How Lead And Other Environmental Toxins Are Affecting Us

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

What happens is that it's not diagnosed until problems appear and then it's not diagnosed as lead poisoning. Part of the problem is when you have an exposure that precedes the discovered symptoms by 13 or 14 years or even by 20 years, it's really hard to tie it to the initial exposure. Right. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark.

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Episode of the Dr. Pharmacy. hi, I'm Kaya Perowne, one of the producers of the Doctors Pharmacy podcast. 80,000 toxic chemicals have been released into our environment since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and very few have been tested for their long-term impact on human health. You might be surprised to learn that there are many government policies and even sanctioned decisions to dump toxins in areas that poison communities and steal children's cognition and health. Earlier this year, Dr. Hyman sat down to discuss these issues with medical ethicist and author Harriet Washington.

So lead poisoning has come way down, thank God, but we're learning that even low levels of lead can have an impact. So we just think the level was 40, was safe, then it was 20, then it was 10, and now studies show that even down to one or less, there's impairment of IQ and cognitive function. And so we've had this sort of staggering effects to our population, but it's still happening in communities of color in disproportionate ways that harms millions of people, that affects their intellectual development, that provides these horrible deadly environments that are robbing communities of color of the ability to succeed in life, of their full intellectual capacity, and really affecting America as a whole. So can you tell us the connection between these environmental toxins and our intelligence and IQ and how that actually works?

Well, of course you're right, and the CDC has stipulated that there is no threshold for lead exposure. that any amount of lead exposure is dangerous.

Yeah, people say, what's the normal blood.

Level of lead or mercury? I'm like, zero. Yeah, well, that's what it should be. That should be the normal one. However, to say that lead has gone down is not actually true. It's gone down over the nation as a whole.

Right.

But if you look at places where pockets of children of color, it is not. That's what I mean. That's where people are exposed. Yeah, I knew that's exactly what you wanted to convey. So, that's the problem. We now have it limited to pockets of children who live in these areas, once again, as I said, people who are trapped in the area, either by economics or by race or by both. Race actually tends to be the larger factor here, but economics is a factor as well. People tend to assume that it's low income, socioeconomic, it's a problem. But all the poisoning issues equally pertain to African Americans who are middle class, utterly middle class, and living in the suburbs. Yes. There are many communities that are suburban communities, fully employed, that if they were not African American, there'd be no reason for them to be the foci of Superfund sites or be exposed to toxic waste. But they are.

Why is that?

Because it's a matter of race.

Because they're segregated communities.

No, no, no, no, no. We're talking about We're talking about communities that are African-American and are solidly middle class. I mean, I think the 2017 study showed that African-Americans with median incomes between $50,000 and $60,000 are exposed to far more toxicity than white communities with incomes of $10,000.

Because they live in neighborhoods that are more likely to be exposed to environmental.

Toxins because of... Well, it's actually the exact opposite. they are living in communities that should not be exposed to, but they are because of race.

Why is that?

NIMBY syndrome.

Not in my backyard.

It's kind of a zero-sum game, right? Whites understand that a lot of this is political clout, right? Whites understand that these toxins are gonna be located somewhere. Nobody wants them in their neighborhood, right? So whites who have some political clout or power or representatives with little clout of power will fight legally to prevent the siting of them in their communities. And so it's by default that they're cited in African American and Hispanic communities. They don't have as much clout. Political gerrymandering or robs them of power. Also home ownership. Remember the redlining we talked about earlier? People who don't own their own homes are much more vulnerable to this kind of thing. You don't have the clout to fight it. If the homeowner doesn't really have a problem with it, then you're stuck.

Mm-.

So that happens often. But even homeowners in places like Anniston find that their communities are targeted. That's where the dumping happens. That's where the illegal, not illegal and illegal sighting of toxic waste happen because of racism, because whites don't want it. You can do blacks, but blacks tend not to have the political power.

Don't have the political power, yeah.

So it's not, so having, being middle class, Even owning your own home doesn't protect you. If you're Black, you're still more likely to be a victim here.

So really the question is how does lead and other environmental toxins rob us of our intelligence and our IQ?

In a myriad of ways. And of course it depends on the toxin. But one of the most profound things I think that is not really understood about these exposures is that although we can trace lead's many multifactorial effects on the body, including Brain damage that is subtle enough not to be diagnosed very often. What happens is you have children who are exposed antenatally, you know, when the damage can be the worst. Yeah, but what happens is that antenatal, that's what I meant. Yeah. But what happens is that it's not diagnosed until problems appear and then it's not diagnosed as lead poisoning. Part of the problem is when you have an exposure that precedes the discovered symptoms by 13 or 14 years, or even by 20 years, it's really hard to tie it to the initial exposure. So what's happening with a lot of African-American children is they're being exposed by things like not only lead and PCBs and even pesticides that have been long banned but still find their way into our food and water, but also exposed to a lot of these things, even alcohol. is a factor.

Sure.

So what happens is when they exhibit behavioral problems at 15, they might get a diagnosis of conduct disorder. Some psychiatric diagnosis describes their behavior, but doesn't get to the heart of the problem. So it goes unrecognized. We don't see the connection between behavioral problems, between failing in school, between failing in employment, not being able to hold a job, to the initial exposure that happened. when they're very young. Industry scientists will often say, oh, the amount you're talking about is too small to cause a problem. That might be true in a full-grown healthy adult with good nutrition. But if you're talking about exposure of a child in utero, of a newborn child whose brain is still developing and who is making these neuronal connections that happen with this exquisite choreography, you know, certain structures are developed on a certain day. Neurons migrate on a certain day. and exposure that day can be devastating to the brain. Maybe a week later it wouldn't have harmed the child. Maybe a week beforehand it would have had no effect. Certainly an adult would have had no effect, but at that particular time, the wrong exposure can cause a lifelong disability.

Not enough attention paid to that, I think. Yeah, and I think what's also true is that a lot of these chemicals are studied in isolation. So they go, well, it's a little bit of this, how can it hurt? But the truth is, We're exposed to hundreds and thousands of these chemicals. They're all synergistic and they actually might not just be additive, they might be multiplied. In other words, one plus one isn't the effect of two, it might be the effect of 100 or 10. And so, when you look at the study done by the Environmental Working Group on 10 newborns, they looked at their umbilical cord blood. I mean, this is before they take their first breath. This isn't necessarily poor African-American community, this is just the average. person, they had 287 known toxins in their umbilical cord blood before they took their first breath, including about 211 neurotoxins, things like mercury, lead, phthalates, pesticides, glyphosate, flame retardants, PCBs, even DDT, even though it's been banned for years. And what's fascinating is in this country, we shoot first and ask questions later.

Exactly.

And I think in Europe, they say, well, you have to prove that this chemical is safe before we include it in anything. In this country, like, well, you know, let's use it and see what happens.

Exactly.

Well, it's interesting, you know, as a functional medicine doctor, you know, I've been focused on environmental toxins for decades, and, and, and the way we test for them doesn't make sense. Right. Because particularly the heavy metals like mercury and lead, they only stay in your blood for a short period of time, maybe 90 days. They're either excreted, portion of them excreted in your urine and stool, but a lot of them are then stored in your tissues and organs like your brain. and your muscles and your bones. And so you can measure lead levels in bones. And so measuring someone's lead level in their blood actually only reflects what their recent exposure was, but they could have been exposed heavily early on and then not later and then it'll look like normal, but they still have high levels of lead. And so I think, you know, for those listening, you know, it can be fatalistic to say, well, we're all poisoned, we're all toxic. We've already done the damage. And I can tell you clinically from my point of view, I was mercury poisoned from living in China. and thousands of patients that I've treated with lead mercury poisoning, they get better when you treat them. And there's a science to how to detoxify from heavy metals and how to upregulate your body's own systems for getting rid of pesticides and chemicals and so forth. So there's a way to do it. I've written a lot about it, but I think it's important for people listening to understand that it's not a done deal. If you've been affected, if you think your children have been affected, that there.

Are ways of treating this, but they're not within the traditional healthcare system. It's important, I think, because futility is one of the things we're up against. Futility is a problem. If you assume that nothing can be done, nothing will be done. And I do make the point in my book that chelation and other methods can help people.

So from this whole idea of these communities who are marginalized with these toxic effects, these chemicals, what else can be done either locally, nationally, individually?

I devoted two chapters of my book to that. In chapter six, I talk about what individuals can do. to exercise more control, not perfect control, but more control over their own environment, detoxify their own environment. And there are many things you can do in your home. It's important to understand, though, that as we said before, an individual cannot alone, you know, eliminate this problem. It's not an individual responsibility. But in your home, you can do certain things. If you live too near a bus depot or are, you know, gas fumes from passing vehicles, because lead has been reduced greatly but not eliminated, in fuels in this country. Then there are things you can do like run the air conditioner, keep your doors shut if you can afford to do that. And I point out that there's funding available to help individuals to do that. I talk about the vermin in their homes, which have also been shown to cause disease that lowers cognition and things you can do to help eliminate those vermin.

You mean like cockroaches and dust mites?

I mean like cockroaches, dust mites and rodents. Rodents are a largely unrecognized source of hantaviruses. Sol virus, for example, has been tied to hypertension, which in turn has been tied to lowered cognition over time. So getting rid of these rodents is more than an aesthetic concern. It's a very immediate health concern. And people who rent often feel powerless because it's not their property. They have control maybe over their own apartment, but not neighboring apartments. There's limits in what they can do. But I point out the legal help that's available to them because most laws and most municipalities say that the owner of the home is responsible for keeping the area vermin free.

And also, lead remediation is legally mandated, but it's not being done by landlords.

Right, but still there are things that people can do. There's also OSHA, you know, depending on the use of the building. So I detail a lot of that for readers so they will know what to do.

So practical things about how to get help.

In their own environment. In the next chapter I talk about communities uniting to get help from the government and other agencies and to try to clean up their own areas. And the thing is that these communities, I try to stress to people, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. There already exists a lot of agencies that have been very successful in helping other communities and you can benefit from what other people have gone through to try to get your own area attention that it needs.

When it comes to toxins, there is a compounded effect. One plus one does not equal two, it might equal 100. And we know that many of these so-called safe exposure limits for individual toxins have now been proven much too high. Lead, for example, is not only linked to heart disease, high blood pressure, and kidney failure, it is also connected to ADHD, developmental, learning problems, and autism. And symptoms of lead poisoning can range from headaches, tremors, and mood problems to nausea, memory difficulties, and even constipation. Yet there is a lack of knowledge and resources to help individuals and communities to get to the root cause of these mysterious symptoms. When combined with a lack of precautionary testing, we are ignoring a massive health crisis. If you'd like to learn more about any of these topics you heard today, I encourage you to check out Dr. Hyman's full length conversation with Harriet Washington. Please also consider sharing this episode to help raise awareness about these issues and how we can best overcome them. Thank you for tuning in. Until next time. Hi everyone. I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their Find a Practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed.

Healthcare practitioner, and can help you make.

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