Toxic pollutants can contribute to the development of many diseases, including cancer, Parkinson's Disease and learning and behavioral disabilities. Much of that exposure comes from the food we eat. Infants and children are especially vulnerable to harm, including harm from pollutants found in food. Farmers and workers involved in industrialized agriculture also are vulnerable, due to their heavy use of pesticides and other chemicals. IATP's Food and Health Program works to prevent exposure to toxic pollutants in the food chain by:

• Working with health-impacted groups to raise understanding and awareness of the links between disease and exposure to environmental chemicals.
• Creating informational materials to help people make informed personal decisions, as well as advocate for public policies, that aim to prevent chemical exposures at home and in food, even before science can conclusively "prove" how many people have been injured by such exposures.
• Building coalitions that foster the growth of the environmental health movement. IATP's involvement in trade, food, agriculture and environmental issues as well as health means that we have contacts with diverse constituencies. These existing relationships make it easier to present the notion that all of these issues—trade, food, agriculture, environment and health-are inextricably linked—and help groups to identify how they are potentially being impacted.

• Who's at Risk?
• Children are Vulnerable
• A Preventive Approach
• Collaborative on Health & the Environment
  • Preventing Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma
  • Preventing Parkinson's Disease
  • Preventing Learning and Behavioral Disabilities

Who's at Risk?
Everyone is at risk from suffering harm related to exposure to environmental pollutants. But some people simply are more sensitive to toxic injury. Their DNA may tell their body to produce less of an enzyme that protects against toxic exposures. So it makes sense for public policies to protect those persons in the population who will be more sensitive, even if no one could identify those sensitive individuals in advance.

Children are Vulnerable
Fetuses and children often are more vulnerable to suffering health effects from environmental toxins. Commonplace pollutants in the womb, in children's foods, their homes and broader environment include lead, mercury, PCBs, and some pesticides. Kids exposed to these agents early in life can later suffer impacts on their intelligence, memory, learning and behavior.

A mother provides a child's first environment, the womb. Toxins in her body can cross the placenta and affect the developing fetus. Her "body burden" of toxins also can transfer to her child through breast-feeding. Because of their rapidly growing bodies and developing organ systems, children are particularly at risk from exposure to pollutants in food. The brain, for example, continues to develop rapidly in the first two years of life, making it more vulnerable to mercury, PCBs and other food borne neurotoxins. Pound for pound, toddlers eat nearly four times as much food as the average person—so they can proportionally consume more food contaminants. They also tend to consume more of certain types of foods. For example, young children eat more apples and peaches than adults, and these are among the fruits with the highest pesticide residues.

Preventive Approach
Food, including breast milk, is widely contaminated with toxic pollutants. From birth, we find traces of these chemicals in our blood, urine and tissues. At the same time, chronic diseases—like childhood cancers and learning disabilities, which science has already linked to these chemical exposures—are on the rise. This situation came from our "prove harm" regulatory system, where chemicals are marketed without having been fully tested for their toxic effects—especially potential effects on fetuses and children. The system then requires large-scale harm to occur before government will impose any regulatory restraint. In other words, our system puts the burden of proof on the public to prove harm—to a scientific certainty—before government will consider restricting exposure to these toxic agents.

We support food production, and public policies in general, aimed at preventing pollution of breast milk and other foods with toxic chemicals, without waiting for additional science to prove harm to the infants who have nursed on that milk, and to the people who have eaten those foods. This preventive approach, consistent with the precautionary principle, underlies much of our work and that of our partners, like the Collaborative on Health and Environment, the Be Safe campaign, Preventing Harm Minnesota, and Health Care Without Harm.

Collaborative on Health & the Environment (CHE)
CHE was founded to raise awareness around emerging science now linking certain diseases, disorders and disabilities with possible environmental causes. IATP, a founding CHE member, works nationally, and especially in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. We focus (although not exclusively) on Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Parkinson's disease and learning and behavioral disabilities, trying to inform those most at risk about these environment-disease linkages. In fact, CHE scientists have compiled a database summarizing the science linking chemical contaminants with over 200 different diseases, and it rates those links as being "strong," "good" or "limited."

• Preventing Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma (NHL)—Incidence of Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has risen steadily in the developed world since the 1960s. National Cancer Institute maps indicate the Upper Mississippi watershed is a national "hotspot" for cases of NHL. Increased NHL risk is associated with being a farmer and with pesticide exposure among adults and children. People with certain organochlorine pesticides elevated in their bodies are at significantly higher risk for having NHL, according to recent study. Reducing exposure to pesticides generally, and organochlorine pesticides in particular, may be prudent for preventing NHL, especially in the Upper Midwest. Atrazine, the world's most used pesticide, has been linked to cancer and contaminates groundwater. Atrazine is commonly applied to corn and soybeans, the chief crops of the Upper Mississippi. Atrazine causes cancer in animals; EPA officially determined that atrazine is "not likely" to cause human cancers, despite the warning of its own independent scientific advisors that atrazine couldn't be ruled out as causing these cancers. Atrazine's manufacturer, Syngenta, had failed to give the EPA copies of its own study showing that workers at one Louisiana atrazine plant had prostate cancer at rates more than 3.5 times higher than did Louisiana workers generally. The European Union will ban atrazine by 2005.

• Preventing Parkinson's Disease (PD)—Parkinson's disease is a chronic, progressive neurological disease affecting the part of the brain called the substantia nigra. The substantia nigra produces dopamine, a brain chemical that helps tell muscles how to move. Incidence rates of Parkinson's disease are higher in rural areas. While the cause of Parkinson's disease is not known, a number of potential environmental factors have been identified. Several of these are toxic compounds or metals. Pesticide products that have been strongly linked to PD include:

  • Rotenone, a commonly used plant-based insecticide that is believed to cause both inflammation of the brain, which leads to death of dopaminergic (dopamine-producing) neurons, the pathways of communication in the brain, and direct toxicity to the neurons themselves. ["Parkinson's Disease and Exposure to Infectious Agents and Pesticides and the Occurrence of Brain Injuries: Role of Neuroinflammation," Bin Liu,* Hui-Ming Gao, and Jau-Shyong Hong, EHP, Vol. 11. No. 8, June 2003.]
  • Paraquat, an insecticide, is chemically similar to MPTP, a compound that induced Parkinson-like symptoms in some individuals who had been attempting to synthesize heroin but made MPTP instead. MPTP is used as a benchmark against which the toxicity of other chemicals is measured. Paraquat is used on a number of food crops, including corn and soybeans—both commonly grown in the Midwest—cotton and fruit. Maneb is used on corn and other vegetables, such as potatoes, lettuce and tomatoes. "Combination of Two Widely Used Pesticides Linked to Parkinson's Disease," University of Rochester Medical Center press release 2001.
  • Diothiocarbamate fungicides such as maneb contain manganese, a heavy metal that has long been associated with Parkinson-like symptoms. ["Proteasomal inhibition induced by manganese ethylene-bis-dithiocarbamate: Relevance to parkinson's disease" abstract. Zhou Y, Shie FS, Piccardo P, Montine TJ, Zhang J., Neuroscience. 2004. 128(2):281-91.

  Note: Mice exposed to paraquat and maneb in combination demonstrated nearly all of the molecular signs of PD that people do. Corn is one crop that frequently receives application of both products.

  Many neurologists tell their patients that "genetics loads the gun, but the environment pulls the trigger." That trigger could be something other than toxic chemicals but there is ample evidence to implicate a role for chemicals in creating conditions on the body that foster conditions that destroy dopaminergic neurons.

• Preventing Learning and Behavioral Disabilities—Food and Health's Dr. David Wallinga contributed to the landmark report, In Harm's Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development. It documents the science linking learning and developmental disabilities to an array of toxic pollutants commonly found in a child's immediate environment. Environmental pollutants are important contributors to these disabilities precisely because they are preventable. Dr. Wallinga gives Grand Rounds presentations to health professionals based on In Harm's Way. As a member of CHE's Learning and Developmental Disabilities Initiative, IATP works with other partners to prevent exposure to neurotoxins. We advise women and children how to choose and eat fish through our Smart Fish Guide, while minimizing risks to brain development. We inform parents generally how to protect their children from toxic pollutants in the home environment.