Chemicals

About 20 years ago Kent Anger and Barry Johnson came up with 750 chemicals that could harm the brain during development. Nobody has since then dared to update that number, it's just a guess today, there has to be more than a thousand if there was 750 twenty years ago. But the problem is also that we have put too little emphasis on this type of, uh, research. For example, it has taken so far the OECD 10 years to devise a battery of tests that they could recommend for systematic testing of chemicals for developmental neurotoxicity. That panel, that battery, has not yet been completed and authorized by OECD so it's taking way, way, way too long because it is complicated. But there is so much at stake. Children are just losing IQ points and losing their concentration span, memory, or motor functions. But in the present world where there's so much emphasis on knowledge and brain functions, this can also translate into dollars. The EPA has calculated that every time a child loses one IQ point because of chemical pollution it costs society something like $8,000 or $10,000.