Birth Defects Surge in a Toxic World

This post was first published on Healthy Child Healthy World.

Recent headlines from China are revealing a growing public health crisis: birth defects are up 40% since 2001, to 145 per 10,000. A child is born every 30 seconds with a birth defect.

It sounds like a horrendous public health crisis, but it made me wonder what the numbers are here in the US. It couldn't be that bad, right? We have less poverty and better prenatal care, so we must have far fewer children being born with birth defects. Wrong. The Chinese estimate about one in every 69 children are born with a birth defect. According to the March of Dimes, one in 33 babies born in the US have a birth defect -- about twice as many as China.

How could this be? Maybe US physicians simply recognize more subtle defects than Chinese. Maybe. But, twice as many? A more interesting story emerges when you compare what each country is saying about causation. In the US, about 30% of birth defects are attributed to genetics, environment, or some combination of the two. A startling 70% of birth defects come from "unknown origins."

On the other side of the ocean, Chinese officials are saying loud and clear that the rise in birth defects are due to pollution from the coal and chemical industries. They aren't claiming ignorance and waiting decades until the full toxicological and epidemiological picture is drawn. Granted, it may be easier for them to make an assumptive analysis. They have industrialized at break-neck speed, so corresponding health effects may be easier to identify. In the US, our industrialization process has been a bit slower, so impacts from various branches of it may be harder to delineate.

Still, our government tends to drag its feet before laying blame, waiting decades or more before pointing a fickle finger. Consider lead, which has been studied for well over a century now and is known to be a potent neurotoxin, but is still allowed in everyday products. It was only last year that Congress finally banned it from products intended for children.

We use thousands of chemicals in everyday products and most have not been adequately tested for health impacts. Chronic disease and illness in the US is on the rise and you don't need statistics to tell you. When you were a child, how many people did you know with cancer, asthma, allergies, autism, obesity, or diabetes? These diseases are so prevalent today that our children are the first generation in recorded history to have a shorter lifespan than their parent's generation.

And, still, it's business as usual here in the US. We pat ourselves on the back for new fuel-efficiency standards of 35mpg by 2020 -- a standard that was in effect in China and Japan six years ago. We all applaud a maximum salary for CEOs of companies receiving government bailouts, when China's bailout plan includes regulations that prohibit banks from lending to companies that are not in compliance with environmental laws.

We keep using chemicals in cosmetics that have been banned in the EU for years. We keep eating dairy products from cows injected with rBGH even though that's been banned in Canada, the EU, Australia, and Japan for years. Our supermarkets and grocery stores are filled with products that contain questionable chemicals and all we hear is "a little bit won't hurt anyone." But, all these "tiny" exposures are adding up. Babies are being born with over 200 industrial chemicals in their bloodstreams. When will we admit it's gone too far? When will we seriously start pointing fingers?

Not only have Chinese officials already laid blame, they are already kicking off a prevention plan. And, when they decide to change, it's relatively comprehensive and quick. As Arrol Gellner of the San Francisco Gate put it:

In the United States, gross industrial pollution continued utterly unhampered for a century. At China's current rate of progress, and despite its posturing to the contrary, industrial polluters may well be brought up to Western standards within the next decade.

What's more, when China decides that it's ready to tackle its environmental problems full force, it'll move quickly. Unlike us fiercely independent-minded Americans, the Chinese people, for the most part, are far more amenable to sweeping change being imposed from the top down - a deep-seated cultural trait that stems, not from China's trifling time under communism, but rather from its nearly 3,500 years under dynastic rule.

The result is that official pronouncements -- whether they concern spitting on the sidewalk, smoking in restaurants or wasting electricity -- are acted upon with a sense of earnestness and devotion that's quite impossible to imagine here in the United States. So, when an exemplary environmental policy finally reaches the top of the agenda, China may yet become Mother Earth's best friend.

What are we waiting for?

Comments

[Kaviraj]

AND BY EXTENSION, THAT GMO'S ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE INCREASE IN BIRTH DEFECTS? DID YOU KNOW THAT RATS AND MICE FED GMO'S ARE ALL HAVING OFFSPRING WITH BIRTH DEFECTS? THAT ALL OF THEM ARE BUT HALF-SIZED OF NORMAL RATS AND MICE?

[Kaviraj]

CHRIS,

HAVE YOU NOT THOUGHT ABOUT GMO'S?

HERE IS A THREAD WHERE THE DANGERS OF GMO'S ARE EXTENSIVELY DOCUMENTED, INCLUDING BIRTH DEFECTS.
http://www.hpathy.com/homeopathyforums/forum_posts.asp?TID=9169&PN=1
THE SECOND POST IS PARTICULARLY TELLING.
HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED THE FACT THAT C-SECTIONS HAVE INCREASED TO ALMOST A MILLION YEARLY IN THE US? DID YOU KNOW THAT THE UMBILICAL CORD IS SHORTENED BY HALF AFTER CONSUMPTION OF ROUND-UP READY SOY? HAVE YOU CONSIDERED THIS MAY BE THE MAIN REASON FOR THE INCREASE IN C-SECTIONS?

[mamacat]

The plutocracy of China is not subject to influence from corporate billions.

America's democratic republic is subject to "influence" from corporations. When the U.S. was started, the mega-corporations did not exist, and their threat to our society was not addressed in the Constitution. As this country has grown, the influence and power of corporations has grown even faster, to the point that often the power of the government is used for the benefit of the corporate plutocracy.

So, the difference between China and the U.S.? Good question.

[joebaggadonuts]

While China talks, Americans are actually getting it into their emotional makeup that the environment needs our attention. Or at least I think that's what is going on. The fools who ran things have been put to the run, and those few idiots still dancing the Limbaugh Lambada will get their comeuppance soon. Once Americans actually agree on something, it will move incredibly fast. I am holding my breath. Chinese talk a good game, but without a populace behind the moves, compliance is spotty. For them, making rough examples of non-compliers is the way to gain the upper hand. For Americans true internalization is required. That takes longer, but it keeps better.

[sheila]

In my opinion, this stems from the "burden of proof" which has favored profiteering over human and environmental health. Chemicals, including drugs, are essentially "presumed innocent" until proven guilty, which is INSANE. They should all be presumed "toxic" until conclusively proven "harmless" by an independent government body (not by dubious studies paid for by the manufacturer).

This country is on a collision course with environmental meltdown because of its extremist support of "profits" as the first 8 of 10 priorities on our societal list. Employees, health, the environment, community - all are afterthoughts in the mercenary quests for the Big P. Our Blue Sky laws give total cover to this warped pyramid scheme by making "seeking shareholder profits" above all else in corporate regulations. So, even if a corporation wanted to do the right thing, it finds itself in violation of its fiduciary duty to shareholders, which is (intentionally) extremely narrowly drawn as short term financial gain.

We need to change our corporate governance and our FDA (and other) processes to reflect American values - fair employment, clean environment, human health, fair trade, and community benefits.

[dadw5boys]

Why does it take a comparsion to make us think.

1 case is too many if the damamge comes from the Enviornment.

[avraamjack]

It is shameful that Americans need someone to point out the obvious.