexual) have gay fellow workers, relatives and/or friends, and the
resulting familiarity caused most people to realize that gay people are good
citizens and worthy human beings, not deserving of being discriminated
against. It is also likely that a large gay population is associated with
Norway's extraordinarily high rate of breastfeeding, given the high levels of
certain ingredients typically present in breast milk in modern industrialized
countries, including ones found to cause feminization in sexual behavior of
male laboratory animals (see Section 1.2.b.1).
Sweden "is
one of the most gay friendly nations on earth" with considerable
legislation protecting gay and lesbian rights; "businesses face up to one
year’s imprisonment if they fail to provide their normal level of service to
someone because of his/her homosexuality." (http://www.gaytimes.co.uk/Hotspots/GayGuide-action-Country-countryid-912.html
) Again,
unusually forceful national action favoring gays is probably related to an
unusually large gay population within that nation. And again, it is a country
with a high rate of breastfeeding that probably has the unusually large gay
population.
Minneapolis is
the capital of what is the most heavily Swedish/Norwegian U.S. State, with its
confirmed very high rate of breastfeeding. Breastfeeding was very heavily
promoted in Minneapolis by public health workers in the early 20th
Century, resulting in a 96% rate of breastfeeding through the second month
after birth at that time;(Am J Public Health. 2003
December; 93(12): 2000–2010. Low Breastfeeding Rates and Public Health in the
United States Jacqueline
H. Wolf, PhD);
more recent data doesn’t seem to be available specifically for Minneapolis, but
there is no reason to think that this city does not continue to have a very
unusually high rate of breastfeeding. And perhaps not surprisingly, Minneapolis was
named Number 1 on
the 2011 list of "Gayest Cities in America" by a gay-oriented
publication. (http://www.advocate.com/Print_Issue/Travel/Gayest_Cities_in_America_February_2011/). (These
annual rankings first started in 2010.) In the absence of a census of the
homosexual population, this publication did a study that seemed to be
reasonably thorough when coming up with their list of the top 15 gay cities. They
counted personal profiles placed on Gay.com for each city, numbers of
openly-gay elected officials, performances by gay-oriented entertainers in the
city during the previous five years, numbers of gay and gay-friendly religious
congregations, lists of officiates for gay weddings, and other indicators of
homosexual population size for each city, and then adjusted for the cities'
total population sizes. This is probably a good index of the
relative proportions of gays in various cities' populations. And Minneapolis,
the capital of the state with the greatest concentration of the ethnicities
that stand out with high rates of breastfeeding, and one of the three or four
states that stand highest in the CDC’s 2000 survey of breastfeeding rates, was
at the very top in the 2011 ranking as "theGayest
City."
But keep in mind that the
probable effects of breastfeeding in Minnesota relate not only to its
prevalence but also to the likely contents of the breast milk; the
high-fat Scandinavian diet increases the intake into women's bodies of the
dioxins that have been found to feminize male laboratory animals (see Section 1.2.b.1)
and possibly also toxins of the kind that masculinize female animals (see Section
1.6.a).
Washington,
one of the three states joining Minnesota on the list of states with the
highest rates of breastfeeding, has two
cities among the top nine on the above-mentioned 2011 list of Gayest Cities.
No other state matches that. It should be noted that King County, Washington
(the county in which one of those gayest cities, Seattle, is located) was found
in the CDC’s 2000 breastfeeding survey to have the highest rate of breastfeeding among the 27 cities
and counties for which data were reported.
Note that the possible
neurological effects of breastfeeding discussed here, seen to be strong in
Washington, aren't in conflict with the previous finding that, in another area,
the effects of breastfeeding in that state did not appear to be unusually
high. There are many different variations of dioxins (so-called
"congeners") in the environment, as well as various other kinds of
endocrine disruptors (such as BPA) contained in breast milk, with varying
effects on neurological development; some of them are successfully
minimized by Washington's anti-pollution efforts, and some of the others are
probably not so minimized, before they enter and accumulate in the bodies of
mothers-to-be.
Update: The above was
written before the 2012 list of 15 Gayest Cities compiled by the same
publication was publicized. On the basis of a modified set of criteria,
Minneapolis and Seattle were two of only five cities that made the list in 2012
as well as 2011. New on the 2012 list were (a) Portland,
Oregon (Oregon always seems to be first or second from the top on the CDC’s various surveys
of breastfeeding rates) and (b) Salt
Lake City, Utah, in first place.
Utah was third from the highest in the CDC’s 2000 breastfeeding survey, but the
survey’s margins of error were such that it could easily have actually been in
first place if the whole population had provided information. Salt Lake City’s
top ranking at the gayest U.S. city was a surprise, given the until-recently
staunch anti-homosexuality of the Mormon Church, which dominates in that state.(http://www.religioustolerance.org/hom_lds.htm
and http://www.affirmation.org/history/prologue.shtml) It could be that the
Church’s opposition was no match for the sheer numbers of gays in this mostly-Mormon
home base of (apparently) the
only major church in developed countries that strongly promotes breastfeeding.
(See Section 1.2.s.2)
When considering the odds
that a particular city would turn out at random to be number one in the list of
Gayest Cities, note that there are 110 U.S. cities with populations at
least as large as that of Salt Lake City. (2000 Census)
It may be not entirely coincidental that in both of the last two surveys ,
based on different selection criteria each time, the city that was the number one Gayest City in the U.S. each
time was a city that almost certainly had one of the very highest rates of breastfeeding in the
entire United States. Bear in mind what was pointed out earlier
about findings in research with laboratory animals that showed
de-masculinization or feminization of male test animals to result from exposure
to dioxins and other chemicals that are known to be highly concentrated in
breast milk.
1.2.w
Effects on U.S. Marriage Rates and Fertility Levels of Recently-Widespread
Chemicals, often Concentrated in Breast Milk
It is also interesting to
look at marriage trends and fertility rates that could be affected by possible
de-masculinization of a large percentage of the men born in recent decades. In
the 25-34-year-old age group in the U.S., the percentage of men never married more than quintupled
between 1970 and 2008, reaching 58% in the 25-29 age group. (data
drawn from U.S. Census Bureau, found at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763219.html,
"Percent Never Married") Although there are clearly
various causes behind such a gigantic change, any reductions in male sex drive
and masculine sex appeal to women, and any increase in homosexual percentage of
the male population, could only contribute greatly to such a trend. Laboratory
tests would predict that exactly
those changes would have been likely to take place as a result of the major
increase in the last half century of certain developmental toxins in the
environment, which are concentrated in breast milk
(see Sections 1.2.b-d and
1.9). Bear in mind that breast
milk in modern industrialized countries contains concentrations of dioxins,
BPA, PBDEs and DEHP, all of which have been found in tests with animals to
cause de-masculinization, testicular atrophy, or reduction of testosterone
synthesis (see Sections 1.2.b.1,1.6.b and
1.7.1), or to affect the male reproductive
system. Research with human data has verified the results from animal tests
regarding the testosterone-reducing, de-masculinizing effects of phthalates.
(Section 1.6.b)
In
connection with the above-mentioned likelihood of reduced male-female
attraction resulting from an increase in toxins transmitted in breastfeeding,
it could also be predicted that the number of births per woman would decline.
And that has certainly happened. In a 2005 "Consensus Statement"
from a group of 40 experts and researchers in reproductive
epidemiology, biology, toxicology, and clinical medicine, evidence
is cited that "12% of the reproductive age population in the United
States, or 7.3 million couples, reports experiencing difficulty conceiving
and/or carrying a pregnancy to term. ….This appears to be a rising
trend…" (VALLOMBROSA CONSENSUS STATEMENT ON
ENVIRONMENTAL CONTAMINANTS AND HUMAN FERTILITY COMPROMISEOCTOBER
2005,
a product of a workshop spronsored by the Stanford University School of
Medicine’s Women’s Health@Stanford program and the national Collaborative on
Health and the Environment ) Considering the modest percentage of
the reproductive-age population who are currently married with a spouse present
(35.5%) (Census
Bureau 2006-10 American FactFinder data for 15-44 age groups) and
the likely far lower percentage who want to
have a birth (or want an additional child), 12% of
that entire age group is an absolutely huge percentage to be trying
unsuccessfully to have a baby. It could easily be that most of those who currently
want a pregnancy are unable to achieve conception. A related publication
stemming from this same conference ("Challenged Conceptions: Environmental
Chemicals and Fertility", 2005, Stanford University School
of Medicine) points out that the recent increase in infertility has
been 3½ and 7 times as high among women below age 25 as among the two older
age groupings. This calls into serious question the idea sometimes expressed
that recent fertility problems have been mainly a result of widespread
intentional postponement of childbearing until a later age. A huge reduction in human mating and a
dramatic rise in infertility (both
occurring in recent decades) are exactly what could have been predicted on
the basis of what was happening 20 to 40 years ago: a greatly increased
percentage of infants being breastfed, ingesting the rapidly-increasing
concentrations of chemicals that are now known (on the basis of considerable
scientific research) to de-masculinize males, which
chemicals are contained in breast milk.
The Consensus Statement also points out that "recent
research with animals has demonstrated effects
on specific aspects of reproductive system developmentat
very low levels of exposure to environmental contaminants."(emphasis
added) Dioxins, bisphenal A, and PBDEs are the first environmental
contaminants mentioned in this Consensus Statement as chemicals that laboratory
research has identified as harmful to mechanisms that are important to an
individual's fertility. (item 9 of the statement).
(Notice in Section 1.2.d
that two of those three toxins are known to be in high concentrations in breast
milk.) It then goes on to explain the great similarity between the activities
of hormones in test animals and those in humans, specifically in the area of
reproduction, justifying the use of laboratory tests with animals for judging
toxicity of various chemicals for human fertility. And it notes that
measurements of contaminants in people have detected some at levels that have
been determined to affect reproductive processes.
Take
note
of something regarding the above-mentioned current inability to conceive on the
part of what could easily be half or more of all couples who want to conceive,
and also regarding the fact that infertility is growing far faster among
younger women than among older women: The average number of children born per
woman in the United States in the 19th Century wasfour,
and that was before so many modern methods of promoting conception had come
into existence. Currently, the average number of children born per married,
native-born woman in the U.S. is slightly over one(Census
Bureau data), and even that figure is made possible only by substantial
use of artificial means of promoting conception. (Rapid dwindling of the
American population is being prevented by the current 41% of all U.S. births
that are to unmarried women, along with the effects of immigration.)<<cite
specific Census document>> An earlier statement bears
repeating:A huge reduction in human mating and a
dramatic rise in infertility are exactly what could have been predicted on the
basis of what was happening 20 to 40 years ago: a greatly increased
percentage of infants being breastfed, ingesting rapidly-increasing
concentrations of chemicals that are now known to de-masculinize males.
Special attention should be directed toward the word “concentrations” here,
since conversion of weak incoming dosages into concentrated dosages in excreted
milk is what takes place with many of the toxins that enter a woman’s body.
Can anybody think of a more logical explanation for what is happening?
Section
1.2.x Various Locational Effects:
Section
1.2.x.1 PCBs, a "Dioxin-like" Toxin that Becomes Concentrated in
Breast Milk, and another Dioxin Source:
As noted earlier (Section 1.2.a),
PCB exposure (like that of dioxins in general) even at low levels during the
perinatal periods is reported to be able to influence development in a way that
can "cause irreversible neurological damage." In addition to the above, there is other evidence from
research involving humans (to follow) that moderate, background-type exposure
of infants to PCBs harms mental development. The following is taken from a
State of California website. ("Prioritization of
Toxic Air Contaminants: Dioxins" - Children’s Environmental Health
Protection Act October, 2001 (State of California) At
http://oehha.ca.gov/air/toxic_contaminants/pdf_zip/dioxin_Final.pdf, p. 17 ff).
Various researchers "have reported persistent neurological effects"
of PCB exposures. Another study, with 395 children, "reported that
exposure in utero to'background' PCB concentrations is associated with poorer
cognitive functioning (cognitive abilitiesand verbal comprehension) in
preschool 42-month-old children." Another study, of 212 eleven-year-olds,
involved children born to mothers who were known to have consumed Lake Michigan
fish contaminated with PCBs, comparing them with a control group without such
exposure. The study found that the most highly-exposed children were "three times as
likely to have low average IQ scores and twiceas likely to be at least two
years behind in reading comprehension." (emphasis added) Other strong
effects were related to memory and attention.
Fig. 1.5
The EPA does not provide
data about total dioxin levels broken down by state, but it does provide a map
showing levels of (the related) PCBs.
Oregon, as mentioned, has an
autism rate twice as high as the national median. Nothing stands out on this
map of PCB concentrations like western Oregon. And that specific dark area is
also the section of Oregon with the highest
levels of autism, within a very high-autism state. There are also many paper
and pulp mills in that same area, and such mills are known sources of dioxins
and other neurological toxins. So the environment in which the average nursing
mother in Oregon has been eating and breathing seems to be unusual, and not in
a good way.
In this side-by-side map of
Oregon, notice how similar the area with the most paper and pulp mills is to
the area (in black) with higher-than-median levels of autism.
Maine is
the state with the third-highest level of autism, and it was seventh in the
U.S. in rate of breastfeeding at six months in the 2000 CDC survey. The state
also has unusually large numbers of paper and pulp mills (19, most of which
include the more-polluting pulp operation), and it (along with Minnesota) has
the least benefit from solar radiation among the 48 contiguous states. (http://www.cpbis.gatech.edu/data/mills-online?state=Maine).
One has to look closely in
Figure 1.5 to see the small state of Vermont,
which is essentially the un-colored section directly below the "a" in
"Concentrations" in the map's heading. The lack of color in that
thinly-populated, very non-industrial state's location on this map says
something about the kind of environment in which Vermont's mothers live, and
about the probably-low average levels of toxins in their breast milk.
There is apparently only one company in Vermont with a paper and pulp mill (www.cpbis.com
for Vermont). The above helps explain why Vermont can be among the
states with higher levels of breastfeeding while at the same time having a
medium level of autism.
PCBs are one major segment
of the overall group of dioxins, and dioxins in
general are known to be endocrine disruptors and therefore neurodevelopmental
toxins. (See Section 1.2.a)
Dioxins are a product of most forms of combustion when there is a source of
chlorine present, and hydrochloric acid (HCL) is a very effective source of
chlorine for the formation of dioxins during combustion. As indicated in the
EPA-provided map on the left, Vermont is the only state among the U.S.
northeastern states that, as
an entire state, has low levels of HCL in its atmosphere.
The only other places in northeastern states where low levels of HCL show up
are in the least-populated parts of the states. How exceptional Vermont’s
environment is can also be seen in the next map. One would have to go over
1000 miles to reach another U.S. state with air quality so uniformly good.
Between its unusually-low population density, its relative freedom from
atmospheric toxins, and the scarcity of HCL to enable formation of dioxins
during typical combustion, dioxin levels in Vermont’s environment (and
therefore in its air, water, soil, and much of its food) must be unusually
low. Therefore typical breast milk in Vermont must be low in the
developmental toxins of the kinds that contribute to high levels of mental
impairment in other states that have high rates of breastfeeding.
Section 1.2.x.2 Effects of
Coastal vs. Inland Locations: But there are, as usual,
other factors that help explain the differences observed. According to a study
of mercury levels in U.S. women by a researcher with the EPA and others,
"Women living near the coastal areas had approximately three to four times
greater risk of exceeding acceptable levels of Hg (mercury) exposure than did
noncoastal-dwelling women."(Adult
Women's Blood Concentrations Levels Vary Regionally in the U.S., by Kathryn R. Mahaffey,1et al (1Office
of Science Coordination and Policy, EPA) found at
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/587407_4). That could help explain why the states
with the second and third highest rates of autism in the U.S. (and high rates
of breast feeding) are states with the bulk of their populations near an ocean
(Oregon and Maine), while the landlocked states with high breastfeeding rates generally
have relatively low autism rates. Highest-autism Minnesota
isn't coastal, but it is home to the most active port on the Great Lakes
(Duluth) as well as the Mississippi River port in St. Paul. Over 5
million tons of commodities passed through Twin Cities river terminals in 2010, apparently with most of that activity right in the middle of the
city of St. Paul. (http://www.sppa.com/river-shipping-terminals/) An earlier statement is worth repeating:
High levels of autism appear to be associated with high levels of
breastfeeding if there
are reasons to expect women's body burdens of dioxins and mercury to be typical
or high in that area. But it should be kept in mind that reasons
for expecting high body burdens of toxins can be only partly shown by maps such
as those above, or by considering distance from the coast. It is apparently,
more than anything, a matter of individual long-term dietary habits.
Vermont and all low-autism states outside the far south are well
inland, and are therefore not as subject to high
levels of atmospheric mercury, and probably other toxins, as the coastal states
are.
The states in the far South that have low levels of autism despite being coastal have the
advantages of both (a) extra solar radiation (see Sections 3.1-2), and (b) high African-American population percentages;
bear in mind that African-Americans breastfeed at about half the rate compared
with whites, and are also half as high in their rates of autism. (See Section 1.2.s)
Section 1.2.x.3 Other Factors
that Greatly Affect the Toxic Contents of Breast Milk:
On the subject of low pollution and consequently low toxins in breast milk:
The reader may have noticed in Figure 1.4a
that the area with relatively high percentages of Norwegian and Swedish
ancestry extends west from Minnesota into the Dakotas, especially to North
Dakota. And rates of breastfeeding are also high in those states (although not
as high as Minnesota's). But rates of autism in those two states are
substantially below average. So it is worth looking at levels of pollution in
those states, which are likely to end up in breast milk. Figure 1.5 shows very
low levels of PCBs where those two states are located. TheAmerican Lung Association in its 2009 "State of the Air" report ranked Fargo (the
largest city in North Dakota) as the cleanest city in the United States, and
gave the rest of the state 11 "A" ratings on air quality.(Wikipedia). Less than 2% of North Dakota's land area is forest land, meaning
that firewood for residential burning would be especially expensive, reducing
that potential source of particulate matter, dioxins and lead in indoor air and
a community’s air to an extremely low level.
Fig. 1.6
In areas with substantial forest
land such as Minnesota, Maine, and the Pacific Northwest, lakes typically form
sheltered basins in forested areas where wood burning emissions and other
pollutants collect, often with many nursing women and infants residing and
breathing the bad air in those wooded basins. In the near-absence of forests
in the Dakotas, the lakes don't form such sheltered areas for collecting
polluted air. (See these leading pictures from tourist-promotion sites for
both Dakotas.)
Population
density is another determinant of toxins in the air, almost all of which arise
from various forms of combustion. In that regard note that population density
in the Dakotas is one-sixth as high as in Minnesota (Census Bureau). The dark areas showing
Norwegian and Swedish ancestries in the Dakotas show percentages, in thinly-populated
areas; that probably makes formation of communities with common
ancestries (and therefore long-term continuation of the high-fat Scandinavian
diet) less likely in the Dakotas. And, as noted in the previous section, a
location that is distant from coasts (such as that of the Dakotas) apparently
has a very distinct advantage in reduced atmospheric levels of developmental
toxins.
Section 1.2.x.4 Effects of Precipitation and Sunshine:
Fig. 1.7 Average Precipitation Levels in the U.S.
Another environmental
feature that helps keep toxin levels down in the Dakotas is a low level of
precipitation. Precipitation brings toxins in the atmosphere down to the
human-level environment and is also instrumental in the formation of dioxins
(more on this later). Precipitation affects the amounts of toxins
that are deposited on vegetation that is consumed by farm animals whose meat is
eaten by childbearing women in the region, and also affects the amounts of
toxins that end up in lakes and rivers and then come up the food chain into freshwater
fish that are eaten. There are also far fewer trees
in low-precipitation areas, especially trees that are good sources of logs for
burning, so that the particulate matter, dioxins and lead that are typically
emitted inside homes by residential wood burning
would rarely be present in those areas. As this map shows, Minnesota (and the
vast majority of its population) is mostly in the zone of medium precipitation,
and the Dakotas (with their low rates of autism) are in the zone of low
precipitation. High-autism Maine and the most-populated, high-autism part of
Oregon both has high precipitation.
Of the ten
states on this map that are mostly low in
precipitation (mostly red, brown and/or tan,
but excluding the very exceptional California), everyone is below the national median rate of autism; their average is 25% below the
national median rate of autism.
In addition to
reduced deposition of toxins, low-precipitation zones also receive more
sunshine than is normal for their latitudes; this is partly because of
reduced cloud cover and partly because of very little forest cover in these
areas to shield the deposited dioxins from destruction by solar radiation.
Greater amounts of solar radiation reduce formation of dioxins, shorten the toxic lives of dioxins
that are present, and enable the body to create vitamin D, thereby promoting
immune function, which is associated with lower levels of autism (more detail
in Section 3).
Of the eight U.S. states with the
highest rates of breastfeeding, <<insert table in appendix and refer>>
a) the state
with the highest rate, Oregon, has an autism rate twice as high as the national
average;
b) Minnesota
has the very highest autism rate of any U.S. state;
c) California
has the highest autism rate among all southern states, where high solar
radiation has a beneficial effect in reducing autism (see just above);
d) regarding
Washington state and Vermont, there are good reasons to expect women’s body
burdens of developmental toxins to be unusually low in those states (see
Sections 1.2.u and 1.2.x.1); but both states are nevertheless above the national
median rate of autism;
e) the
remaining three high-breastfeeding states (Montana, Idaho, and Colorado) are
all within the western low-precipitation zone, which (as explained above)
apparently has very beneficial effects in reducing pollution of the kinds that
raise levels of developmental toxins in breast milk.
Going another
three states down the list of high-breastfeeding states, the next two (Utah and
New Mexico) are also in the beneficial, low-precipitation zone; and then
comes Maine, the state with the third-from-the-highest rate of autism in the
U.S.
So we have seen that, at the
high end of the widely varying rates of breastfeeding in the U.S., the direct
association with autism is strong, but it is complicated by
a) effects of different
levels of precipitation and sunshine, which greatly influence the levels of
toxins in women’s bodies and in breast milk,
b) other
pollution-reducing circumstances or human initiatives, which reduce body
burdens of developmental toxins in some areas, and
c) effects of varying
diets (such as a high-fat Scandinavian-type diet that is probably common in
Minnesota), which in turn affect the levels of toxins in typical breast milk.
Section
1.2.x.5 Probable Effect of Low Levels of Breastfeeding: At
the low end of the spectrum of varying breastfeeding rates within the U.S., the
association between breastfeeding and autism is not at all complicated. The
seven states with the lowest rates of breast feeding are all
in the bottom third of autism rates in the contiguous U.S.
states, (Kentucky,
West Virginia, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi). (Iowa's
reported autism rates were omitted from this list on the grounds that its data
are not comparable with data from the other states, since its four-year trend
was completely at odds with the trends in the other 47 contiguous states,
implying that Iowa was out of step with the rest of the nation in methods of
diagnosing the condition.)
Section 1.2.x.6 Another
look at Europe, associating Breastfeeding with Autism rates:
Ireland's relatively low
rate of autism, and the high rates of Norway and Sweden, can be associated not
only with their rates of breastfeeding but also with the probable contents of
the breast milk in the various countries as affected by diet, including the
high-fat Scandinavian diet. As clues to the typical consumption of meat (the
other major source of dioxins and mercury in the average mother's diet) for the
average Irish, Norwegian or Swedish citizen,
a) there are over twice as
many vegetarian restaurants in Ireland per capita as in either Norway or Sweden
(www.happycow.com
and www.worldatlas.com). This difference is not apparently due to
greater ability of Irish people to afford the expense of eating out, since per
capita income on a "purchasing power parity basis" is essentially
identical between Ireland and Sweden, and oil-wealthy Norway is substantially
better off than both; ("The World Fact Book" at
www.cia.gov).
b) if one particular food is
an unusually large part of a people's diet, other kinds of foods would
correspondingly be consumed in smaller quantities. Potatoes were such an
important part of the Irish diet, at least in the 19th century (and
probably continuing to a great extent today), that a blight affecting only that
one crop caused a million to die from famine and a million or more to emigrate
from Ireland. More potatoes in the diet probably means less of the
dioxin-containing meat, fish and dairy products.
<<other confounding
factors in studies: rural where more pesticide exposure; also publication
bias>>
1.3 Harmfulness of Lead in even the Smallest
Amount, and Terminology related to Mental Retardation
In addition to what is widely known about
harmfulness of lead to mental development, we add the following from the EPA's
website:"Lead is the only
chemical treated as a non-threshold non-carcinogen. That is, adverse health
effects can occur at any level of exposure. A great deal of information
on the health effects of lead has been obtained through decades of medical
observation and scientific research…. It appears that some of these effects, particularly
changes in …. aspects of children’sneurobehavioral development,
may occur at blood lead levels so low as to be essentially without a
threshold…." (v) (emphasis added)
Mention should be made here of the different terms that are used
to mean very much the same thing. "Mental retardation" has for many
people become an overly negative, pessimistic term;according
to Wikipedia, "over 100 ... organizations are striving to eliminate the
use of the "r-word" (analogous to the "n-word") in
everyday conversation." Some government
agencies now instead use subdued terms in describing the effects of lead and
other toxins, such as "causes lower IQ" or "changes
neurobehavioral development" or "causes developmental delay."
But such terms tend to mask the life-impairing seriousness of the toxins to
which infants are often exposed. It should be born in mind that a specific
"lower IQ" (below a score of 70) has long been the standard basis for
determining mental retardation, that
"delayed development" in actuality is normally permanent rather than
delayed, and that "changes in neurobehavioral development” is an abstract
way to tell what is probably happening when infants' brains are becoming those
of autistic children or delinquents or are losing the ability to focus
attention. Medline Plus, a
medical encyclopedia published by the NIH, comes a little closer to words that
acknowledge the gravity of lead's hazards in saying that it "can
affect children's developing nerves and brains. The younger the child, the more
harmful lead can be. Unborn children are the most vulnerable."
Figure
2a1
As
shown in this chart, there has been a huge drop in what is considered acceptable
blood levels of lead in children. Various studies have determined that each 10
ug/dl in lead level makes a difference of between 3 and 5.5 points in a child's
IQ. So lead levels that were considered acceptable in the 1960's could easily
have been causing 15 to 27 points in lower IQ for each affected child. Bearing
in mind that a score of 100 is in the exact center of the IQ range and below 70
is considered to be mentally retarded, that means that lead exposure that was
considered acceptable as of the 1960's could have been lowering the IQs of many
children from medium to that of retardation. A large part of the mental
retardation of earlier decades may have resulted essentially from lead levels
that were considered acceptable at that time.
It
is probable that the major decline in mental disability among females that
occurred in the last generation or so resulted to a great extent from the huge
decline in lead levels that took place during that time. Discussing measurements of cognitive harm found in a study of
effects of lead exposure on 375 infants, the ATSDR points out that “throughout
the various assessments, it was noted that ...girls were more sensitive
to the effects of lead than boys. ( TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR LEAD, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry August
2007, p. 119) This (along with increases in toxins that
affect males specifically, to be explained) may help explain why mental
impairment among U.S. females declined substantially while it was increasing
among males.
The EPA oversees
substantial research on "particulate matter", but typically only
publishes environmental pollution data for "diesel particulate
matter", as in the EPA's NATA 1999 air toxics assessment. That phrase was
replaced in the NATA 2002 assessment with "diesel engine emissions".
There is considerable overlap in what is encompassed in the meanings of the
three above phrases, as well as substantial differences. But particulate
matter from diesel emissions seems to be the specific kind of PM that the EPA
considers to be of the greatest significance.
In an EPA document, the
authors pointed out findings of a study suggesting that "…the central nervous system is a potentially important
toxicologic target of PM2.5
(very tiny particles of the kind predominant in diesel emissions)… In support of this significant result, studies of mice chronically
exposed to ambient PM2.5 documented loss of brain neurons (Veronesi et al. 2005) and
changes in gene expression in the brain….."(w)(italics added) In a report
about work at the University of Rochester's Environmental Sciences
Center, findings are stated that "inhaled
ultrafine
particles can reach
the central nervous system" and can do so efficiently.(x)
In addition to complete
particles reaching the nervous system, organic compounds (which include dioxins
and PAHs) adsorbed onto particles can be freed from the particles and
"rapidly
absorbed into the bloodstream." (y)
(parenthetical expression added) The EPA document on PM Centers cited earlier
in this section refers to "a number of PM Center
studies (providing) a strong evidentiary basis for oxidative damageas a general toxicologic
mechanism of PM injury." Metals in PM were found to play a role in formation of "reactive
oxygen species," which are extremely reactive molecules and ions that can
harm cells. If words like "oxidative" and "reactive
oxygen" are not familiar terminology to the reader, bear in mind that
oxidation damages or destroys matter, sometimes quickly (as in burning) and
sometimes slowly, as with rust.
Aside from
evidence about general neurological harm resulting from oxidative damage caused
by particulate matter, a team of scientists studying the connection between
vehicular exhaust and autism referred in 2011 to "emerging evidence that oxidative stress and inflammation are also
involved in the pathogenesis of autism."(z)
Notice that most
of the above indications of harm that can be caused by PM refer to effects on
tissues and brains in general, regardless of age. The specially great
vulnerability of developing brains should be considered in light of the
statement by the NIH (quoted in Section 1.2.a) about the "greatest risk … when organ and neural systems
are developing." The 2011 study quoted in the previous paragraph
states that "Diesel exhaustparticles
present in traffic-related pollution have been shown to haveendocrine-disruptingactivity
and to transplacentallyaffect
sexual
differentiation and alter
cognitive functionin
mice ." (z) (emphasis added).
Another relevant experiment was conducted on male rats over a three-month
period beginning at birth, in which it was found that diesel exhaust was
responsible for "disrupting
the endocrine system".(cc)Also, scientists replicated lungs of infants to compare
with replicated lungs of adults, tested both for particle deposition after
exposure to particles, and concluded that "tracheobronchial dose on
a per kg body mass basis……may be more than six times higher in the resting newborn
than in the resting adult."(bb)
In Section 4.4 of the EPA's
2002 Health Assessment Document for Diesel Engine Exhaust, it
is pointed out that, "Extensive studies with salmonella have unequivocally
demonstratedmutagenic
activity…. Several of the chemicals found in diesel
emissions possess mutagenic activity in a variety of genetic assays." That
same document points out that approximately 80%-95% of the mass of particles in
diesel exhaust are in the size range from 0.05-1.0 microns which, "due to
their small size, can effectively reach the lower portions of the respiratory
tract." (aa22)
The fact that diesel
emissions are a major source of dioxins (and a rapidly-growing sources of
dioxins in the U.S.) ties in with the previously-mentioned effects observed to
result from PM and diesel emissions: altered cognitive function, loss
of brain neurons, and changes in gene expression. (The action of dioxins as
endocrine disruptors, probably resulting in interference with normal brain
development, was discussed in Sections 1.2.a and
1.2.b.)
Although PM is the component
of diesel exhaust that seems to receive the most attention, harm to the
developing brain is seen to result also from other diesel emission components
that are sometimes studied separately, including PAHs.(z)(aa)Regarding
how best to protect infants against the effects of diesel emissions, it is
noteworthy that researchers cited above found that, "Because these effects
were not inhibited by filtration, the gaseous phase of the (diesel) exhaust
appears more responsible than particulate matter for disrupting the endocrine
system." However, later in that same EPA document
(section 5.3) it is stated that "When adsorbed onto diesel
particles, the gases and vapors can be transported and deposited deeper into
the lungs, and because they are more concentrated on the particle surface, the
resultant cytotoxic (harmful to cells) effects or physiological responses may
be enhanced." So there appears to be some question
regarding which of the specific components of diesel emissions are
likely to cause the most
serious damage to neurological development.
Diesel emissions from trucks
and trains are especially likely to be harmful because they are released close
to ground level, from large numbers of exhaust pipes that are travelling
thousands of miles on roads and tracks that are widely distributed within
populated areas. Those emissions quickly and directly reach the air breathed
by many infants and childbearing women, and their particulate matter lands on
surfaces crawled on by many infants, as well as on objects handled, and on soil
that could then be ingested by infants. A study of effects of proximity to California
freeways (published in 2011) found a considerably
elevated percentage of cases of autism among infants residing within about 1000
feet of a freeway. (z)
That study was probably mainly finding the effects of diesel emissions from
passing trucks and buses, as indicated by the following: According to
EPA data for the year 2000, total dioxin toxic equivalency produced by on-road
diesel emissions in the U.S. was about 17 times as high as the total produced
by on-road unleaded gas fuel combustion emissions (Figure
1-8 inEPA/600/P-03/002F November 2006 An
Inventory of Sources and Environmental Releases of Dioxin-Like Compounds in the
United States for the Years 1987, 1995, and 2000)
Diesel
emissions have been found in a study to be harmful to the endocrine output of
male test animals. "Sperm production and hyaluronidase activity,
one of the biochemical markers for testicular toxicity,
were reduced in the diesel exhaust-exposed rats…. These elements indicate that
testicular function was suppressed by the inhalation of diesel exhaust. …the
male reproductive system may be particularly susceptible to toxic insult during
the gestation period, as has been observed….in various studies."
(cc) "Inhalation of Diesel Engine Exhaust Affects
Spermatogenesis in Growing Male Rats," N Watanabe and Y Oonuki,
Department of Environmental Health, Tokyo Metropolitan Research Laboratory of
Public Health, Tokyo, Japan. nobuew@tokyo-eiken.go.jp. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 107, No. 7, accessed at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566672/ ) It
should be noted that, although the level of the test animals' exposure in this
experiment was well above the average urban U.S. diesel pollution levels, that
exposure was for only a total of 30 hours per week, and it didn't begin until
after birth. In that regard, remember from a study quoted previously that
diesel emissions have been shown to act transplacentally (z),
and remember that the brain is going through very important development before
birth. So the exposure to diesel emissions applied in this study probably came
after the equivalent period when harmful exposure to diesel emissions in a
typical urban environment would have already been well underway, but this
abbreviated exposure nevertheless had a significant effect.
The
"bunker" type of fuel that is used in ocean-going ships and for
heating in some large urban buildings is an atypical form of diesel fuel. It
is a tar-like product consisting of the residual that remains after distillates
are extracted from crude oil in the process of making other kinds of fuel, with
many toxic components concentrated in that residual. Most people are surprised
to learn that the EPA has calculated that many thousands of deaths occur in
North America every year as a result of diesel emissions from ocean-going ships.(aa11), although
substantial death rates have also been attributed to land-based diesel
emissions (per EPA announcements <<add
details>>). An
EPA document regarding diesel pollution from ocean shipping points out that the
PM contained in marine diesel emissions includes mercury, lead, and dioxin, as
well as arsenic and other metals. (aa2). It
also points out that "Marine diesel engine emissions consist of a higher
fraction of ….. metallic ash (approximately 7-11%) than (is) typically found in
land-based engines".(aa3) Another
authoritative source places the fraction of metallic ash in diesel emissions of
PM 2.5 and PM 0.1 (the deepest-penetrating categories of PM) at between 17% and
25%.(aa6) The higher proportion of
metallic ash in marine diesel emissions is important because (a) some of the
metals are known to be neuro-developmental toxins, (b) formation of dioxins
during combustion is promoted by metals' acting as catalysts during the
combustion (EPA/600/P-03/002F November 2006, p. 2-2), and
(c) as mentioned earlier in this section,metals
are important in formation of reactive oxygen species, which damage tissues,
including neurological tissues. Between the above and the presence of sodium
chloride in sea air (as a source of the chlorine needed to form dioxins),
marine diesel emissions may be substantially higher in dioxins than is average
for other diesel engine exhaust, and they almost certainly contain a higher
proportion of mercury and lead.
Summarizing: Particulate matter and diesel
emissions can be generally
harmful to central nervous systems. Infants can receive dosages that are
effectively several times higherthan adults just by
breathing, not to mention the concentrations that may be carried in breast milk.
Infants can receive those effectively very high dosagesat the worst possible
time, when their brains are developing and before
their defense mechanisms have matured. Research “indicates that testicular
function was
suppressed by the inhalation of diesel exhaust.”
1.5 Mercury
An EPA web page on mercury points
out the following: "for fetuses, infants, and children, the primary
health effect of methylmercury is impaired neurological development." (rr) "Methylmercury
exposure adversely affects a number of cellular events in the developing brain
both in utero and post-natally.(ss, p. 49) …There is an
extremely high level of scientific certainty that methylmercury causes these
changes (abnormalities in the human brain)." (p. 51) The only question is
when the effect is most likely to occur:"it is not possible to precisely identify the
period of development during which mercury is likely to damage the nervous
system of the developing fetus or growing child"(tt).
One study of hazardous air pollutants found a moderate association of autism
with estimated airborne metal levels at birth, most notably mercury, cadmium,
and nickel. (uu)
Mercury to which children (and all of us) are
exposed comes only partly from nearby sources, since airborne mercury can stay
in the air for a year and travel thousands of miles.(vv) What isn't breathed in by humans and animals is
deposited to a great extent onto trees and plant life or is taken in through
the stomata of plants, or falls onto the soil from where it enters plants'
roots, thereby entering the food chain. But absorption by marine plant life,
which is then eaten by fish, which in turn are eaten by other fish, is normally
considered to be the largest primary avenue for mercury into human
bloodstreams. This effect of increasing mercury at higher levels in the food
chain usually has greater impact in freshwater fish than saltwater fish.
Exposure
of infants and child-bearing women to mercury varies tremendously, and is a
serious concern. Among children aged 3-6, the 5% who consume the most fish and
shellfish receive ten times more exposure to mercury from the fish than does
the average child. Among women of child-bearing ages, the 1% who consume the
most fish receive over thirty times as much mercury as the average. 5%
of children have methylmercury exposures from fish/shellfish two-to-three times
the EPA's recommended safe maximum amount (RfD). (EPA-452/R-97-006,
December 1997, Mercury Study Report to Congress. Volume IV: An Assessment of
Exposure to Mercury in the United States, Tables 4-70, 71 &72,
and p. ES-3) However, the benefits of Omega 3 fatty
acids in fish to mental development are also believed to be significant. A
2005 research study found that infant "cognition" at six months of
age was normally lower when mothers had higher levels of mercury, but it was higher
with mothers who ate more than average amounts of fish, which caused the
authors to recommend that mothers eat ample amounts of specific species of fish
that are known to be low in mercury. (Maternal Fish Consumption, Hair Mercury, and Infant Cognition in
a U.S. Cohort, Emily Oken et. al., Environmental Health Perspectives, Oct.
2005)
Wildfires and residential wood burning cause deposited or
absorbed mercury to re-suspend into the air, and this re-suspension takes place
in concentrated form; the re-suspension during fires is likely to be
from the heated soil (including deposited, decayed vegetation) as well as from
living vegetation (aa20). An environmental toxicologist at the Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality was quoted in The Oregonian as saying that he
"could tell when wildfires were burning by looking at data from mercury
monitors. The fires send mercury levels three or four times higher."
According to the EPA, 50 tons of mercury were emitted from burning of
coal in U.S. power plants in 1999, even after considerable reductions took
effect as required by the Clean Air Act of 1990. (http://www.epa.gov/mercury/control_emissions/index.htm )
1.6.a
Pesticides:
(In this section, the reader should be aware that pesticides are widely
used around residences as well as agriculturally.) In a study published in
2007 by researchers with the state of California, of children who went through
gestation in the vicinity of where organochlorine pesticides (principally
dicofol and endosulfan) were applied agriculturally, it was found that eight subjects had ASD where the
normal expected number of cases would have been 1.8. "Risk for ASD was consistently associated with
residential proximity to organochlorine pesticide applications occurring around
the period of CNS embryogenesis (early development of the central nervous
system); this association appeared to increase with dose and was attenuated
with increasing distance of residence from the field site."(In
Environmental Health Perspectives, of the NIH, found at
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.10168
: "Maternal Residence Near
Agricultural Pesticide Applications and Autism Spectrum Disorders among
Children in the California Central Valley", Eric M.
Roberts et al.) The EPA discontinued the registrations of
endosulfan and dicofol in 2010 and 2011, after both had been in use since the
1950's.
Top of Form
Bottom of Form
Formal Correction: This article has been formally corrected to
address the following errors.
Chlorpyrifos
is the first pesticide mentioned in a statement about insecticides that
"have long predominated for insect control on lawns, shade trees and
shrubs, and nurseries." (Classes of Pesticides Used in
Landscape/Nursery Pest Management, Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State Univ.,
accessed Jan. 2012 at
http://www.entomology.umn.edu/cues/Web/042ClassesOfPesticides.pdf) "Chorpyrifos
exposure was linked to changes
in social behavior and brain development as well as developmental
delays in young laboratory animals.…. Researchers studied the blood of women
who were exposed to chlorpyrifos and the blood of their children from birth for
three years. Children who had chlorpyrifos in their blood had more developmental
delays and disorders than children who did not have chlorpyrifos in their
blood. Exposed children also had more attention deficit disorders and
hyperactivity disorders." (Chlorpyrifos
– General Fact Sheet National Pesticide Information Center, Oregon State
University in cooperation with US EPA) Note that the EPA
seems to use the term "developmental delay" the way "mental
retardation" would have been used in earlier, less sensitive times. It is
interesting to note that (in a European study) exposure of rat fetuses to low
dosages of chlorpyrifos during gestation "did not induce large
immediate effects on brain development (aa23), but
….did cause deficits in brain cell numbers …(and capabilities)... which
emerged in adolescence and continued into adulthood."
(emphasis and parenthetical expression added) (Potential
developmental neurotoxicity of pesticides used in Europe Bjørling-Poulsen et
al; Environ Health. 2008; 7: 50.Published online 2008 October 22.) Studies
that claim to find no decline in mental or other health in children exposed to
various environmental toxins (such as those typically included in breast milk)
probably don’t continue long enough to detect long-term consequences, including
cancer as well as neurological effects such as mentioned above.
Chlorpyrifos
has also been found to cause
developmental deficits in male ratswithout causing the same deficits in
developing females (Chlorpyrifos exposure during
a critical neonatal period elicits gender-selective deficits in the development
of coordination skills and locomotor activity. Dam K at al. Brain Res Dev Brain
Res. 2000 Jun 30;121(2):179-87. PubMed - NCBI accessed at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) In the late 20th
Century, chlorpyrifos was the most commonly used residential insecticide in the
U.S., found in products for both indoor and outdoor use; it has since then been
withdrawn from residential use. Journal of Exposure Analysis and
Environmental Epidemiology (2001) 11, 501–509.
10.1038/sj.jea.7500193 Quantitative analysis of children's microactivity
patterns: The Minnesota Children's Pesticide Exposure Study N C G FREEMANet al. And it has probably been replaced with other
pesticides that, similarly, had never been tested for toxicity to human infants
before going into wide use.
"Many
pesticides target the nervous system of insect pests. Because of the similarity
of neurochemical processes, these compounds are also likely to be neurotoxic to
humans…. Some60% of
all herbicides… have been reported to interfere with thyroid function….
Even within the normal range,a relatively slight reduction of
the concentration of maternal thyroid hormonesduring
pregnancy can lead to intelligence deficits in the
children."(Bjørling-Poulsen et al. ) Vinclozolin,
a fungicide used on many types of fruits and vegetables, is
a potent
anti-androgen. (Gray LE Jr, Ostby JS, Kelce
W. Antiandrogeniceffects of the fungicide
vinclozolin on sex
differentiation of the rat. Toxicol AppI Pharmacol (in
press).
"Many of the persistent organochlorine pesticides
…have been identified as endocrine
disruptors…. pups (exposed to some of these chemicals) were impaired on both learning and
retention of active avoidance tasks."(Cognitive
Effects of Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals in Animals, Susan L. Schantz and
John J. Widholm, Department of Veterinary Biosciences and
Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana,
Illinois, in Environ Health Perspect 109:1197–1206 (2001). [Online 14 November
2001] Found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1240501/pdf/ehp0109-001197.pdf) The
pesticides procymidone and vinclozolin are anti-androgens.
"A number of organochlorine pesticides, including Kepone, methoxychlor,
and zearalenone, have been shown to masculinize
female rats. Tamoxifen demasculinizes
male
rats." (Environmental
Endocrine Disruption: An Effects Assessment and Analysis, by Thomas Crisp et
al, EPA, in Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 106, Feb. 1998, Supplement,
pp. 24, 29 )
The EPA conducted a study assessing data availability on
close to 3,000 chemicals that the United States
produces or imports at more than 1
million pounds per year and concluded that only
23% of those chemicals had been tested for reproductive and developmental
toxicity. Test data were considered available if any
studies relevant to reproductive and developmental toxicity were located. (Scientific Frontiers in Developmental Toxicology and Risk
Assessment (2000) Commission on Life Sciences,
National Academy of Science, National Academies Press, p. 24) Note that this small percentage of any kind
of developmental testing applied to the highest-volume chemicals in the U.S.;
nearly 100,000 different chemicals are currently in commercial or
industrial use in the U.S.Even if testing is performed, one may wonder
whether the testing with animals is normally sufficient to find out about all
or most of the likely harmful effects on humans.
A study of Missouri men “showed high levels of
three widely use pesticides—alachlor, atrazine, and diazinon—in their urine.
Men showing the highest levels of these compounds were more likely to have
poorer sperm quality; … the chance
of low sperm counts was 30 times greater for those with the highest
levels of (alachlor) in their urine compared with those with the lowest levels." (Challenged Conceptions: ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMICALS AND
FERTILIty" 2005, a publication of Stanford University School
of Medicine)
1.6.b DEHP and other Phthalates: A
web page of the FDA * *(http://www.fda.gov/downloads/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/GuidanceDocuments/UCM080457.pdf)
points
out that DEHP (a phthalate, found in many plastics)
has been shown in experiments with animals to cause testicular
atrophy. (Research including humans to follow) The special
significance of testicular atrophy as regards neurological impairment can be
seen in Section 1.2.b of
this paper, which explains the importance of testosterone in development of the
infant brain, and in the section dealing with declining fertility in
industrialized countries (Section 1.2.w).
Research directly involving
humans has been especially plentiful in the case of DEHP and
other phthalates. A study published in 2006 investigated phthalate
contamination ofbreast milk of
Danish and Finnish mothers and found various forms of phthalates to be present,
and concluded, “Our data on reproductive hormone profiles and phthalate
exposures in newborn boys are in accordance with rodent
data
and suggest that human Leydig cell (which produces testosterone) development
and function may also be vulnerable to perinatal exposure to some phthalates.
Our findings are also in line with other recent human data showing incomplete
virilization in infant boys exposed to phthalates prenatally.” (parenthetical
expression added) (Main KM, et al. 2006. Human Breast Milk
Contamination with Phthalates and Alterations of Endogenous Reproductive
Hormones in Infants Three Months of Age. Environ Health Perspect 114:270-276.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.8075) A study of effects of
human mothers’ exposure to phthalates found that this exposure was likely to
partially “undermasculinize” sons of those women. “The
effect was most striking in boys whose mothers carried the
strongest mixtures of phthalates…. The researchers noted
that they observed the effect at levels of phthalates
equivalent to those seen in about one in four American women.”(Challenged Conceptions: ENVIRONMENTAL
CHEMICALS AND FERTILITY" 2005, a publication of Stanford
University School of Medicine, p. 15) “Phthalates in pregnant women’s
urine was linked to subtle, butspecific, genital changes in their
male infants – … incomplete descent of testes and a smaller
scrotum and penis (Swan et al. 2005)."(http://e.hormone.tulane.edu/learning/human-effects.html
, Tulane University: Endocrine Disruption Tutorial) Phthalate exposure in childhood was associated with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in a cross-sectional study of
Korean school children between the ages of 8 and 11 years. (Kim BN et
al. 2009. Phthalates exposure and
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in school-age children. Biol
Psychiatry 66(10):958–963.)In a New York City study, phthalate exposures of human infants
were strongly related to measurement of tendencies towardaggression, attention
problems, conduct problems and depression.(The Mount Sinai Children’s
Environmental Health Study, “Prenatal Phthalate Exposure
Is Associated with Childhood Behavior and Executive Functioning, S.M. Engel et
al.
http://ehsehplp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/info:doi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.0901470) A
Swedish study found that autism rates were twice as high as
average for children in households with PVC flooring (known to contain DEHP),
especially in parents’ bedrooms. (Associations between indoor environmental factors and
parental-reported autistic spectrum disorders in children 6–8 years of age Malin Larssona, et al. NeuroToxicologyVolume 30, Issue
5, September 2009,
Pages 822–831)
(For additional verification of reproductive
effects of various environmental chemicals in research directly including
humans, see the last paragraph of the preceding section, Section 1.6.a.)
It should be noted that DEHP has been widely
used as a plasticizer for manufacturing many plastic products with which
infants can come into contact, including flexible toys, floor tiles, table cloths,
furniture and auto upholstery, baby pants, shoes, rainwear, and food and
beverage containers. (from website of the
ATSDR at http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=377&tid=65 )
It has apparently been banned in children's products as of 2008, but there are
probably many still in use. An especially likely avenue for exposure of
infants is via runoff of DEHP from shower curtains into tubs in which infants
will later be bathed, with soapy water being a likely medium for lifting and
re-suspending the dried DEHP residue and helping it soak in through the skin,
especially into the very exposed male scrotum and then into the testicles.
Figure
2a4
The ATSDR is particularly
concerned about infants' chewing on plastic objects not designed for that purpose.
According to a small poll taken by the author of this paper, that sort of thing
is extremely widespread. But the ATSDR points out that even skin contact
with plastics can be a source of exposure to DEHP.
The agency indicates that other likely sources of low-level exposure include
packaging "especially of fatty foods like milk products, fish or seafood,
and oils." (Fatty foods are of special concern, since fat helps the DEHP
to dissolve and transfer.)
Since mere skin contact with
plastics can be a source of exposure to DEHP, consider how much greater would
be the exposure of an infant in a tub to water containing runoff from
DEHP-containing shower curtains, or bromine or PCBs in the water supply, or
possible toxins in cleaning solutions.
<<<insert re PCP, drawing from
Indiana secn, >>
1.7.1 Dioxin-like PBDE Levels Rapidly Increasing in Breast
Milk, and especially High in the U.S., and Affecting Males Especially: PBDEs are chemicals whose main environmental properties
and mechanisms of toxicity are similar to those of the structurally-related
PCBs and dioxins.(Rev Environ Contam Toxicol.
1995;141:1-26. Polybrominated biphenyl and diphenylether flame retardants:
analysis, toxicity, and environmental occurrence. Pijnenburg AM, Everts JW, de Boer J, Boon JP.
National Institute for Coastal and Marine Management (RIKZ), Ministry of
Transport, Public Works and Water Management, The Hague, The Netherlands.) According
to the Swedish National Food Administration, "the critical effects of
PentaBDEs are those on neurobehavioural
development … and, at somewhat higher dose, thyroid hormone levels in rats and
mice…." (Toxic effects of brominated flame retardants in ...
[Environ Int. 2003] - PubMed - NCBI http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed).
PBDEs are also likely to be endocrine disruptors.(Envir. Health Perspectives, May, 2000: The PBDEs: An Emerging Environmental Challenge and
Another Reason for Breast-Milk Monitoring Programs Kim Hooper1, Thomas
A. McDonald2Top of
Form), Bear in mind the importance
of testosterone to development of the brain when reading the following quote:
"…most
PBDEs haveantiandrogenicactivity….
Some PBDEs and their metabolites (e.g. OH-BDE-47) have been found to inhibit
activity of CYP17, a key enzyme in the synthesis of testosterone…."(DEVELOPMENTAL
NEUROTOXICITY OF POLYBROMINATED DIPHENYL ETHER (PBDE) FLAME RETARDANTS Costa
and Giordano 2008 Neurotoxicology National Center for Biotechnology
Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine) "Many
experimental studies consistently reported neurotoxic
effects following perinatal exposure to PBDEs."(Polychlorinated
Biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenhyl ethers (PBDEs) in milk from
Italian women living in Rome and Venice", Ingelido et al., Chemosphere,
Vo. 67, issue 9, April 2007, obtained from Air Force Institute of Technology,
ILL.
PBDEs are
used as flame retardants in TV sets, computers, other electronics, some
plastics, and foam cushioning (although most use of PBDEs in foam cushioning
manufactured in the U.S. was discontinued by 2005). Their use is still permitted
in the United States but has been banned in some European countries. "North America consumes over half of the
world's production of polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants.
About 98% of global demand for the Penta-BDE mixture, the constituents of which
are the most bioaccumulative and environmentally widespread, resides here. …."
(Environ
Int. 2003 Sep;29(6):771-9. Polybrominated diphenyl ether flame retardants in
the North American environment. Hale RC, Alaee M, Manchester-Neesvig JB,
Stapleton HM, Ikonomou MG. Department of Environmental and Aquatic Animal
Health, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, College of William and Mary, VA,
USA. PubMed – NCBI http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) See Section 1.7.3 concerning
the high (especially in the U.S.) and increasing levels of PBDEs in breastmilk.
Figure 2b
1.7.2 Sun Exposure, which varies
greatly by Region, is an important influence on
toxicity of developmental toxins.
1.7.2.a Total Accumulation of toxicity of pollutants is very
much affected by sun exposure or lack thereof. At least one
of the pollutants that is most implicated in neurological harm, dioxin, can be
relatively quickly degraded by sunlight, sometimes in less than a day.((Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). 1998. Toxicological profile for Chlorinated
Dibenzo-p-dioxins (CDDs) U.S. Public Health Service,
p. 419) That
helps explain why levels of neurological impairment are low in the U.S.
Southwest, except for autism in certain big California city areas. (See
Sections 3.1 and 3.2 about other
benefits of sun exposure.) At the other extreme are Maine and Minnesota, with
the lowest solar radiation levels of all the contiguous states; those
two states have either an extremely high level of mental impairment in general
(in the case of Maine) or an extremely high level of autism (in the case of
Minnesota). Pollutants In far northern areas (including toxins blown in from
the south) retain more of their toxicity than would be the case to the south,
because of reduced solar radiation; and that toxicity continues to
accumulate in the soil and water through many decades. The EPA quotes two studies estimating the
half-lives of dioxins on soil to be 9 to 15 years, and half-lives of
dioxins in soil are estimated to be 25 to 100 years.(EPA/600/P-03/002F
November 2006, p. 11-11). In addition to variations in the amount of
solar radiation approaching the earth, as shown on this map, the amount that
actually reaches ground level can also vary greatly depending on forest cover. That is another area in which Maine has an unusual
disadvantage regarding solar benefits, since it is 90% forested. And it is an
area in which the low-precipitation parts of the U.S. have advantages with
regard to environmental toxins, since they have little forest cover of the kind
that would shield deposited dioxins from the effects of solar radiation. (See
Section 1.2.x.4.)
Because of their extremely long lives in soil, dioxins
in soil are continuing to increase even while the new amount
added each year is declining; therefore the soil that is very often ingested by infants
(Section 2.4) has been continuing to
increase in dioxin content in recent decades. As will be described in
Section 2.4, actual observed
accumulations of dioxins in soil have turned out to be roughly ten times higher
than the EPA had predicted in four cases, with no mention of predictions that
had been any more accurate than that. The EPA acknowledges that they may have
underestimated the effect of increases that result from long-term accumulation
of toxins that degrade extremely slowly.
The continuing increases of dioxins stored in locations
that are shielded from sunlight almost certainly applies also to water
bodies, considering not only the shelter from sunlight below
the surface but also the continuing additions to the water bodies via erosion
and runoff. Fish that eat vegetation or ingest sediment
in water that drains from typical dioxin-containing soil, and/or that eat
smaller fish that ingest that vegetation and/or sediment, will
"bio-accumulate" higher levels of toxins before (often) being eaten
by mothers and infants. It is probably no coincidence that the only state <
we have been able to find> that tells residents not to eat almost any freshwater
fish caught in that state is in southern New England. That state is Rhode
Island, densely-populated and industrial, whose waters and surfaces are on the
receiving end of considerable pollution blown in by the prevailing winds from
the congested Northeastern Corridor. Soil and pavement are very major sources
of toxins that have been deposited from the atmosphere, which toxins are then
subsequently eroded and run off into water bodies, according to the EPA.
Buildup of dioxins in below-surface locations also
applies to bathing water and drinking
water (especially if well water) coming from below the
surface, and also to foods grown in that soil. (see next section)
1.7.2.b Other implications about foods to be avoided by
infants and child-bearing women:Farm animals eat not only vegetation that grows in soil that
keeps accumulating dioxins but also significant amounts of the increasingly
toxic soil itself, sometimes ingesting up to as much as 18% soil in what they
eat (Dioxins and Dioxin-like Compounds in the
Food Supply: Strategies to Decrease Exposure By Institute of
Medicine (U.S.). Committee on the Implications of Dioxin in the Food Supply,
National Academy of Sciences. National Academies Press, 2003).
The toxins then accumulate in the future food supply of mothers and infants:
meat, fat tissue that becomes an ingredient of processed foods, and cheese,
butter, and other dairy products. Vegetables growing in dioxin-containing soil
can absorb endocrine disruptors from that soil; in one experiment,
carrots grown in soil to which dioxin had been added increased their dioxin
content by over 800%.(Agency for Toxic
Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR). 1998. Toxicological profile for Chlorinated
Dibenzo-p-dioxins (CDDs). Atlanta, GA: U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, p. 421) Potatoes,
beets, and other root and tuber crops could be expected to absorb dioxins from
soil in which they grow. The green-living advice common in recent years, about
buying locally-grown foods, should probably not be heeded when purchasing food
for infants and child-bearing women (including future mothers and nursing
mothers) living in the lowest-solar zones on the above map. Likewise,
vegetables grown in one's own backyard garden could be hazardous if the home is
near a major throughway, railroad, or port, or downwind from an industrial
source of dioxin-containing emissions, or near a hazardous waste site.
1.7.2.c Non-foods to be especially avoided
in northern areas and high-pollution areas: In addition to
dioxins from foods, infants very often ingest soil and dust which contain
dioxins. Section 2.4 deals with
that topic, pointing out that researchers have found dioxins in soil to be far
higher than expected, and levels of dioxins in soil
and dust would be unusually high in areas with low solar radiation.
1.7.3
Changing Levels of Developmental Toxins within Many Childbearing Women, therefore
within Breast Milk:
PBDEs
were first introduced in the 1960s. A study of 47breast
milk samples in Texas (quoted in 2003) found
PBDE levels similar to levels found in blood and fat tissue from California and
Indiana, which were ten to one hundred times higher than levels
found in humans in Europe.(Environ Health Perspect. 2003
Nov;111(14):1723-9. Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in U.S. mothers'
milk. Schecter A, et al.,
found at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14594622) In
1998, research with archived samples of breast milk in Sweden found that PBDE levels in the milk had been doubling every 5 years over the preceding 25 years, but no one had known about it.(Hooper K, She J 2003. Lessons
from the Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDEs): Precautionary Principle,
Primary Prevention, and the Value of Community-Based Body-Burden Monitoring
Using Breast Milk. Environ Health Perspect 111:109-114.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.5438 Online: 11 December 2002) It is interesting to note that
the Swedish National Food Administration was clearly concerned about the
effects of PBDEs on neurological development even though the levels of that
chemical in their country were apparently a small fraction of those in the U.S.
With regard to this rapidly-increasing toxin in the environment, note that it
has anti-androgenic
activity and limits synthesis of testosterone (Section 1.7.1),
therefore disrupts the activity of male hormones needed for proper neurological
development.
Lead has
been conspicuous in its huge decline in the environment since the 1970’s, and
its effects appear to be unusual among neuro-developmental toxins in that girls
are more sensitive to it than boys (Section 1.3). This helps explain the
greatly increased difference between mental impairment numbers of males versus
females born in recent decades. “Numerous studies have reported lead
concentrations in maternal blood and breast milk.”(TOXICOLOGICAL PROFILE FOR LEAD, ATSDR
August 2007, Section 3.3.2) Also,
absorption of ingested lead is “as much as 5– 10
times greater in infants and young children than in adults (Alexander et al.
1974; Chamberlain et al. 1978; James et al. 1985; Ziegler et al. 1978).” (ATSDR Section 3, p. 264).
PCBs,
also, declined substantially in the environment in recent decades, following
the banning in 1977 of their use in most manufacturing in the U.S. Girls could
be expected to have benefitted disproportionately by the decline in prevalence
PCBs for the following reasons: (1) Various studies have found PCBs to be in
concentrations over ten times as high indoors as outdoors, probably as a result
of the presence indoors of older appliances from which PCBs are known to
sometimes leak; (ATSDR
Public Health Statement for Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs), November 2000, Balfanz et al. 1993;
MacLeod 1981; Wallace et al. 1996, Sec. 6, p. 565, see Section 6.4., 1); girls are known to spend
more time indoors than boys, and would therefore benefit more from the gradual
replacement of older appliances; and (2) PCBs from the
atmosphere are known to accumulate in the leaves and above-ground parts of
plants (same ATSDR source); as noted in Section 1.9, girls have been found to have a far higher rate of
object-to-mouth activity than boys, and that activity no doubt sometimes brings
plant leaves (containing PCBs) into the mouth.
Therefore females in general
would have benefitted more than males from the discontinuation of PCBs in most
manufacturing, but breastfed children of both genders would still be receiving
greatly disproportionate effects from the substantial levels of PCBs that still
remain in circulation. According to the ATSDR again (p. 569), ”PCBs tend to accumulate in breast milk fat,” with accumulations increasing with the woman’s age and being
higher in industrial areas than rural areas. “It is estimated that an infant
that is breast fed for 6 months will receive 6.8–12% of its lifetime PCB body
burden (Kimbrough 1995; Patandin et al. 1999)” Therefore, in much less than 1%
of its lifetime, a breastfed infant will receive 7 to 12% of its expected
lifetime burden of PCBs. And that concentrated dosage of a neurological toxin
takes place during the time when the infant is going through an extremely
vulnerable stage of its brain’s development, and before its body’s defenses
against toxins have fully developed. Another study showed the intensity of
concentration of PCBs in breast milk even more strongly: “Daily PCB intake for native northern Quebec women was calculated
to be 0.3 μg/kg (ppb) body weight while daily intake among infants was
calculated to be 10 μg/kg due to breast
feeding.” (Section 6, p. 584) That means that, at least as found in this study, toxins that enter the
woman’s body are excreted in breast milk in what is effectively a
30-times-higher concentration compared with their entering concentration. A study in the Netherlands, also summarized by the ATSDR (p.
569), found that, at 42 months of age, the median plasma PCB levels of children
who had been breastfed for at least 6 weeks were 4½ times as high as those of children
who had been formula-fed.
In a study by a
team of scientists reported in 2007, rats were exposed as fetuses and nursing pups to PCBs at levels judged to be of
the same order of magnitude as levels for populations near severely
contaminated U.S. waste sites. The results were reported
as follows: “While the brain region of the pups raised without exposure to the
toxicant was developing typically, the brain
region in the pups exposed to the toxicant in
utero and while nursing was profoundly altered. The animals could hear, but their brain’s representation of
what they heard was grossly disturbed. The balance
of inhibitory and excitatory signaling between nerve cells, which contributes to the appropriately controlled responses of
the brain to stimuli, was disrupted.” The neural circuitry was disorganized in the region of the
brain that processes sound, decreasing ability to learn. The lead scientist
pointed out that “Strong evidence indicates that there is imbalance in
signaling throughout the brain of children with some developmental disorders, such as autism.”(“Class of PCBs causes
developmental abnormalities in rat pups” http://www.ucsf.edu/news/2007/04/5564/class-pcbs-causes-developmental-abnormalities-rat-pups) People who are familiar with
behavior of the autistic will probably recognize familiar topics when reading
about disrupted balance between inhibition and excitatory signaling within the
nervous system. The reader may also wish to
review Section 1.2.a for a description of the neurological harm that has been found in
other studies to result from exposure to PCBs.top
1.9 While Mental Impairment
has been Falling among Female Children and Impairment (Mental and Reproductive)
has been Rising among Males: Changing Environmental Factors Associated with Both
of These Trends
See Section 1.2.a
concerning the “rising tide” of male reproductive disorders in connection with
environmental toxins.
<<dioxins in air declined, in soil keep increasing;
boys get in dirt more, girls mouth objects on which dioxins have settled from
air>>
Mental impairment among girls dropped substantially in
recent decades compared with that of females of earlier generations. As
explained in Section 1.3,
lead in the environment has decreased drastically since 1980, <<< and
others see below>> and those declines should have accounted for a
substantial drop in mental impairment. It is
probable that females benefitted disproportionately by the declines in
environmental toxins, as will be explained in the next paragraph.
Fig. 2c
All of these toxins are carried in the air
and settle on surfaces and objects both indoors and outdoors. In a study that
included videotaping of activities of both boys and girls, it was found that
the rates of hand-to-mouth and object-to-mouth activities of girls were higher
than those of boys by huge margins. (See Figure 2c, especially the
object-to-mouth rates) (Journal of Exposure Analysis and
Environmental Epidemiology (2001) 11, 501–509.
10.1038/sj.jea.7500193 Quantitative analysis of children's microactivity
patterns: The Minnesota Children's Pesticide Exposure Study N C G FREEMANet al, Table 5). It would therefore not be at all surprising
if a large part of the earlier mental impairment among girls had resulted from
the above activities: specifically from ingesting leaded paint chips,
deposited dust that had originated from leaded fuel combustion, deposits of
dioxins that were far higher before major regulatory measures took effect, and
deposited DDT on outdoor vegetation. Also, as indicated in Section 1.7.3,
female children are more subject to toxic effects of lead than males. It would
be logical that mental impairment among females would be reduced far more than
that of males as a result of the 90% drop in environmental lead.
<<<quote from EPA re huge decline in diox in
env also PCBs stopped 1979 DDT 1972 >>
The EPA reported in 2004 that "releases (of dioxins)
from industrial sources have decreased approximately 80% since the 1980s (U.S.
EPA, 2004)".(National Report on Human Exposure to
Environmental Chemicals Dioxin-Like Chemicals:etc. Uupdated April 2010 Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA at http://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/data_tables/DioxinLikeChemicals_ChemicalInformation.html)
The decline in
dioxins in the environment was mainly in emissions from smokestack sources,
which are likely to drift far enough to be deposited on agricultural lands
where they become part of the food supply. Therefore much of the food supply
has probably improved with respect to the forms of dioxins that come from
smokestack sources; but the improvement could be slow, since dioxins in
soil survive in toxic form for decades. While some sources of dioxins have
declined, the specific types of dioxins
contained in diesel emissions have increased greatly in the
environment (see Section 1.9.4), getting into air breathed by
infants and nursing mothers, into dust and soil ingested by infants, and into
water supplies feeding into bath tubs and swimming pools, in which the very
vulnerable scrota (neurodevelopmental endocrine sources) of boys often soak for
extended periods. Dioxins are only part of the toxic components of diesel
emissions (see Section 1.4 about others); since the
dioxin component has been increasing so substantially, the other components
almost certainly have also been increasing.
As noted in Section 1.2.d, consumption of
meat in the U.S. has doubled in the last 50 years, which would have had a
strong influence in contributing to buildup of body burden of dioxins within
childbearing and nursing women, since consumption of animal fat is the
principal means by which humans absorb dioxins and some other important
neuro-developmental toxins. (See Section 1.2)
1.9.1 Indoor
pollution increasing: Emissions of dioxins and PAHs
from residential wood burning are from sources that are obviously very close to
many infants, mothers and mothers-to-be. Levels of these toxins in indoor air have
probably been increasing in many households even while amounts emitted may have
been falling in some cases, because of residences' becoming more tightly sealed
in recent decades. And there are several other sources of toxic indoor pollutants
aside from wood burning, especially formaldehyde in plywood/pressed wood panels
and DEHP in vinyl flooring, which would have become more concentrated indoors
following the tighter sealing.
1.9.2 DEHP
(see Section 1.6.b) and BPA (Section 1.2.a) increasing: To people who have been observing the
typical consumers' world in recent decades, it is probably apparent
that use of plastics as containers for food and beverages (including milk) has
been increasing; and most of those plastic containers (including plastic film
wrappers) contain DEHP or BPA or both, which can leach out into the food or
drink and then be ingested. One relatively recent source of possible transfer
of DEHP to foods that should be of special concern is the use of soft plastic
film that covers frozen foods even while
they are being cooked.
1.9.3
Increasing Use of Disposable Diapers (placing Dioxins almost in contact with
Male Glands that Produce the Neurologically Crucial Testosterone):
Usage of disposable diapers more than quintupled (to 1.93 million tons) in the
U.S. between 1970 and 1980, and rose by more than an additional 40% by the year
2000.(article,
"A Brief History of the Disposable Diaper", found at http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/04/brief-history-disposable-diaper)
1.9.4 Trends in
diesel emissions, which have been found to Suppress Testicular Function (See Section 1.4): There have been major increases in recent decades in emissions
from diesel trucks and many off-road diesel emission sources. The
EPA provides data showing that, between the years 1987 and 2000 (2000 appears
to be the latest year for which the EPA provides this data), dioxins released in diesel emissions
increased about 100%: a74% increase from off-road diesel
emissions (including emissions from trains, ships, construction equipment and
tractors) and a 134% increase
from
heavy-duty diesel truck emissions during that relatively short period.* ("An Inventory of Sources and Environmental Releases of Dioxin-Like
Compounds in the United States for the Years 1987, 1995, and 2000",
EPA/600/P-03/002F,
November 2006: especially Table 1-17. 2000 appears to be the most recent year
for which the EPA provides national dioxin release data). With dioxins from
diesel emissions increasing so dramatically, it is probably safe to assume that
diesel emissions in general have also increased greatly.
This is especially likely because diesel motors often continue in use for over
thirty years in the U.S.; continued use of an ever-growing number of
those older motors, with their declining combustion efficiency, can be expected
to have a cumulative effect on increasing diesel pollution levels. Except for newly-manufactured vehicles,
emissions of diesel trucks and non-road diesel-powered vehicles/equipment are
not regulated in most states in the U.S. <<refine this?>> This is
in contrast with the regular inspections typically required in Europe.
Diesel emissions from
offshore ships, rising from smokestacks and continuing to rise for some time
because of their heat, will often be on a downward path by the time they reach
some heavily-populated coastal areas. Statistics on changes in marine diesel
emission exposures in the U.S. don’t seem to be available, but, with the major
increase in international trade that took place during that period, they must
have increased substantially. And, as explained in Section 1.4,
those emissions are unusually toxic.
1.9.5 Major Releases of
Dioxins from Certain Sources Continuing or Increasing: In
addition to increases in exposure to toxins as indicated above, also
substantial are continuing re-releases of old toxins stored in what the EPA
calls "reservoir" sources. Dioxins are persistent in the
environment; if they are sheltered from the degrading influence of
sunlight, they can continue for a century or more to be released to the
environment in toxic form; such shelter exists below the surface of the
soil, in sediment at bottoms of lakes, inside vegetation, and inside chemically
treated utility poles, railroad ties and wooden docks. The EPA points out that
"…at least one-third of the overall risk to the general population
from dioxin-like compounds comes from reservoir sources." (EPA/600/P-03/002F
November 2006, p. 11-28) Dioxins are released into the air from soil
through "volatilization," or in road dust, or when soil erodes, or in
smoke from wildfires, or are leached out of chemically-treated wood (EPA/600/P-03/002F
November 2006, p. 1-13). The EPA considers forest firesand
accidentalfires at landfills to
be the largest sources of such re-releases (EPA/600/P-03/002F November
2006, p. 1-37) The re-released toxins land on surfaces with
which infants come into contact, settle into lakes and streams and become part
of water supplies from which humans and farm animals drink, and are absorbed
into vegetation; from the vegetation they work their way up the food
chain through farm animals and fish, to be eventually consumed by humans.
Note that dioxins have been
found to specifically harm the male glands that produce the testosterone that
is essential for brain development (Section 1.2.b.1).
Also, it seems to be generally acknowledged in this author's polling among
parents of both boys and girls that boys are more likely than girls to get
dirty with soil; bear in mind that dioxins can be absorbed through the
skin, and that thumb sucking sometimes continues into the period during which
children (mainly boys) could be playing in soil.
Section 1.9.6 To
summarize some key points:While
male mental disability has been increasing substantially, we
have been seeingmajor increases in certain neurological
toxins in the environment that are specifically connected with male brain
development. Other major sources of toxins are at least
stable. Summarized below are the implicated toxins that have been increasing,
and their connections with male neurological development (in most cases
connected by means of their impacts initially on testosterone/androgen output
and activity, which are important to development of the brain):
a) major
increases in DEHP and BPA in food packaging; DEHP can cause testicular atrophy
(Section 1.6.b); BPA is strongly
suspected as a cause of damage to brain development and development of the male
reproductive system (Section 1.2.a);
b) major
increases in PBDEs, with their anti-androgenic activity and limiting of
synthesis of testosterone (Section 1.7.1)
c)
substantial increases in breastfeeding rates in the past half century (see
Section 1.2.s), which is especially
significant in that various toxins harmful to male neurological development are
known to be concentrated in breast milk;
d)
very large increases in diesel emissions, strongly associated with toxicity to
testicular function (Section 1.9.4);
e)
dioxins in soil accumulating unexpectedly rapidly (Section 1.7.2)
and continuing to increase, and that source being one that can be expected to
affect boys more than girls.
f)
greatly increased exposure to dioxins in disposable diapers (see section 1.9.3),
which rub against skin within 2-3 millimeters of the extremely vulnerable male
testicles;
g)
extensive use of certain pesticides, many new types of which were introduced in
the 1980's; as indicated in Section 1.6.a at
least one widely-used pesticide has been found to cause developmental deficits
in male rats without causing the same deficits in developing females;
others have been very closely associated with prevalence of autism, which
mostly affects males; and several others are known to have negative effects on
male hormones specifically;
h)
bromine, in greatly increasing use as a substitute for chlorine in swimming
pools and spas, is known to be a neurological toxicant, and by its ability to
penetrate the skin of partly-submerged infants and boys it probably affects
male production of testosterone needed for neurological development (Section 1.2.b.1);
1.9.7
Mercury
Mercury
has not been identified as contributing to mental impairment in males more than
females, but it has been increasing in the environment and in the food supply
during the period in question. According to the EPA, mercury in the atmosphere
tripled between the era before human activity and current times.(EPA-452/R-97-006,
December 1997, Table 2-3) A web page of the U.S. Geological Survey
points out that, even though awareness of toxicity of mercury started in the
1950's, it wasn't until the late 1980's that investigations found high levels
of mercury in fish commonly in northern-tier states and Nordic countries, and
in the 1990's surveys found it in fish in other regions of the U.S. as well.("Mercury
Contamination of Aquatic Ecosystems" at http://water.usgs.gov/wid/FS_216-95/FS_216-95.html
).
(Mercury can drift hundreds or thousands of miles in the atmosphere before
settling on surfaces; therefore much of the mercury rising from stacks
would continue to rise for some distance with the accompanying heat while
blowing to the northeast with the prevailing winds, bypassing southern areas
before settling in the north.) So there appears to have been an upward trend
in in mercury in fish, which is a major source of mercury ingestion by infants
and child-bearing women, a trend that has been especially noticed during this
last generation. And that recent increase is of particular concern because
mercury found in greatest quantities in fish is the specific form
(methylmercury) that is most likely to affect humans; and "Recent research suggests that prenatal
effects (on the nervous system) occur at intake levels 5-10 times lower than
that of adults."(same USGS web page) The USGS quotes
the best estimates as indicating that mercury in the atmosphere is increasing
by about 1.5 percent per year. After finding a 15% increase in mercury in
Minnesota lakes between 1996 and 2006, the first cause hypothesized by
scientists was "mercury-spiked emissions from
power plants around the world….atmospherically transported." (EPA newsletter, March, 2009) In
addition to the probable increase in average
mercury per ounce of fish consumed during this period,total ounces of fish consumedby
Americans increased24 percent
from 1980 through 1989.(National Marine Fisheries Service (2005), Silver
Spring, MD (NOAA). Fisheries of the United States, 2004. Per Capita
Consumption. Page 79,)
Although mercury is the best known contaminant that has been
building up in fish, dioxins in fish are also a serious concern, as is PCP
(pentachlorophenol) that leaches out of preservative-treated wooden docks and
then bio-accumulates in fish. The latter two toxins, also, long persist in the
underwater areas that are sheltered from solar radiation, and they are almost
certainly increasing as more toxins flow into the water and as more PCP leaches
out of docks every year.
1.9.10 Effectively a decline in
beneficial sun exposure, following health advice of recent decades:Lower sun exposure leads to lower
vitamin D levels. Vitamin D deficiency is associated with reduced immune
function, and low immune function has been associated with autism in an
NIH-funded study of autism.(aa21) Also, according to an article in a publication of the American
Medical Association, "Vitamin D deficiency can
lead to reduced levels in the developing brain of calcitriol, a critical
neurosteroid involved in brain development. Of interest, while health care
providers have exhorted patients during the last 20 years to reduce sunshine
exposure, autism prevalence has been increasing. It is also of interest to note
that evidence indicates a substantial incidence of vitamin D deficiency in the
United States and elsewhere among infants and toddlers.” (aa24)
1.9.11 Increasing
Levels of Developmental Toxins to which Infants are Heavily Exposed, Prenatally
and in Breast Milk:
In 1970 the average age of a first-time
mother was about 21, and by 2008 the average age was 25.1, with large numbers
of births taking place into the 40-44 age group (found at
http://www.babycenter.com/0_surprising-facts-about-birth-in-the-united-states_1372273.bc
, which drew statistics from the CDC and the Census Bureau).. That is a large and growing sector of the
population who are giving birth at an age by which they would have built up a
far higher body burden of dioxins and mercury (and probably other toxins) than
was typical in earlier generations. The burden would be higher both because of
more years of accumulation and because of higher levels of toxins in their
environment.
Figure 2e
This chart shows a record of the only data this author
has been able to find about trends in dioxins in breast milk in the U.S.
Organizations that promote unhesitating, as-exclusively-as-possible
breastfeeding often quote a World Health Organization study finding that toxin
levels in breast milk have been declining "in most industrialized
countries;" but the U.S. is conspicuously absent in the data
provided by WHO, including in all documents found in a detailed search of WHO's
website in January of 2012. The European countries, data for which the
organization does provide, have been more aggressive than the U.S. in combating
pollution, from diesel combustion sources especially. (Dioxins in diesel
emissions have been rapidly rising in the U.S. – see Section 1.9.1).
Authors looking at data for the U.S. sometimes say that the trend in dioxins in
breast milk here is "ambiguous" and that more data is needed. Unless
they can show data other than what is shown in this chart,
"ambiguous" seems to be a word that avoids recognizing an upward
trend in the U.S. (Note that observations for the U.S. are shown with the
darker dots on this 2001 chart.)
Part 2: More on Sources of
Pollutants associated with Developmental Disabilities
As mentioned earlier, the
EPA points out that dioxins are
unintentional byproducts of severalindustrial
chemical processes and of most
forms of combustion, including forest
fires, fuel
emissions and waste combustion, and are included in the food we eat. Dioxins
are "ubiquitous in the environment -- air,
water, and soil", according to the EPA (mm) and Section 2.2In the atmosphere the dioxins become attached to
particulate matter and are typically deposited onto vegetation or other
surfaces, especially via precipitation. Once on and in the vegetation, the
dioxins affect humans when (a) consumed in affected food, especially
animal-based foods from fish and animals that consume the affected vegetation,
resulting in bio-accumulation, or (b) when re-suspended during residential
burning and wildfires. Dioxins in the air are also deposited onto the ground
and other surfaces (including indoors) with which infants come in contact.
PAHs (Section
1.2.a) are apparently especially
likely to be a product of imperfect combustion. This may help explain why
three counties in California with very high rates of autism (Placer, Tuolumne
and Mariposa) are counties in which there is considerable vehicular traffic at
high altitudes, at which levels the vehicles' engines are normally not tuned
for proper combustion. << show map of CA with these 3
standing out, away from urban areas/ combine with pesticide effect>> All
(?) (most?) other California counties with high rates of autism are urban,
where there is considerable vehicular traffic and/or industrial sources of
dioxins and PAHs.
Since
most people are surprised to be told that burning of wood and eating freshwater
fish can be sources of neurological toxins, additional attention to that
subject will be given below. It will be assumed here that there is no need to
dwell on the sources indicated in bold above or on other sources mentioned
earlier, but that should in no way imply that those are not similarly
substantial sources.
2.1
Burning of Wood and Foliage Emits Toxins
Combustion of wood is known
to emit dioxins and lead (dd) as
well as PM and methanol. According to tests by Nestrick and Lamparski, burning
1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of wood produced as much as 160 micrograms of total
dioxins. (Keep in mind that, as explained above, dioxins and other endocrine
disruptors adversely affect neurological development, and that there is good
evidence that they "can affect test animals’ bodily functions at very
low levels — well below the “no effect” levels determined by traditional
testing.") The same research found that lead produced from burning one
kilogram of wood was 0.1mg to 3 mg. Keep in mind the EPA's finding that any
amount of lead can be harmful, especially to children. Another source,
calculating on the basis of EPA data, estimates that dioxin emissions from
forest fires exceed all other U.S. sources of dioxin emissions combined.(ee)
The EPA lists residential wood combustion as the largest
source of PM 2.5 in California, producing almost 40 tons of those
emissions in that state in 2005 alone (well above the totals for both
industrial processes and on-road vehicles), and "fires" (mainly forest
fires/wildfires) are listed as the fourth-highest source.(ee)
Adding tremendously to the significance of the above is that so much of this
pollution originates inside residences, where part of it escapes directly into
the indoor air breathed by infants and pregnant women. The remainder is
emitted into the nearby community's air, from where it becomes part of the
general air supply breathed by infants and pregnant women in that area. It
should be of special concern that this largest-in-all-of-California source of
PM 2.5 tends to be concentrated in certain Northern California areas and
communities, where the climate is colder and the wood supply is especially
plentiful. Burning of brush
(in backyard burning and wildfires) is not specifically known as a source of
lead, but it is a known source of dioxins (gg) and
it almost certainly emits particulate matter.
<<expand>>Toxicity
especially strong if preservative-treated wood or trash is included.
Foliage and wood (as
well as fossil fuels) contain the three elements which, when chlorine is
present during combustion, can produce dioxins. The final ingredient (chlorine) can
be provided by atmospheric pollutants or by the plastics in typical trash. This
potential
for creating dioxins during burning of organic matter is present even
when the fuel doesn't already contain toxins. Butin
addition, vegetation also typically absorbs and retains existing toxins (which
can be re-suspended during burning). It appears to be generally agreed,
including in research by NASA, that many houseplants are effective at reducing
indoor pollution because they absorb toxins from the air (through openings
normally on the undersides of the leaves). Outdoor vegetation can be expected
to do that same absorption of toxins. The toxins will probably remain
contained within the plant or tree, continuing to accumulate through the years
for longer-lived vegetation. Those stored toxins will almost certainly be
dispersed into the air when the vegetation is burned during wildfires.
(Obviously, the effect would be reduced if some toxins had travelled to the
roots.) So residential burning as well as wildfires could be expected to be
substantial sources of toxins able to be re-suspended into the air, especially
if much of the vegetation burned is years old. This re-suspension is in
addition to the creation of dioxins that takes place as a result of the
burning. Residential burning is especially likely to
create toxins if it isn't done correctly, and it probably isn't done correctly
a very high percentage of the time.
2.2 An Apparent Incongruity
between the Recent Increases in Autism and the Long-Standing Existence of Wood
Burning:
Q: Why, if we claim a causal
connection as stated above, should autism have been increasing substantially in
recent decades? After all, burning of wood is not at all a recent development.
A: First, wood burning is
only one of several important sources of neurological toxins. More importantly,
wood and vegetation emit harmful levels of dioxins when burning because
(1) chlorine, essential for creation of dioxins, has
been provided in increasing quantities by sources in the environment;
those sources include atmospheric hydrochloric acid and other increasingly
common waste stream sources of chlorine (including PVC,
or polyvinyl chloride plastic) that could be included with
the burning;
(2) pollution from human sources has increased and has
caused wood and vegetation to be receiving and absorbing toxins at increased
rates, creating the potential for re-suspension of existing toxins
during combustion
2.3 Toxins in Freshwater Fish:
Fish consumption makes up about one-third of
the total general population's CDD/CDF TEQ (dioxin) exposure.* *(EPA/600/P-03/002F
November 2006, P, 11-28)Toxins including mercury, dioxins and PAHs are deposited into
lakes via atmospheric deposition, via streams, or via runoff from pavement and
land following rain or snow. Those lakes are in basins that also collect wood-burning
emissions, which affect infants living near the shores of the lakes. (After
originating from human-generated pollution, those toxins enter bodies of water
and pass up the food chain from sediment to game fish, whose flesh is tender
and seemingly well suited to feeding infants.) A "National
Dioxin Study" found that fish from the Great Lakes region were among the
most severely contaminated in the United States. (k,
Section 5.4.4). Possibly even worse are fish in densely-populated,
industrial Rhode Island, where the state government tells people not to eat
freshwater fish caught anywhere in the state, with the exception of trout that
are added from outside the state's normal waters. There
is nothing inherently toxic about fish and lake water; those would normally be
fine in North Dakota or much of Canada. The toxicity comes mainly from
precipitation and drainage into the lakes from environmental pollution,
combined with (as mentioned earlier) leaching of PCP from preservative-treated
wooden docks.
2.4 A Major
Source of Ingestion of Neurological Toxins for Young Infants: Eating Non-Food
Substances
According to the Seattle/King County, WA
Public Health website, " infants and toddlers often eat dirt and other
non-food items,…. Some little children just put everything into their mouths as
a mode of exploration." The NIH's Medline Plus encyclopedia refers to
"pica", the condition of deliberate eating of non-food substances on
a consistent basis, as affecting 10% to 32% of children ages 1 to 6. Since
this eating of non-food substances applies to a significant proportion of
infants even when those who do it inconsistently are not even included in that
percentage, that implies that this means of ingesting possibly toxic substances
in harmful quantities could be very common. The Seattle Public Health website
quoted above, and authors for Medscape.com quoted below, say that pica isn't
even considered to be pathologic with reference to infants below age two,
apparently in recognition of how extremely common it is for younger infants to
put non-food items in their mouths and ingest them. Bear in mind that below
age two is a period during which the infant brain is going through critical
stages of development. And bear in mind the extremely long lives of dioxins in
soil, which means that dioxins continue to accumulate to ever-higher
concentrations in soil, as more and more is deposited through the years.
It is apparently difficult to grasp how high
concentrations of dioxins in the soil can become as they accumulate through the
years, even for the EPA's scientists. The EPA acknowledges that
actual levels of dioxins observed in four reports on rural soil concentrations
in the U.S. exceeded their predictions by amounts in the range of 1000%. Nothing
was mentioned about any estimates that had turned out to be any more accurate
than that. The EPA acknowledged that they may have greatly underestimated the
effects of accumulation of dioxins through the years, overestimating the extent
of degradation that would take place.(at http://www.cqs.com/epa/exposure/part2_v1.htm
"Estimating
Exposure to Dioxin-Like Compounds," EPA, revised 1992; III.6.2)
<<replace with below?>According to
two MD's writing for Medscape.com (at. http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/914765-overview),
pica
"is the most common eating disorder in individuals with
developmental disabilities." Considering the known
developmental toxicity of dioxins that can be extremely high in soil, it would
not be surprising if a cause-and-effect relationship (starting with pica) were
at the basis of this typical association.
Medscape
article: "Pica is an eating disorder typically defined as the persistent
ingestion of nonnutritive substances for a period of at least 1 month at an age
at which this behavior is developmentally inappropriate (eg, >18-24 mo). The
definition is occasionally broadened to include the mouthing of nonnutritive
substances. Individuals who present with pica have been reported to mouth
and/or ingest a wide variety of nonfood substances, including, but not limited
to, clay, dirt, sand, stones, pebbles, hair, feces, lead, laundry starch, vinyl
gloves, plastic, pencil erasers, ice, fingernails, paper, paint chips, coal,
chalk, wood, plaster, light bulbs, needles, string, cigarette butts, wire, and
burnt matches.
In
children aged 18 months to 2 years, the ingestion and mouthing of nonnutritive
substances is common and is not considered to be pathologic."
Among
the mentally retarded, the relatively common occurrence of pica is reported to
be positively correlated with degree of retardation (Broadening
the Perspective of
Pica:
Literature Review ELLA P. LACEY, PhD at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1579989/pdf/pubhealthrep00198-0031.pdf)
Distances over which Neurological Toxins in
the Air Affect Human Infants and Pregnant Women:
The study of effects of proximity to California freeways
(referred to in Section 1.4) found a considerably elevated percentage of cases of autism among
infants residing within about 1000 feet of a freeway. (z) Beyond that
(for the approximately-three-mile width of the area studied), there seemed to
be little change in autism levels depending on distance from the freeway. But
the study was conducted in what is considered by the Census Bureau to be urban
areas, where general pollution levels are normally high compared to non-urban
areas. As this paper will attempt to demonstrate, greater distances from busy
highways (beyond the 1000-foot threshold) may have beneficial effects if the
region studied extends into non-urban areas that don't have their own serious
pollution sources.
Figure 2a5
The big question is the distance that
non-road combustion
emissions will travel and still seriously affect people. As opposed to
vehicular emissions that originate very close to ground level and therefore
affect people nearby, emissions from tall smokestacks from power plants, large
factories, and large ships are initially emitted high above the surface and are
directed upward; then the heat of the emissions keeps carrying them
still farther upward for some time after exiting the stacks. The wind carries
them for many miles, until eventually major parts of the emissions are
deposited onto surfaces. Some are likely to be deposited relatively nearby,
possibly starting a few miles downwind from the source. At the other extreme,
one of the most neurologically toxic emissions, mercury, can travel around the
world before being deposited. Pennsylvania, New York, and the New England
states requested that the EPA require reductions in emissions from facilities
as much as 550 miles and more upwind from them, on the basis of atmospheric
pollution in the northeastern states caused by emissions from 22 states to their
south and west, including states as far away as
Alabama and Missouri, and the EPA agreed. (http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/t1/fact_sheets/126fs0131.pdf
)
In addition to the more or less gradual effects of gravity, precipitation
considerably accelerates deposition of pollutants.
The Northeastern Corridor:
Three of the four states with the very highest population
densities in the entire U.S. are Rhode Island, Massachusetts and
Connecticut. Those states are in fifth, sixth and seventh places among
the highest-autism states. And those three states are not hard to find in the
pollution map (Figure 14c) if one looks closely for completely-colored-in
states, indicating unusually widespread, high levels of atmospheric toxins in
those states. The state that is highest in population density, New Jersey, is
high in autism but not among the very highest states; that is probably because
it is not on the receiving end of a pollution stream that affects the other
three highest-density states, as described below.
Fig. 14d
In addition to population-related pollution generated within Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts, these states (plus
high-autism Maine) are downwind in the receiving region for the northeastern corridor's population- and
traffic-related air pollution that starts in Northern Virginia and is typically
blown up the coast by the prevailing winds. This atmospheric stream picks up
extra potency in the high-density Philadelphia/New Jersey/New York City area
and also receives contributions from (a) polluted areas farther west in
Pennsylvania, and (b from the considerable shipping and other traffic going to
and from the Atlantic port cities. (This image is a wind forecast, based on
typical known wind patterns, provided by Intellicast.com.)
But don't judge from the above that a state's overall population
density (and its accompanying higher pollution levels) is by itself sufficient
to indicate autism risk in a state. The three states with the three highest
levels of autism in the U.S. are not high in overall population density. But in those states there are many specific
populated areas with serious exposure to identifiable
pollutants that are known neurological toxins. Breastfeeding in those states
is either high (Maine) or very high (Minnesota and Oregon). Maine and
Minnesota are the two states of all the contiguous states that have the least
benefits of solar radiation (see Section 3 about those benefits). In the cases of Minnesota and Oregon
there are high percentaqes of a specific ancestry (Scandinavian) that is
associated with a high-fat, high-toxin diet. (Section 1.2.t) Maine has an especially large supply of wood (90% forested),
encouraging widespread residential and other wood burning, which would be
especially intense in a state with long, cold winters.
New York, Pennsylvania, and the six New England States recognize
that the air in their corner of the U.S. suffers from being downwind from most
of the other states. Those eight states petitioned the EPA to require certain
utilities and other facilities in 30 upwind states to reduce their emissions,
on grounds of their northeastern atmospheric pollution resulting from being
downwind from those 30 states. In 1999 the EPA approved the petition as
applied to facilities in 22 states, including states as far away as Alabama and
Missouri.* *(http://www.epa.gov/ttn/oarpg/t1/fact_sheets/126fs0131.pdf )
Data from the EPA can help one determine where pollutants are
highest, but those data should ordinarily be considered as only educated
approximations when looked at below the state level, since monitoring stations
are often placed in only about one out of four counties, if there are
monitoring stations at all for the particular pollutant under consideration.
Part 3: Effects of Climate, and Probably of
Vitamin D, on Sources of Disabilities
3.1 In areas with more sunshine, dioxins are much less likely to be
created and/or to continue in toxic form, as will be explained:
3.1(a)Creation of dioxins requires
chlorine, the active form of which is reduced by sunshine: Dioxins are
created during combustion of organic materials; but the element chlorine must
be present, since chlorine is an essential part of every molecule of dioxin.
Low concentrations of chlorine are normally present in the atmosphere in any
area where pollution is present, incorporated into hydrogen chloride (HCl).
HCl becomes dissolved in water vapor in the form of hydrochloric acid and is one
of the three "most abundant sources of chlorine
available for participation in the formation of CDDs/CDFs (dioxins)…" (aa10) But sunlight can dry out the
water in which the hydrochloric acid is dissolved, leaving the HCl relatively
unreactive and unlikely to support formation of dioxins during combustion.
<<cite ref>>
3.1(b) Creation of dioxins is promoted by colder temperatures:Dioxins have been found to be typically formed at cooler
temperature ranges of combustion.<<cite ref>> Combustion in cold
areas is likely to take longer to reach hotter operating temperatures, and the
combustion chamber is more likely to descend into the cooler part of the
operating range during idling of motors, during intermittent operation of
incinerators, or when heating levels are turned down. Furnaces and
wood-burning stoves in very cold states would almost certainly be larger than
average. That should be considered in light of standard anti-pollution advice
to use wood stoves that are the smallest that can provide the needed heat,
since turning a fire down low is known to produce more toxins than a hot fire.
Stoves that are big enough to keep a house warm during an entire Maine or
Minnesota winter would certainly tend to be kept at a low flame during the fall
and spring.
Background
levels of dioxins in air were measured in a Minnesota location about 25 miles
northwest of Minneapolis-St. Paul, with no major industrial or commercial
activity occurring in the area. Ambient air samples were collected in the
winter and summer of 1988, checking for levels of two different varieties of
dioxins. The differences between summer and winter levels were quite
remarkable, with maximum average levels of one variety being 17 times
higher in the winter than during the summer, and maximum average levels of
another dioxin variety being 342 times higher during winter than during
the summer.(p. 427 of ATSDR 1998 publication) the author of the study
attributed the differences to increased emissions from combustion sources
during the winter, and that certainly seems to be a logical assumption for
Minnesota. Such wintertime readings were not readily available for other
states, but it is probable that wintertime increases in neurological toxins are
unusually high in Minnesota, with its unique combination of very cold
temperatures and substantial city population. (Minnesota has 17 of the 21
coldest U.S. cities with populations over 50,000, per city-data.com.) The
effects of those toxins during a major part of each year in Minnesota no doubt
contribute to that state’s having the highest rate of autism in the U.S. If
there were such a thing as a map of dioxin exposure in the U.S., Minnesota
would probably show up as an outstandingly red area.
3.1(c)Potency of
dioxins (and PAHs) declines with greater exposure to sunlight:Dioxins are subject to destruction by sunlight, within a
few days (nnand k).
Intensity of sun exposure has been seen to be the main variable affecting the
lifetime of the dioxins in atmosphere. So it is
very likely that dioxins emitted into the atmosphere in high-solar areas would
be completely degraded before they ever land on the vegetation that will
subsequently enter the food chain or be burned; if not before, then soon
after deposition. In regions with lower amounts of sunlight, or even in
heavily-shaded local areas within high-solar regions, dioxins would be far more
likely to retain their toxicity; and they would probably then keep
accumulating into increasingly potent concentrations in the vegetation or soil,
unless they are degraded by solar radiation that reaches surfaces of those
substances. (See Section 1.7.2 for more details.) If dioxins in the vegetation don't enter the
food chain directly or degrade, they normally eventually become part of the
soil, from where they could be recycled on the way to human ingestion. Or the
dioxins might also be re-suspended in a wildfire and thereby form atmospheric
concentrations affecting downwind infants and mothers-to-be. If dioxins
accumulating in forest soil aren't re-suspended in fires, they can be
transported by soil erosion (aided by unpaved roads) that goes to bodies of
water, ending up in fish eaten by women and infants.
The above probably helps to explain why two of the three states
with the highest rates of autism in the U.S. (Minnesota and Maine) are at the
far northern border of the contiguous states, and the other one of the top
three (Oregon) is near the northern border. In addition to extending the toxic
lives of dioxins, low sunlight goes along with lower temperatures, and dioxins
are known to be created especially in the lower ranges of combustion
temperatures. In sunnier locations, high engine operating temperatures are
likely to be reached sooner during
wintertime, and ongoing combustion is more likely to be sufficient to keep the
combustion chambers of engines, stoves and fireplaces steadily at high
temperatures.
3.2 Other Things related to
Reduced Vulnerability of Infants to the Effects of Toxins in Areas of Greater
Sun Exposure:
(a) Greater sun exposure leads to higher vitamin D levels. Vitamin
D deficiency is associated with reduced immune function, and low immune
function has been associated with autism in an NIH-funded study of autism.(aa21)
(b) Residential wood fires and wood-burning
stoves are known sources of PM, dioxins and lead, and most children in areas
with greater warming effects from sunshine would almost certainly have
comparatively lower exposure to those sources. As noted in section 2.1, the EPA considers residential wood burning to be the largest
source of PM 2.5 in California. As is the case with wildfires, quantity of
dioxins emitted by the burning depends partly on exposure the firewood has had
previously, including to sunlight;
(c) Children in areas with more sun and in
areas with less rain are likely to spend less time indoors, where, according to
the EPA, pollution "may be two to five times higher than outdoor
levels."(10/20/10 EPA press release). Obviously being outdoors while there is a fire in the vicinity
would be bad; and outdoor air in urban areas or near major highways appears
generally also to be worse than indoor air (EPA/600/8-90/057F
May 2002 Health Assessment Document for Diesel Engine Exhaust National Center
for Environmental AssessmentOffice of Research and Development U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency Washington, DC, p. 2-113); but during normal times in areas with average or lower
pollution, being outdoors more and having the windows open wider would probably
benefit the infant's general health and ability to tolerate sporadic
environmental toxins.
3.3 More General Increase in
Mental Impairment among U.S. Male Children:
Related to the autism problem (but not receiving
publicity) is the fact that far larger numbers of males born in the U.S.
in recent decades apparently have a mental impairment other than autism,
as reported to the Census Bureau. (The Census Bureau’s question that provides
this data asks, "Because of a physical, mental or emotional condition,
does this person have serious difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making
decisions?”) The percentage of males said to have such difficulties who were
born since the early 1990’s is twice as high as the percentage of females in
the same age group (that is 5.2% for male children nationwide, which includes
many of those with autism); this in sharp contrast with the apparently
gender-equal numbers that apply to those born in the half-century leading up to
the mid-1970’s. (see endnote(a) The
data indicate these reportedly serious mental difficulties for about one out of
eleven 5-to-17-year-old boys in Maine and about one out of twelve in Rhode
Island. But there is good reason to observe a general downgrading of male
mental abilities, not merely increasing problems at the bottom. 60% of all
masters’ degrees in the U.S. currently go to women. “Throughout the ’90s,
various authors and researchers agonized over why boys seemed to be failing at
every level of education, from elementary school on up….” (July/August 2010
ATLANTIC MAGAZINE
The End of Men By Hanna
Rosin) In
a 2003 Business Week cover story (The New Gender Gap From
kindergarten to grad school, boys are becoming the second sex”), a
professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School is quoted as saying, “It's
not just that boys are falling behind girls, It's that boys themselves are… doing
worse than they did before." Similar effects appear to be in evidence in
most countries of the developed world, in higher education (Education
at a Glance 2008 OECD INDICATORS Table C4.3 www.oecd.org/edu/eag2008) and
among boys in the only other country for which this author has been able to
find comparative data (the U.K.).
Changes of this magnitude could not possibly be
attributable to heredity. And, assuming some validity in the averaged data
taken from tens of thousands of responses to the Census Bureau regarding mental
impairment, the changes obviously represent extremely serious consequences.
Note from and about the
author, and acknowledgements: There
can be advantages to having a study done by a qualified outsider. Research by
PhD's tends to go into great detail in narrowly-defined areas, and they
typically conclude with recommendations for future multi-year studies on the
subject. I feel that this matter deserves a strong orientation toward
determining what can and should be done now to
address serious problems. There is already a large amount of research
published that relates to this subject, which can be brought together, analyzed
and put promptly to use. I received scores in the top 1% on standardized tests
when in high school, hold a B.A. cum laude from Oberlin College, did well in
challenging biology and chemistry courses, and stood in the top third of my
class during a year at Harvard's Graduate School of Business Administration.
There were important aspects of the business-school case-study method that have
been helpful in making this paper more practically useful (I believe) than much
or most of what has been written on the subject, as follows: After
carefully studying large amounts of printed matter on the subject and doing
whatever numerical calculations seem relevant,one is expected to come up with
well-considered recommendations for action. Apparent
insufficiency of information available on a subject should not lead one to be
satisfied to recommend future long-term studies, if there is a serious problem
now. Work around gaps in the available data as best you can, and come up with
an action plan reasonably quickly that you can defend in plain English on the
basis of the data and common sense. As applied in this case, that approach
meant poring through hundreds of studies and reports, plotting local disability
data and analyzing regional pollution data sets (with the aid of spreadsheet
software), winnowing out some apparent patterns, utilizing the excellent
computer expertise, diligent data analysis and real-world knowledge of Matt
Hulbert, data entry and map-shading assistance from various helpers, considerable
and invaluable assistance from reference librarians at the Central Rappahannock
Regional Library (especially Lee Criscuolo) in locating difficult-to-access
scientific articles, very helpful thoughts and guidance to information sources
from Professor James Corbett of the University of Delaware's College of Earth,
Ocean, and Environment, and drawing on insightful comments and suggestions from
various acquaintances, employees and friends, including parents from three
separate families each with at least one boy and one girl. Normal business
calculations are lacking here, for good reason; the costs of most of my
proposed remedial measures are so minimal in relation to the lifetime costs of
mental impairment that calculations are unnecessary; some would protect
other family members as well as the infant against exposure to known or
probable toxins (such as residential wood smoke), some would probably also
improve immune function (Gehrs BC, Riddle MM,
Williams WC, Smialowicz RJ (1997). "Alterations in the developing immune system
of the F344 rat after perinatal exposure to
2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin: II. Effects on the pup and the
adult." Toxicology 122(3):229-40) , and
several would actually save money (such as restricting smoking and eating less
meat). In any case, we should not have to wait for completion of ongoing
five-year studies before taking constructive steps.
Full disclosure/ verifiability: I
own a small U.S. manufacturing company that competes in a minor but significant
way with imports from Asia, but have no interest in infant formula. My
attention was drawn to the subject of mental impairment partly by seeing an
increase in sales of my company’s damage-resistant products for use in
residences for mentally-handicapped young people, but also by awareness of the
increasing toxic pollution emitted by ships bringing imports to U.S. shores.
That pollution is mentioned in this paper as only one of many sources of
atmospheric toxins that could be involved in causing mental impairment. I
strongly encourage any reader to look in this paper for any statement that does
not appear to be well supported by valid evidence or reasoning, or any passages
that don't seem to make sense, and to inform me (and anyone else) about any
apparent flaws. All comments that criticize specific passages in this paper
will be posted at the end of the paper and responded to. I realize that many
people won’t like my conclusions, but if you can’t say what is wrong with the
evidence or reasoning that led to those conclusions, please don’t bother
responding. My e-mail address is dm@pollutionaction.org .
Appendix 1 Various
Things Wrong in “The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Support
Breastfeeding”:
Section
A: In the above-mentioned document, the Surgeon General strongly
implies existence of high-quality evidence for benefits of breastfeeding when
making the following statement: “As stated by the U.S. Preventive Services
Task Force (USPSTF) evidence review,human milk is the natural source of nutrition for all
infants.” However, the only evidence considered in that review was about
effectiveness of certain measures in promotion of
breastfeeding, not evidence about actual health benefits of
breastfeeding. (Annals of
Internal Medicine: Interventions in Primary Care to Promote Breastfeeding: An
Evidence Review for the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force Mei
Chung et al.)
While it is true that breast
milk is a “natural source” of food for infants that is essentially a valueless
endorsement, given today’s typical environment and the resulting contents of
breast milk. Water in local ponds or rivers was also for eons the “natural”
source of water for humans, given the sources of water that were available in
the early days of our species. Fishes from local lakes and rivers were also a
natural food. But nobody in modern industrial countries recommends drinking
untreated water from local ponds, and the State of Rhode Island warns that
people should not eat almost any fish from any of that state’s fresh waters.
In too many regions these days, toxic chemicals enter women’s bodies in low
dosages but become highly concentrated in the milk that is subsequently
excreted. Those concentrations enter a breastfeeding infant at the worst
possible time, when its neurological system is rapidly developing and extremely
vulnerable to toxins, and before the infant’s defenses against toxins have
matured. A breastfeeding infant has been found to ingest neuro-developmentally-toxic
dioxins at levels over 50 times as high as the average adult; and other
known developmental toxins that didn’t even exist 50 years ago are now
recognized as being concentrated in breast milk. The “naturalness” of breast
milk arose from bye-gone conditions that do not exist in most parts of the
developed world today, conditions that in the past permitted breast milk to be
relatively free of developmental toxins. Promotion of breastfeeding on grounds
of its being natural is equivalent to encouraging a child’s drinking of
untreated water from local rivers in highly-populated, modern industrial areas.
High on the Surgeon
General’s list of “Excess Health Risks Associated with Not Breastfeeding” is
“Eczema (atopic dermatitis);” the chart shows a 47% “excess risk” of the
disorder as the expected outcome in the absence of breastfeeding. But, looking
at the source cited for this figure, one reads, “Exclusive breast-feeding
during the first 3 months of life is associated with lower incidence rates of
atopic dermatitis during childhood in children with a family
history of atopy. This effect is … negligible in
children without first-order atopic relatives.” (emphasis added)(Gdalevich
M, Mimouni D, David M, Mimouni M. Breast-feeding and the onset of atopic
dermatitis in childhood: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective
studies. J Am Acad Dermatol 2001;45:520–527.) It
will be left to the reader to judge whether the Surgeon General’s statement of “47%
excess risk” is a valid statement of the findings of the study on which the
statement is based.
In “The Surgeon General’s
Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding,” she asserts that “the Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) … reaffirmed the health risks associated
with formula feeding and early weaning from breastfeeding.” But that is not at
all an accurate statement of the AHRQ’s position. The Surgeon General
acknowledges elsewhere, relatively inconspicuously, that almost all of the
findings that favor breastfeeding are merely associations, from
observational (not randomized) studies, and that “the associations described in
the report do not necessarily represent
causality.” Ample associations of
high death rates with sunshine would be found by doing studies of people in Florida.
Sunshine could then be alleged to be a “risk” factor on the basis of such
studies, in the same way that formula feeding is alleged to be a “health risk”
for infants on the basis of various associations. In the case of Florida, the real,
underlying cause of the death rate is the disproportionately large
number of old people in that state (age is what scientists call a “confounding
factor” in this case). In the case of illnesses associated with breastfeeding,
the confounding factors are the low-income status of the parents and the high
prevalence of smoking in those households, both of which are known to be (a)
disproportionately high among women who do not breastfeed AND (b) causally
related to high levels of many childhood illnesses. (Appendix, Section D).
Therefore, given the fact
that the studies on which the Surgeon General bases her position merely found
associations, in non-randomized studies, valid use of the results requires
emphasis on the clear, acknowledged fact that “the associations described in
the report do not necessarily represent causality.”
Given proper recognition of this fact, it is not correct to say, as the Surgeon
General does, that the AHRQ “…reaffirmed the health risks associated with
formula feeding and early weaning from breastfeeding.”
Given the recognized absence of established causality, there can be no
affirmation of health risks of formula feeding.
On the Surgeon General’s
list of “Excess Health Risks Associated with Not Breastfeeding” is “acute ear
infection (otitis media)”. Smoking, being more prevalent in low-income homes
and among bottle-feeding mothers (Section
D
of Appendix 1), is likely to be a cause and might even be the
principal cause of ear infections in homes in which infants are bottle fed. (Gallup Well-Being, March 21, 2008 Among
Americans, Smoking Decreases as Income Increases by Rob Goszkowski Effect of
passive smoking on growth and infection rates of breast-fed and non-breast-fed
infants. Yilmaz
G, et al Department
of Pediatrics, Keçiören Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey. gonca.yilmaz@tr.ne; Verbreitung, Dauer und zeitlicher Trend
des Stilles in Deutschland, Bundesgesundheitsblatt
Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz. 2007 May-Jun;50(5-6), Abb. 2, Abb. 1) Again,
it is improper to conclude that formula feeding is anything more than an
uninvolved, typical characteristic of low-income homes; this factor that
is disproportionately present in low-income homes and known to be harmful to
infants present (smoking) is likely to be the principal cause of higher
rates of the illness.
An
especially impressive-looking “excess risk” of 257% is attributed in this same chart
to “Hospitalization for lower respiratory tract
diseases in the first year.” This statistic came from only one study,
in which the authors exercised considerable selectivity in deciding which other
studies they would draw on for their data, and this study dealt only with hospitalization
rates for the illness. The Surgeon General’s document failed to mention that several
studies failed to find any benefits of breastfeeding in reducing rates
of lower respiratory tract disease per se. (Pediatrics. 1984 Oct;74(4 Pt 2):615-38. American Academy of Pediatrics Review of the epidemiologic evidence
for an association between infant feeding and infant health. MG Kovar, Dr PHet
al., p. 623) The hospitalization rates that were reported to be
higher among non-breast-fed children very likely resulted from the following
circumstances: Low-income mothers (many or most of whom are employed)
breastfeed in disproportionately low numbers. They would often be unable to
provide appropriate medical or home care when a child’s illness is worsening,
and instead merely send the child to multi-child daycare. So the condition
worsens, and other low-income children are exposed to it. The vulnerability of
the infant’s lungs is increased by smoking in the household, which is disproportionately
high with mothers who formula feed. Therefore a very large share of the
resulting hospitalizations probably were causally very much related to adverse
conditions and/or lack of suitable care during the progression of an illness,
and to nothing else. But those same underlying conditions of a low-income
existence, of smoking, and of a mother’s employment are also known to very
strongly predict low breastfeeding rates.(Surgeon General’s
Call to Action, pp. 8, 32)
To
summarize: Children of low-income mothers, and children with employed mothers
and smoking mothers are likely to have relatively high rates of
hospitalizations for respiratory illnesses, and those same categories of
mothers also do breastfeeding at unusually low rates. The illnesses and the
low rates of breastfeeding are two different things that each arise separately
from the same underlying conditions of low income and maternal employment
and/or smoking. Neither proper science nor common sense allows one to conclude
from such a study that the hospitalizations result from the formula feeding, as
the Surgeon General seems to be doing in her Call to Action. The same could be
said about ear infections and other conditions, about which the Surgeon General
alleges similar “risks.” Avoiding unjustified claims of “Excess Risk” based on
such studies is important in every case, but most especially in a case (such as
the above) in which multiple other studies had come to the opposite conclusion
regarding that same illness in general, in cases in which the researchers had
not selected
particular other studies to draw on.
The
Surgeon General does acknowledge on
page 2 of her Call to Action that “the associations described
in the report do not necessarily represent causality,” but those few words are
insufficient to properly counteract the unjustifiable impression of scientific
certainty that is conveyed much more conspicuously elsewhere on those pages.
Page
1
has a bold heading of “Health Effects”;
and there
are nine statements about “risks” on
page 1 and an eye-catching, bold headline for a chart on page 2 stating the
various “Excess Health Risks” that are alleged to
result from lack of breastfeeding.The precise percentage
numbers stated give the average reader an additional (incorrect) impression of
scientific validity in her statements of “risks.” An
overwhelming impression is given of well-evidenced findings, which overshadows
the sole brief acknowledgement that there may be no causal connection between
breastfeeding and illness data. In addition to the inconspicuousness of that
acknowledgement of uncertainty, its wording is not adequately meaningful to the
average reader. A candid, truthful statement in this case, in language that
would properly convey the reality of the evidence to the general public, would
be, “Nobody
knows whether these actually are risks of formula feeding.”
For any communication that attempts to accurately represent this subject to the
public, that statement should be made and should be presented more
conspicuously than statements alleging “excess risks.” However, the opposite
was very much the case in the Surgeon General’s “Call to Action.”
Section B Serious Problems that often occur in
Observational Studies:
The
above is an illustration of the kinds of problems that can occur with
“observational studies,” which the Surgeon General acknowledges are the sources
of “almost all the data” in the AHRQ review which is her primary source for the
“risks” attributed to formula feeding. (Breastfeeding and Maternal
and Infant Health Outcomes in Developed Countries Prepared for:Agency
for Healthcare Research and Quality, US HHS(Evidence
Report/Technology Assessment Number 153, Part 1)
In another document, the AHRQ (Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality)
states, “to prevent selection bias, the comparison groups in an observation
study are supposed to be as similar as possible except for the factors under
study. For investigators to derive a valid result from their observational studies,
they must achieve this comparability between study groups.”(emphasis added)(Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, U.S. DHHS,
Systems to Rate the Strength of Scientific Evidence, Evidence Report/Technology
Assessment: Number 47). In the studies drawn on by the Surgeon
General, the formula-feeding households are disproportionately low income (see
above) and with employed mothers, which as a group have relatively high rates
of infant health problems resulting from differences in the home and care
environments (see Section D). The high-breastfeeding mothers are
disproportionately high income and better educated, and infants of this group
have fewer health problems. Therefore
health comparisons of formula-fed infants with breastfed infants are in
actuality comparisons of low-income households with higher-income households,
with inherently differing illness levels that have nothing to do with
breastfeeding. In various of the studies cited by the
Surgeon General, these home and care effects are recognized and the authors
often say they have attempted to adjust for them, but it is completely open to
question whether the adjustments have ever been remotely sufficient. This
author has been unable to find any explanations as to how the adjustment
factors were arrived at, possibly because of the extreme difficulty that any
researchers would have in arriving at anything more than a guess. If any
reader is aware of any study that satisfactorily explains a rigorous method of
adjusting for dissimilarities of incomes as confounding factors in such studies,
please notify this author, at dm@pollutionaction.org.
Until seeing such, this author feels safe in assuming that (a) differences in
income levels and parental smoking across comparison groups are not properly
adjusted for in the studies used to defend breastfeeding, and (b) the effects
that result from these confounding factors are fully able in
themselves to explain the illness rates that are alleged to be
“risks” of formula-feeding.
The
AHRQ probably recognizes virtual impossibility of determining suitable
adjustment factors when they say simply, “for investigators to derive a valid
result from their observational studies, they must achieve this comparability
between study groups.” To
repeat the most important words from the AHRQ for clarity: “Valid
results”… must be achieved by means
of maximum possible “comparability
between study groups.” No mention is made in that AHRQ statement
about even attempting to make adjustments, in the absence of comparability. If
good comparability doesn’t exist (as apparently was the case in the studies
cited by the Surgeon General), there is no reason to consider the results to be
valid. Given the likelihood of error, such studies are scientifically useful
mainly for highlighting areas to think about for future research.
Section
C Boundaries of Studies Done on this Subject, Biases of Researchers, and
Establishment Viewpoint:
This
author, having read many studies and having read about many studies on
associations of lack of breastfeeding with illnesses and cognitive development,
has observed that almost all of them have as their boundaries the simple
question of how beneficial are
the effects of breastfeeding. Almost never do the pre-set boundaries extend
over into the possible area of negative effects of breastfeeding. If negative
effects had been present, it appears that they would ordinarily not have
been recorded. Consider the previously-cited article from the journal of the
American Academy of Pediatrics (Pediatrics. 1984 Oct;74(4 Pt 2):615-38. American Academy of Pediatrics Review of the epidemiologic evidence
for an association between infant feeding and infant health. MG Kovar, Dr PHet
al., p. 623), describing a study that found no benefits in
breastfeeding: The authors noted that the study had failed to include
adjustment of its data for the distortion of data resulting from the known
effects of low income; these authors recognized that “failure to adjust
for that factor would lead to artifactually (artificially) higher rates of
respiratory disease in bottle-fed infants.” In other words, disease rates
reported for the bottle-feeding group were biased on the high side because of
the recognized effect of low income in leading to high disease rates;
but, even though artificially high, the bottle-fed group’s disease rate was
nevertheless no higher than that of the breastfed group. Any attempt at
adjustment for the known effects of low income (which would have to be a
downward adjustment) would have indicated a favorable
effect of bottle-feeding. But “failure
to adjust for that factor” was merely bypassed, because
(even without adjustment) the conclusion had already been reached
that “breastfeeding was not protective.” The pre-determined boundary for
findings had already been reached. Data that certainly would have been
negative to breastfeeding after well-warranted adjustment was simply recorded
as zero. The above seems to be essentially standard procedure in these
studies. There is normal variation around the null effect, but only the
variation on one side of the zero point is recorded. What a surprise that the
summarized data then comes out on the side of beneficial effects of
breastfeeding.
This
sheds some light on how these studies are probably typically done. Given the
origins of both high illness rates and bottle feeding in low-income families,
researchers would find that certain illnesses and bottle feeding occur
disproportionately together in the same families. The researchers then may or
may not try to adjust to account for the bias arising from low incomes and
tobacco smoking among the bottle-feeding families. If they do “adjust” for
these differences, they
have a clear point that they know they need to stay short of in any “adjustments,”
in order to be able to arrive at the expected results. As
mentioned earlier, adjusting for effects of low income and of parental smoking
(of greatly varying levels and combinations), if adjusting is done at all, is
something that could be done only with extreme imprecision; if the
adjustment used is only one quarter of what real conditions would justify,
nobody could point to any standard by which the adjustment could be considered
insufficient. .
As
mentioned (Section B),
the AHRQ merely points out that the comparison groups must be as similar as
possible. It doesn’t even attempt guidelines as to how adjustments should be
made when the comparison groups are dissimilar. Where the AHRQ discusses
studies that were done comparing dissimilar groups (such as the ones cited by
the Surgeon General), it makes it clear that any associations found do not
necessarily indicate causation. But unfortunately such studies might end up being
inappropriately used to promote major public policy (such as in the Surgeon
General’s Call to Action to Support Breastfeeding); the studies might be
cited in a context that obscures the important message that “this association
doesn’t necessarily show causation” and instead essentially presents the
associations as actual “health risks.” This kind of use of such studies as a
basis for launching major governmental efforts, which could end up going in
exactly the wrong direction, is exactly the kind of usage that the AHRQ warned
against.
In
addition to biasing effects resulting from non-comparable comparison groups,
the possibility of personal biases affecting researchers’ findings is a
recognized, serious problem. That appears to be especially true regarding the
matter of breastfeeding, since there is a great deal of one-sided emotion
present in much of what is written on this subject. A team of four
researchers, in a study of changing attitudes of pediatricians regarding breastfeeding,
openly revealed their personal biases of a kind that is easily observed in much
or most of the published research and advice on this subject: After finding
that a smaller number of pediatricians were recommending breastfeeding to their
patients in 2004 than in 1995, the study summarized that the pediatricians’ “attitudes
and commitment have deteriorated.” The changed recommendations were seen to
indicate “poor attitudes.” (Arch
Pediatr Adolesc Med. 2008 Dec;162(12):1142-9. Pediatricians and the promotion and
support of breastfeeding. Feldman-Winter
LB, Schanler
RJ, O'Connor
KG, Lawrence
RA.
Division of Adolescent
Medicine, Department of Pediatrics, Cooper University Hospital, University of
Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School)
And another study points out that “Health care professionals can be a negative
source of support (for breastfeeding) if their lack of knowledge results in
inaccurate or inconsistent advice.” (J Obstet Gynecol Neonatal Nurs. 2002
Jan-Feb;31(1):12-32. Breastfeeding initiation and duration: a 1990-2000
literature review. Dennis CL.
Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. cindylee.dennis@utoronto.ca) Yes,
that must be it, “lack of knowledge”, “poor attitudes” and “deteriorated
commitment,” those must be the only reasons why highly-educated, devoted health
care professionals would provide allegedly “inaccurate” advice to their
patients, by counseling against breastfeeding. Serious study of the subject
matter of their professions, or extensive long-term observations of their
patients, couldn’t be affecting the advice they give. If somebody advises
against breastfeeding, by definition they couldn’t have good reasons for that.
To
partially excuse the closed-mindedness that many researchers display regarding
the subject that they ought to instead be considering with open minds, we
should remember the very strongly-stated, indisputably one-sided position of
the highest medical authority in the U.S. government, the Surgeon General.( U.S. Public Health Service Office of
the Surgeon General at http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/topics/breastfeeding/calltoactiontosupportbreastfeeding.pdf, p. 47) With extremely
strong promotion of one side of this issue coming from the very top (also
including from all of the other Federal health-related agencies), with obvious
implications regarding attitudes expected of recipients of government research
grants, how many researchers would be brave enough to express genuine question
about benefits of breastfeeding? Put another way, how many researchers would
approach their studies today without already having accepted that the only
matter that is open to question is, “howgreat are
the benefits of breastfeeding?”
Typical
mindsets of researchers: Researchers label one of their charts “Cognitive
Ability & Duration of Exclusive Breastfeeding / Controls Included“ when the
“controls” apparently included no controls for parental intelligence.
Section D
Known Effects of Low Income and Tobacco Smoking on Health of Children:
Before examining more of the Surgeon General’s “Excess
Health Risks”, we should quote some relevant findings of a study of health
effects of poverty, which are crucial in understanding the basic differences
between the two groups being compared in the data cited by the Surgeon
General. Bear in mind that the bottle-feeding vs. breastfeeding groups being
compared differ greatly according to income levels, with bottle-feeding mothers
being very disproportionately of low income, according to the Surgeon General’s
own data for the U.S. and according to studies in the U.K. and Australia.
(Section 1.2.s.1.a)
According to a major study funded by the U.S. Public Health Service, “Disparities
in childhood asthma can be directly tied to several factors which
disproportionately affect lower income children and children of color,
including substandard and over-crowded housing,poor ambient air quality (often
related to living near freeways, ports, or industrial sources of pollution); exposure topesticides,
particularly among migrant families but also children attending schools close
to fields where pesticides are sprayed; andattendance in older schools
with poor indoor air quality. Lower income children are also more likely to
face barriers to quality health care to treat and control their asthma. Obesity
and its consequences, such as diabetes, are widespread in this country, especially
among poor, ethnic and racial groups. Children covered by
Medicaid are nearly six
times more likely to be treated for a diagnosis of obesity
than children covered by private insurance.” (Dana Hughes, DrPH,
Mary Kreger, DrPH, et al.: REDUCING HEALTH DISPARITIES AMONG CHILDREN: STRATEGIES AND PROGRAMS FOR
HEALTH PLANS. Produced with support from the Health Resources and
Services Administration, U.S. Public Health Service,At http://nihcm.org/pdf/HealthDisparitiesFinal.pdf; also see Gallup Well-Being, March 21, 2008 Among
Americans, Smoking Decreases as Income Increases by Rob Goszkowski Am J Dis Child. 1984
Jul;138(7):629-32. Respiratory and gastrointestinal illnesses in
breast- and formula-fed infants.Myers MG,et
al; Effect of passive
smoking on growth and infection rates of breast-fed and non-breast-fed infants.Yilmaz
G, et al Department of Pediatrics, Keçiören
Training and Research Hospital, Ankara, Turkey. gonca.yilmaz@tr.ne))
Many other studies have extensively documented adverse
health effects of poverty on children, including not only frequency but also
severity (including the severity that leads to hospitalization for respiratory
diseases – see Section a). (Parker S, Double jeopardy: the impact
of poverty on early child development. PediatrClinNorthAm.1968; 35:1227-1240.
Starfield B. Child health care and social factors: poverty, class, race. Bull N
Y Acad Med. 1989; 65: 299-306. Geltman PL, Welfare reform and children's
health. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med. 1996; 150: 384-389. Palfrey JS. Community
Child Health: An Action Plan for Today. Westport, Conn: Praeger Publishers;
1995.) For
children in low-income households, frequency of delayed immunization is three
times the average, and asthma and bacterial
meningitis are twice as common. “In the first year of life after the neonatal
period, death rates are double to triple those
of other children;” (With regard to this, note the Surgeon General’s allegation
of 56% “Excess risk” of sudden infant death syndrome in bottle-fed children,
and the 35% / 67% “excess risks” of asthma, and consider whether those “excess
risks” could stem merely from the low-income conditions and tobacco smoking that
disproportionately characterize the bottle-feeding families); ”after
the first year, death rates due to disease are triple to quadruple among
low-income children…. A study in Toronto demonstrated that children living in
socioeconomically deprived areas were far more symptomatic than the adults in
these areas from exposure to ambient air pollution in their neighborhood….
Several studies have linked pesticide exposure in childhood to increased rates
of leukemia and brain cancer.” (Child Health Care and Social Factors:
Poverty, Class Race Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, Professor and Head, Division
of Health Policy, Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health,
presented at 1988 Annual Health Conference of the New York Academy of Medicine)
In trying to explain the reasons why lower-income children “suffer
disproportionately from almost every diseaseand
showhigher rates of
mortality,” poor housing, inadequate nutrition, and reduced access
to medical care are key factors that are focused on. The lower an individual
is in socioeconomic status, the more likely he or she is to experience adverse
environmental conditions, such as exposure to pathogens and carcinogens. (Socioeconomic
Inequalities in Health: No Easy Solution Nancy E. Adler, PhD, (Vice-Chair,
Dept. of Psychiatry & Director of the Center for Health and Community,
University of California, San Francisco), et al., Journal of American Medical
Association, 1993) The reader should bear in mind that the
outcomes alleged by the Surgeon General to result from not breastfeeding are known to result from conditions
of households in which breastfeeding is relatively rare.
Smoking: Smoking is known to be
more prevalent in families in which infants are bottle fed. A study in Germany
found that non-smoking mothers were two-and-a-half times as
likely to breastfeed as mothers who smoked; put another way, mothers who smoked
had an odds ratio of 0.4 of breastfeeding (Verbreitung, Dauer und
zeitlicher Trend des Stilles in Deutschland, Bundesgesundheitsblatt
Gesundheitsforschung Gesundheitsschutz. 2007 May-Jun;50(5-6), p. 628) In studies that
included various controls, it was found that “women who resumed daily smoking
were almost 4 times
more likely to wean early than were women who abstained or smoked
occasionally.” (Breastfeeding Initiation an Duration: A 1990-2000
Literature Review Cindy-Lee Dennis, RN, PhD JOGNN in Review, Vol. 31, Number
1)
Data from the U.K. (in chart on left) shows the different rates of smoking
across socio-economic groups; those socio-economic differences are known
to equate with higher or lower rates of breastfeeding in the U.S., U.K. and
Germany. The following is taken from the “WHO Report on Tobacco Smoke and
Child Health,” 1999: “…maternal smoking during pregnancy causes
well-established, demonstrable harm by reducing birth weight and increasing
infant mortality… Parental smoking is an important cause of lower
respiratory tract illnesses … during the first years of life…. Both
asthma and respiratory symptoms … are increased among children whose
parents smoke, on the basis of over 60 studies…. Over 40 studies with different
designs have investigated effects of parental smoking across a range of
outcomes from acute otitis media to
surgery for glue ear. Pooled relative risks for these outcomes range from 1.2
to 1.4…. Overall, parental smoking, particularly by the mother, appears to be responsible
for between a third and a half of all SIDS cases…. Children of smokers…
have lower scores in cognitive functioning tests…
and have more behavioural problems, including conduct disorders, hyperactivity,
and decreased attention spans…. Tobacco smoke, whether voluntarily or
involuntarily inhaled, includes numerous carcinogens.”
Notice
that the toxins in tobacco smoke would affect the risk of disease in both
mother and infant, which would be greater in bottle-feeding/bottle-fed
mother-infant pairs because of the smoking rather than because of the bottle
feeding. However, typical studies such as cited by the Surgeon
General would find an “association” between formula feeding and the various
illnesses. These associations would then be improperly labeled as “excess
risks” of formula feeding.
Section E Misuse
of Observational Studies in Determining Public Policy:
Given what was related in
the previous section, there is clearly good reason to believe that conditions
associated with low-income living and parental smoking are underlying factors
that lead to asthma, obesity, respiratory and ear infections, and other
childhood illnesses. As an entirely separate matter, low-income and
tobacco-smoking mothers are known to be much less likely to breastfeed. Studies
that don’t (and can’t) properly take into account the underlying biasing
conditions will find various childhood illnesses to be “associated” with not
breastfeeding.
The Agency for Healthcare
Research and Quality discusses the recognized problems inherent in
observational studies (which are the sources of almost all of the Surgeon
General’s data) further as follows: The AHRQ’s central concern is “the
likelihood that bias, rather than causal relationship, can explain a reported
association.” Other words used to describe the possible results of
observational studies are “error” and “false conclusion.” The AHRQ goes on to
indicate circumstances in which it would be acceptable to pay attention to the
results of observational studies, and situations in which it would not be
proper to do so. If “the negative consequences of error in
this context are substantial,”
clinicians
and policymakers“would
not make decisions about this treatment based on
observational studies.” However, in a case in which (a) the
consequences of a false conclusion would not be serious and (b) randomized,
controlled studies (which have good procedures for avoiding bias in findings)
have already demonstrated the benefit of a certain treatment for a different
demographic group, then the “weaker study design”
that is inherent in observational studies would be acceptable for providing
additional basis for decision-making. It must be pointed out here that the
Surgeon General of the United States isinstituting
major public policyon the basis of
observational studies, and error in that public
policy has potentially extremely grave negative consequences. It is not
disputed that breastfeeding on the parts of typical women in present-day developed
countries exposes infants to high dosages of neuro-developmental toxins. (See
Section 1.2.d, and also the indented
sections of the introductory summary for a preview of some of the probable
effects of exposure of infants to toxins typically contained in breast milk.) The
only question is how great the harm caused is in relation to the presumed
benefits, and the Surgeon General does not provide evidence of a comparison
having been conducted on this matter. Basing her position on observational
studies is extremely weak, especially in relation to the seriousness of the
consequences of error.
The AHRQ also says that,
when considering whether a particular study design is adequate for a purpose,
two “critical questions” should be asked: "How likely is it that
bias is affecting the results?" and "How certain of the results is it
necessary to be in order to change policy or practice?" These questions
clearly address the weaknesses of observational studies, in that such studies
are very much subject to bias, and therefore are subject to false conclusions. In
response to the first question, results of observational studies in this area(such as the Surgeon General
relies on almost exclusively for evidence of benefits of breastfeeding) are certain to be heavily
affected by bias and are therefore very subject to false conclusions;
that is because of the known effects of low income and smoking that underlie
both higher rates of illnesses and lower rates of breastfeeding. On the second
matter, regarding how
certain of the results it is necessary to be in order to affect policy or
practice, it is absolutely critical to be certain in this case, given the
likely bad effects of increasing breastfeeding in major parts of advanced
countries during these times. As mentioned in the
introduction and in more detail elsewhere in this paper, it is not disputed that
neuro-developmental toxins are present in breast milk in concentrations that
give infants very unusually high doses at times when their brains are
developing and at their most vulnerable time in terms of lack of resistance to
toxins. (see Section 1.2.d,
and earlier in Section 1.2 for
background) These toxins have been increasing in the environment (and in
women’s bodies), and breastfeeding has been becoming more prevalent, at the
same time as increased mental impairment of male children (including autism)
and reduced mental abilities of boys and young men are becoming very apparent.
The reader can briefly return to the introduction (Intro)
and look at the indented sections to observe just a few of many associations
between breastfeeding and either mental impairment or greatly reduced fertility;
there are also close relations of breastfeeding with increased absence of
normal male sexual orientation.
Therefore, by the standards set by the U.S. Agency for
Healthcare Research and Quality, the observational studies cited by the Surgeon
General to support her position are very much subject to false conclusions
because the comparison groups are very dissimilar in important ways, and the
consequences of error from such use of observational studies are extremely
grave in the matter of the breastfeeding that she is promoting.
The case of the Los Angeles
area: A study published in 2010 found Los Angeles-area
neighborhoods whose children had "approximately four times
greater risk of autism than those born in any other place in California."
(THE SPATIAL STRUCTURE OF AUTISM IN CALIFORNIA, 1993–2001 Mazumdar et al.,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc Health Place. 2010 May; 16(3): 539–546.
Published online 2010 January 22.) As indicated by the source cited in Section
1.2.d,
population characteristics that are associated with high levels of breastfeeding
are higher
educational levels and white ethnicity. In the high-autism
cluster area of Los Angeles, the median property values in the various
neighborhoods ranged from $300,000 to $500,000, while values in the comparison
zone ranged from $150,000 to $175,000. Also, 62% of the population in the
high-autism area is white, compared with 41% in the comparison zone.
In
addition: The EPA says that much more dioxin intake results from food consumed
than from air breathed, and that generalization no doubt applies well to the
average infant and average child-bearing woman. But other Calif study found
effects of air supply near freeways. And the air supply in this high-autism
area is very different from the average. Los Angeles is famous for its smog,
which has a tendency to be trapped in a basin for extended periods.
<<insert graphics from article, topog of area>> This topographical
map shows a low area, almost surrounded by ridges and mountains, that seems
very similar to the high-autism area found in the above study. Pollution,
especially diesel pollution (see Section 1.4 for
details on that), from offshore as well as from truck traffic, would be blown
into this area by the normal on-shore daytime winds, and would typically then
be impeded by the mountains on the eastern side of this basin. In most areas,
the polluted air could drain out of the area at night, but in this area it
would be largely trapped. <<insert graphics showing on-shore/offshore
winds; likelihood of PM being deposited, like precip or with precip, on
windward sides of mountains; forming high-dioxin dust and soil that infants
ingest; maybe also Tuolum/Marip >> Bear in mind, as noted in Section
<< ??? >>, that dioxin releases in both on-road and off-road diesel
emissions have been increasing very rapidly as of the most recently-published
EPA data.
High-meat/fat
diet more likely in high-autism area, because of income differences and lower
Hispanic pop, which would affect infants in utero and via breast milk:
Testosterone
is also involved in female brain development, but it is clearly far less
important than in males; and testosterone in females is obviously not produced
in testicles, which are especially vulnerable to effects of toxins. This could
help explain why mental disability in females has been able to decline
substantially during this same period, along with the major declines in
environmental lead and PCBs, while mental disability was rising among males
Advice
from National Toxicology Program re BPA:
What can I do to prevent exposure to BPA?
If you are concerned, you can make personal choices to
reduce exposure:
• Don’t microwave polycarbonate plastic food containers.
Polycarbonate is strong and durable, but over time it may break down from
repeated use at high temperatures.
• Avoid plastic containers with the #7 on the bottom (http://www.recyclenow.org/r_plastics.html).
• Don’t wash polycarbonate plastic containers in the
dishwasher with harsh detergents.
• Reduce your use of canned foods. Eat fresh or frozen
foods.
• When possible, opt for glass, porcelain, or stainless
steel containers, particularly for hot food or liquids.
• Use infant formula bottles that are BPA free and look for
toys that are labeled BPA free.
It is widely known that BPA exposure comes from printed-out retail
receipts. From http://ferrignofit.com/bisphenol-a-bpa/ : "Based on
analysis by the Environmental Working Group of biomonitoring data from the CDC,
the average retail employee who comes into contact with receipts potentially
hundreds of times a day, possessed 30% more BPA in their bodies than people who
did not work in retail. Some retailers (such as Target and Starbucks) have
recently chosen to use BPA-free receipts. However, it is difficult for us to
avoid receipts all-together or know indefinitely what retailers use BPA-free
receipts. Therefore, what is to be done? One way to avoid BPA is to simply use
glass and ceramic in our homes and when heating food in microwaves. Another way
is to buy and support companies who provide plastic products that are BPA-free.
Also, when possible, choose fresh foods in lieu of canned ones."
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) …..revised clinical
report (2008) states there are few indications for the use of soy
protein-based formula in place of cow milk-based formula in infants.
According to the AAP, the only real indications for soy formula use are for
infants with congenital galactosemia, for use by families who are strict
vegans, or infants who are truly lactose intolerant. For more information, read AAP's May 2008 statement
Use of Soy Protein-Based Formulas in Infant Feeding (http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/pediatrics;121/5/1062.pdf).
"There are a number of reasons the NTP (National Toxicology
Program) panel is evaluating the safety of soy infant formula, including:
Numerous studies in laboratory animals exposed to the isoflavones
found in soy infant formula, including genistein, show adverse effects on
development.
There are some human studies on infants fed soy formula that need
to be examined in light of the findings from animal studies.
There is new information on blood levels of phytoestrogens in
infants fed soy formula.
There is public concern for effects on infant and child
development.
<<Move 1000-ft /hi-aut freeway study artcl to
here?>>
Topographic
map from
http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/salton/SaltonTopographicL.jpg
Keywords: causes of autism,
considerations regarding breastfeeding, disadvantages of breastfeeding,
environmental toxins, neuro-developmental toxins, dioxins in breast milk
Footnotes:
(a) In addition to the
major increases in diagnosed cases of autism, far larger
numbers of males born in the U.S. in recent decades apparently have a mental
impairment other than autism, as reported to the Census Bureau. (The
Census Bureau’s question that provides this data asks, "Because of a
physical, mental or emotional condition, does this person have serious
difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions?”) The percentage
of males said to have such mental difficulties who were born since the early
1990’s is twice as high as the percentage of females in the same age group
(that is, 5.2% for male children nationwide, which includes many of those with
autism); this in sharp contrast with the apparently gender-equal numbers
that apply to those born in the half-century leading up to the mid-1970’s. Those born in the period
between the mid-1970’s and the early 1990’s had an intermediate male-female
disproportion of impairments. This data is from U.S. Census Bureau Table B18104: SEX BY AGE BY
COGNITIVE DISABILITY Universe: Civilian non-institutionalized population 5
years and over. Data
Set: 2008-2010 American Community Survey 3-Year Estimates (accessed Jan. 2012
at http://factfinder2.census.gov , using their search process) The ratios
quoted were arrived at by looking at the percentage reported for each sex in
the various age groups.The even ratio of mental
disability among people born up to the mid-1970's, becoming very uneven later,
is compatible with various studies, as per the following statement about mental
disabilities in the U.S.: "Almost
all studies report… especially among children less than 15 years of age… males
have about a 1.5-fold greater prevalence….. Gender differences are not evident
among adults." (Leonard et al. 2002; Gissler et al. 1999)."
(emphasis added) This quotation was taken from Maulik PK, Harbour CK, 2011:
Epidemiology of Intellectual Disability. In: JH Stone, M Blouin, editors.
International Encyclopedia of Rehabilitation. Available online:
http://cirrie.buffalo.edu/encyclopedia/en/article/144/ ) Note that the quoted
ratio of 1.5 to 1 appears to be applied to the general population, not to
children specifically; it was merely stated that the difference between
the disability levels of the two sexes is especially large among children. To
arrive at a general ratio of 1.5 to 1 when there is no gender difference
in prevalence among most adults, the ratio among children has to be
substantially more uneven than 1.5 to 1.
(b)
This category increased
greatly from about one in 1500 reported in the early1990's to about one in 88 as
reported in 2012 for the U.S., during the same major period of mental
disability increase that we are concerned with. Since over 1% of all infants
currently being born will eventually be diagnosed with autism, and since the
male-to-female ratio for autism is well over 4 to 1, the percentage of boys
who are currently becoming autistic would be almost 2%. Of that near-2%, less
than half are considered to be retarded. There are mental health professionals
who say that the autism figures have risen solely because of changes in
awareness of the disorder and substitution of diagnoses of ASD for diagnoses
that in earlier years would have indicated other disabilities. They often
point to the similarity between current totals of mental disability
figures of various kinds and what the totals were 20 years or so ago. But such
a focus on totals does not account for the major change that has taken place in
the proportion of boys to girls among children with mental disabilities, which
is best explained by rise of disabilities (such as autism) that affect the two
sexes in greatly different proportions.
(c) "The Epidemiology of Autism SpectrumDisorders*, Craig
J. Newschaffer,1 et al., Department of
Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Drexel UniversityDrexel
E-Repository and Archive (iDEA)http://idea.library.drexel.edu
ANRV305-PU28-21 ARI 22 December 2006 7:53. Also a
CDC web page at www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
(d)
NIMH Director's blog at
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2009/nimhs-response-to-new-hrsa-autism-prevalence-estimate.shtml
(e) "On-Road Sampling of Diesel Engine
Emissions of Polychlorinated Dibenzo-p-Dioxin and Polychlorinated
Dibenzofuran," by Brian
K. Gullett, Jeffrey V. Ryan, U.S. EPA, Air Pollution Prevention and Control
Division (MD-65), National Risk Management Research Laboratory, Research
Triangle Park, NC, article found
at http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=23969#Download
(f) EPA's Proposal
to Designate an Emission Control Area for Nitrogen Oxides, Sulfur Oxides and
Particulate Matter, Technical Support Document, Chapter 3: Impacts of
Shipping Emissions on Air Quality, Health and the Environment At http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/nonroad/marine/ci/420r09007-chap3.pdf
, with the passage regarding marine diesel emissions found in Section 3.3.1.3 )
(g) From
NIEHS/NIH website at http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/topics/agents/endocrine/index.cfm)
(h)
From http://www.niehs.nih.gov/health/docs/endocrine-disruptors-2010.pdf)
(j) United
States Office of Research May 25, 2001 Update, Environmental Protection and
Development Agency, Dioxin: Scientific Highlights from DraftReassessment (2000)
(k)
ATDSR document on dioxins, section on environmental sources
(l) Judy L.
Cameron, Dept. of Psychiatry, Neuroscience, and Cell Biology and Physiology,
University of Pittsburgh, in "Effects of Sex Hormones on Brain
Development," Chapter 5 of Handbook
of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, MIT Press, 200, edited
by Charles A. Nelson and Monica Luciana. Charles A. Nelson is
Research Director, Developmental Medicine Center at Children's Hospital Boston,
and Professor of Pediatrics and Richard David Scott Chair in Pediatric
Developmental Medicine Research at Harvard Medical School; Monica Luciana is
Associate Professor of Psychology and Child Development at the University of
Minnesota.
(m) ”Steroid
Hormones and Brain Development: Some Guidelines for Understanding Actions of
Pseudohormones and Other Toxic Agents" by Bruce S. McEwen, Laboratory of
Neuroendocrinology, Rockefeller University, New York, NY (published in Environmental
Health Perspectives Vol. 74, pp. 177-184, 1987). Research in the author's
laboratory was supported by NIH Grant NS07080 and NIMH Grant MH41256.
Institutional support from the Rockefeller Foundation for research in
reproductive biology was also acknowledged.
(n)
Stephen B. Klein and B. Michael Thorne in their Biological Psychology
(2006), Worth Publishers, p. 390
(o) Sex matters in autism and other developmental disabilities,
Thompson, Caruso and Nellerbeck, Journal of Learning Disabilities , Sage Publications, London,Thousand Oaksand New Delhip. 352, referring to COLLAER, M. L. &
HINES, M. ‘Human Behavioral Sex Differences: A Role for Gonadal Hormones
during Early Development?’, Psychological Bulletin
(p)
Committee on Developmental Toxicology, listed above
(q) Sherry G.
Selevan, Carole A. Kimmel and Pauline Mendola, National Center for
Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, USA)
(r) In "Epidemiologic Evidence of Relationships Between Reproductive and
Child Health Outcomes and Environmental Chemical Contaminants", published
inJournal of Toxicology and Environmental
Health Part B, Volume 11, Issue 5 & 6 May 2008 , pages 373 – 517
(s)Winter JS, Hughes IA, Reyes FI, Faiman C,
"Pituitary-gonadal Relations in Infancy", Clin Endocrinal Metab 1976,
42:679), (as reported in Principles and Practice of Endocrinology and Metabolism, by Kenneth L.
Becker 2001
(p. 914))
(t
) "Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders
--- Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, Six Sites, United
States, 2000" and "Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders --- Autism and
Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, United States, 2006", Corresponding author: Catherine Rice, PhD, National Center
on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, CDC, Atlanta, GA 30333,
(u) CDC
web page at http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/data.html
(v) Found at http://water.epa.gov/learn/training/dwatraining/upload/dwaNPDWR-risktoruletraining.pdf
p. 1-58
(w) "Particulate Matter (PM)
Research Centers (1999–2005) and the Role of Interdisciplinary Center-Based
Research", (Fanning
et al.), p.4, found at http://www.epa.gov/ncer/science/pm/documents/11543.pdf
(x) Found a http://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/centers/core/grantees/rochester/index.cfm "Previous studies indicate that
UFP (ultrafine particles) can translocate ...... to extrapulmonary organs ….
within 4 to 24 hours post exposure. Additional studies were designed to
determine whether translocation of inhaled UFP takes place to regions of the
brain, ...We demonstrated ..... increases in the striatum (a section of the
brain), frontal cortex, and cerebellum. .....We conclude that the olfactory
neuronal pathway is efficient for translocating inhaled UFPs to the central
nervous system ....."
(y) in the
EPA's Health Assessment Document for Diesel Engine Exhaust (2002), in the section
that deals with bioavailability of organic constituents present on diesel
exhaust particulates (specifically in sections 3.5.3 and 3.5.4)
(z) "Residential Proximity to Freeways and
Autism in the CHARGE Study" , Environmental Health Perspectives,
Published in 119(6) Jun
2011, Heather E. Volk, Irva Hertz-Picciotto et al.
(aa)
EPA/600/8-90/057F, May 2002 "Health Assessment Document for Diesel Engine
Exhaust", p. 1-1 and elsewhere.
(bb)"Deposition of Particles
in Children's Lungs," Principal
Investigator: Robert F. Phalen, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine March
1985 ARB Contract No. A0-128-32
(cc) "Inhalation of Diesel Engine Exhaust Affects
Spermatogenesis in Growing Male Rats," N Watanabe and Y Oonuki,
Department of Environmental Health, Tokyo Metropolitan Research Laboratory of
Public Health, Tokyo, Japan. nobuew@tokyo-eiken.go.jp. Environmental Health Perspectives, Vol. 107, No. 7, accessed at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1566672/
(ff)
Data found on the EPA website at
http://www.epa.gov/cgi-bin/broker?_service=data&_debug=0&_program=dataprog.dw_do_all_emis_2005.sas&pol=231&stfips=06
(gg)
EPA/600/P-03/002F, November 2006, "An Inventory of Sources and
Environmental Releases of Dioxin-Like Compounds in the United States for the
Years 1987, 1995, and 2000", section 1.2.1
(hh) Data
found in the California state website at www.fire.ca.gov/communications/communications_factsheets.php
, scrolling down to "Statistics"
(ii) News
release for Santa Barbara County residents accessed at
http://165.221.39.44/incident/article/1384/7470/
(jj) See www.wunderground.com for Santa Clara, wind history.
(kk)Data taken from the website of the California Air Resources
Board, www.arb.ca.gov/adam/hourly/hourlydisplay.htm , showing hourly display of
PM 2.5 for Alameda County/Livermore for this period.
(ll)as found at http://www.dds.ca.gov/Autism/docs/AutismReport_2007.pdf.
Hispanics constitute about 36% of California's population, but account for only
28% of those with autism.
(mm)
EPA/600/P-03/002F, November 2006: "An Inventory of Sources and
Environmental Releases of Dioxin-Like Compounds in the United States for the
Years 1987, 1995, and 2000" , Section 2.4.1.
Review of Laboratory-Scale Studies
(nn)
This is mentioned in the EPA's web pages on dioxins as well as the following: Chlorinated Organic
Compounds in the Environment (CRC-Press, 1997), by Sub Ramamoorthy and Sita
Ramamoorthy (p. 275). One experiment (McCrady and Maggard, 1993) found that
the half-life of dioxins (sorbed on the surface of grass) subject to
photodegradation was a mere 44 hours. (There is evidence that UV's are not the
specific wavelengths within sunlight's spectrum that are responsible for the
photodegradation, but that doesn't detract from the finding that sunlight
causes degradation.) Dioxins suspended in the atmosphere are also subject to
photodegradation. (34, pp. 11-24 and 9-12,13) One study found the atmospheric
lifetimes of dioxins to be as little as an estimated one half day, with TCDD
(the most toxic of the various dioxin forms) having a lifetime of 0.8–2 days
(Atkinson 1991). (7b, Section 5.3.2.1)
(pp) Data Accountability Center (DAC),
providing data about children and youth with disabilities served under the Individuals
with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) - funded by the Office of Special
Education Programs (OSEP), U.S. Department of Education. Data accessed at
https://www.ideadata.org/DACAnalyticTool/Intro_2.asp . Data were not available for Vermont and Montana. California was
excluded from this map's data partly because it doesn't fit into a single
latitude group and partly because its pollution levels are extremely atypical –
see Figure 12.
(qq)
"Secular, medical trends fuel perceived
autism 'epidemic” in Clinical Psychiatry News, May, 2002 by Sherry Boschert , reporting on presentation by Bryna S. Siegel, Ph.D., providing
figures for 1987-1994. Also "The changing prevalence of autism in
California" by Croen, Grether and Hoogstrate in J. Autism Dev Disord, 2002
June;32(3): 207-15. Also Shattuck, Paul T. The
Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Presence
of Autism in US Special Education. PEDIATRICS Vol. 117 No. 4 April 2006,
pp. 1028-1037, looking at the period 1994-2003 for the U.S. as a whole. Also
in a publication of the California Dept. of Developmental Services , "The
Epidemiology of Autism in California", p. 13,
found at http://www.dds.ca.gov/Autism/docs/2background.pdf
(rr)found at
http://www.epa.gov/mercury/effects.htm
(ss)EPA-452/R-97-003 December 1997 Mercury Study Report to Congress Volume I
(tt)EPA-452/R-97-006, December 1997 MERCURY STUDY
REPORT TO CONGRESS VOLUME IV
(uu) "The
Epidemiologyof Autism SpectrumDisorders*, Craig J. Newschaffer,1 et al., Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics,
Drexel UniversityDrexel E-Repository and
Archive (iDEA)http://idea.library.drexel.edu
ANRV305-PU28-21 ARI 22 December 2006 7:53
(vv)EPA-452/R-97-003 December 1997 Mercury Study Report to Congress Volume I:
p. 19
(ww) ”Research
findings on particulate air pollution from the Southern California Particle
Center", John R. Froines, Ph.D., Director, presented at EPA webinar Dec
8, 2010, found at http://www.epa.gov/airscience/seminars/SCPCwebinar8Dec10.pdf
(xx) "Secular, medical trends fuel perceived
autism 'epidemic” in Clinical Psychiatry News, May, 2002 by Sherry Boschert , reporting on presentation by Bryna S. Siegel, Ph.D., providing
figures for 1987-1994. Also "The changing prevalence of autism in
California" by Croen, Grether and Hoogstrate in J. Autism Dev Disord, 2002
June;32(3): 207-15. Also Shattuck, Paul T. The
Contribution of Diagnostic Substitution to the Growing Administrative Presence
of Autism in US Special Education. PEDIATRICS Vol. 117 No. 4 April 2006,
pp. 1028-1037, looking at the period 1994-2003 for the U.S. as a whole. Also
in a publication of the California Dept. of Developmental Services , "The
Epidemiology of Autism in California" , p. 13,
found at http://www.dds.ca.gov/Autism/docs/2background.pdf
(yy) EPA-452/R-97-006, December 1997 Report to Congress, Office of Air
Quality Planning & Standards and Office of Research and Development
"MERCURY STUDY REPORT TO CONGRESS VOLUME IV: AN ASSESSMENT OF EXPOSURE TO
MERCURY IN THE UNITED STATES" 2.5
(zz) EPA-452/R-97-003 December 1997 Mercury
Study Report to Congress Volume I: p. 19
(aa1) EPA-452/R-97-004 December 1997
Mercury Study Report to Congress Vol. 2 Office of Air Quality Planning &
Standards and Office of Research and Development
(aa2) EPA's Proposal to Designate an
Emission Control Area for Nitrogen Oxides, Sulfur Oxides and Particulate
Matter,
Technical Support Document Chapter
3: Impacts of Shipping Emissions on Air Quality, Health and the Environment
At
http://www.epa.gov/otaq/regs/nonroad/marine/ci/420r09007-chap3.pdf
(aa3) 3.1.1.4
of same proposal
(aa4) found
at http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/chem_profiles/ozone/health_ozo.html
(aa6)
”Research
findings on particulate air pollution from the Southern California Particle
Center", John R. Froines, Ph.D., Director, presented at EPA webinar Dec
8, 2010, found at http://www.epa.gov/airscience/seminars/SCPCwebinar8Dec10.pdf
(aa7) EPA-452/R-97-005 December 1997 Mercury
Study Report to Congress c7o032-1-1 Office of Air Quality Planning &
Standards and Office of Research and Development Volume III: Fate and
Transport of Mercury in the Environment, p. 2-9
(aa8) "Technical Information for California
Health Officials," May
2003, California Department of Health Services, Environmental Health
Investigations Branch, p. 6
(aa9):
http://www.ers.usda.gov/statefacts/ia.htm
(aa10)
<<reference needs to be inserted here, from EPA doc? re dioxins forming
from HCl present)>> Various experiments have found a very direct
correlation between the concentration of HCl present and the amount of dioxins
produced during combustion. In one experiment (Eklund et al., 1988), the
production of chlorinated compounds (which include dioxins) was shown to drop
to zero when the concentration of HCl was below a certain level.(p. 2-22) And
in some experiments it was found that, for a given percentage increase in HCl fed into the combustion, the increase in dioxins produced was
disproportionately higher than the increase in HCl. p. 2-26).
(aa11)
“Proposal of Emission Control Area Designation for Geographic Control of
Emissions from Ships”, EPA-420-F-09-015, March 2009; the complete, lengthy
document can be read online at
http://www.epa.gov/nonroad/marine/ci/420f09015.htm . Quoting from <<Annex
__ of?>> that EPA document, "4.2.1, The United States Human
Health Impacts," (paragraph 1): " The United States government
estimates that emissions from ships operating in the proposed ECA are
responsible (every year) for up to 11,500 premature mortalities…." in the
U.S.
(aa12)
The Pollution Control Agency of Minnesotahas a web page on ”Health
Effects of Wood Smoke" in which they link readers to publications of other
authorities, including other states. Of the seven links to publications of
other states, a full three were to publications just from Washington.
(aa13)
ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2010)
(aa14) EPA-452/R-97-003, December
1997 Mercury StudyReport to Congress Volume I: Executive
Summary, p. 0-1
(aa15)
http://www.cpbis.gatech.edu/data/mills-online?state=New+York and U.S. Census
2010
(aa20) EPA-452/R-97-005 December 1997 Mercury
Study Report to Congress c7o032-1-1 Office of Air Quality Planning
& Standardsand Office of Research and Development Volume III: Fate
and Transport of Mercury in the Environment, p. 2-9
(aa21) In "Tracing the Origins of
Autism: A Spectrum of New Studies" by Michael Szpir, at
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.114-a412,linked
to by NIEHS site, referring to the Childhood Autism Risks from Genetics and the
Environment(CHARGE)study, quoting Hertz-Picciotto, the principal investigator
of the study. Also EUROPEAN COMMISSION HEALTH & CONSUMER PROTECTION
DIRECTORATE-GENERAL Directorate C - Public Health and Risk Assessment C2 -
Health information, Some elements about the prevalence of Autism Spectrum
Disorders (ASD)in the European Union 2005, p. 3.
(aa22) EPA's 2002 Health Assessment
Document for Diesel Engine Exhaust, Section 4.4
(aa23)
Potential developmental
neurotoxicity of pesticides used in Europe Bjørling-Poulsen et al; Environ
Health. 2008; 7: 50.Published online 2008 October 22
<<The male-to-female ratio of mental
impairment among people born in the U.S. during the last two decades has become
two-to-one, which appears to be a recent development. It contrasts sharply
with the even ratio that apparently prevailed among those born in the
half-century leading up to the mid-1970's. (Data drawn from U.S. Census Bureau
website, which based data on questions concerning residents' possible "serious
difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions"; see endnote (1).)
One side of this transition is a major decline in the mental impairment rate
among 5-to-17-year-old girls, with the rate dropping to only 2.6% of those born
since the early 1990's; this compares with the 4.6% rate that represents the
generations born in the three decades leading up to the mid-'70's. The rest of
the change has come from an increase in the rate of reported mental impairment
among 5-to-17-year-old boys, climbing to an average rate of 5.2%. Census
Bureau data indicate serious mental difficulties for about one out of eleven
boys in Maine and about one out of twelve in Rhode Island, even without
considering the probably greater prevalence of impairment among those born more
recently.
As background to the major changes that have apparently
taken place in mental impairment rates, it should be pointed out that there was
an approximately 90% decline that took place in environmental lead over recent
decades, beginning in the 1970's, and also major declines in releases from
major sources of dioxins and PCBs. These substances are known to be
neurological toxins, affecting infants and/or fetuses especially. So a decline
in mental problems should have been expected, and in fact there was a major
decline among females. What should be demanding our close attention is the
large increase in mental disability among males that took place during
that same period, when there were excellent reasons to expect instead a large decline.
Special attention should
also be paid to the apparent major decline in mental impairment that has taken
place among female children. This is a recent development, one which this
author has found to be referred to almost nowhere outside the bare statistics
in the many data tables in the website of the U.S. Census Bureau. As indicated
above, the decline in female mental impairment coincides with major declines in
certain known developmental toxins in the environment, and a causal
relationship is very likely. This appears to be a tremendous success story for
the regulatory efforts that resulted in those declines, a result from which we
should learn as much as possible, so that we can best achieve even greater
benefits from further, similar efforts, as follows:
Some lessons to be learned:
(a) successful past regulatory efforts should be extended and increased
whenever possible, including by removing the exemption that still allows
aviation fuel to contain lead; (b) regulators should recognize that motivating
the public is important, therefore they should not allow political correctness
to prevent them from using terms that convey the true seriousness of the
consequences of exposure to toxins (such as by using "developmental delay"
to describe what is normally a permanent, life-impairing condition caused by
exposure to certain toxins); and (c) it should be recognized how very
powerfully certain common environmental toxins are related to neurological
development; some valuable insights for future action should be
achievable by studying major changes that have taken place in rates of male and
female mental impairment together with rises and falls in exposures to specific
neuro-developmental toxins that are judged to affect one gender more than the
other.
Some influential people believe that environmental
pollutants are not causing mental impairment in a substantial way, and their
influence is helping prevent action and funding for additional research that
could have considerable benefit in preventing future mental impairments. If
anybody is heard alleging that mental impairment (including autism) is not
closely associated with environmental toxins, that person should be asked to
provide a possible explanation as to why, in recent decades, mental impairment
among recently-born females has declined so substantially while mental
impairment among males has increased substantially (as indicated by Census
Bureau data). Heredity could not possibly account for such rapid changes.
"Prevailing winds": This term
should be defined here, since it will be used at various places later in this
paper, and since it is subject to misinterpretation. It is the direction in
which winds in a particular area tend to blow more often than in any other
direction, and it is typically measured during a span of daytime hours, such as
7 AM to 7 PM, when wind speeds are normally higher than at night. But winds
might be blowing in the prevailing direction less than 30% of the time overall
and still is considered to be "prevailing." If emissions are
produced in the evening or at night, they are likely to fall closer to the
source and travel in a direction that's different from that of the usual
daytime winds. The prevailing winds in most of the U.S., beginning somewhere
north of the 30th parallel of latitude, blow toward the northeast;
the 30th parallel crosses the southern U.S. approximately at the
Gulf Coast of Mississippi. The "prevailing winds" on the West Coast
are onshore, but that applies mainly during daytime hours, and there are many
exceptions to that direction even during the day.
Boys are four times as likely to be diagnosed with
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as a girl, which doesn’t bode well for
their progressing in school work and becoming self-sustaining, tax-paying,
productive members of society. A study of public schools in Fairfax County,
Va., found that more than 20% of upper-middle-class white boys were taking
Ritalin-like drugs by fifth grade. (Business Week, May 26, 2003)
" What are the disadvantages to
breastfeeding? "
" Need a breastfeeding alternative? Attempting to discover any
disadvantages of breastfeeding, or nursing problems. You can read in
detail the information needed to determine if breastfeeding is right for
you, and whether breast feeding is right for you and your baby. If you
need an alternative, how and where to go. "
Regarding this map of PCB
exposure in the western U.S., bear in mind that dioxins and PCBs (which are two
closely-related categories of neuro-developmental toxins) from the environment
become concentrated in breast milk. (Section 1.2.d) For more on the subject shown in
this map, and for the complete map, see Section 1.2.x.1.![Description: C:\Users\Don\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\YZNQUC3E\MC900433160[1].jpg](index_files/image003.jpg){kind=small}
70% decrease in a
mother’s body burden of dioxins over a two-year period while she was
breastfeeding twins, as found in a U.S. study that praised the beneficial
effects of breastfeeding (see Section 1.1.b.6)![Description: C:\Users\Don\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\4YJ9GOC7\MC900433161[1].jpg](index_files/image004.jpg){kind=small}
?? increase in
neuro-developmental dioxins in her infants as a result of the above, during the
neurologically most vulnerable periods of their lives, while their brains are
rapidly growing. To get some idea of quantities and toxicity that are relevant
here, review some of the numbers shown in bold above, starting with 1/800,000th, and
also see below.
1) The eight Western European
countries that have the highest rates of breastfeeding have an average
fertility (birth rate per woman) of only 1.59. In contrast with those
low fertilities in the high-breastfeeding countries, the two
lowest-breastfeeding countries of that region have birth rates of 2.01 and 2.08
per woman; and the four next-lowest-breastfeeding countries have an
in-between average fertility rate of 1.78 (see Section 1.1.b.2);
Fig.
1.8
