More than 60 adults – mostly moms – filled the Community Room at Rye Neck High School recently, to learn about toxic chemicals.

 

By Bill Lawyer

More than 60 adults – mostly moms – filled the Community Room at Rye Neck High School recently, to learn about toxic chemicals.

Leading the “Heard in Rye” program were Rhonda Sherwood, a Greenwich resident who serves on the Executive Board of Mount Sinai Children’s Environmental Health Center, and Dr. Maida Galvez, an educator and director of the Mt. Sinai Region 2 Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. Educators and health professionals from Mount Sinai have been presenting programs to groups from Rye and surrounding communities for many years. And, the community has been an important source of funding for Mount Sinai projects, through annual benefit events.

In her introduction, Ms. Sherwood noted the community’s support, saying, “You guys get it.” Before offering updates and new research findings, she gave a brief history of the ways that toxic chemicals became a major source of illness and death. DDT was considered a miracle chemical for increasing crop yields, until its toxic effects worked their way up the food chain to humans. Ms. Sherwood recalled her childhood in the Midwest, where her brothers would chase each other around squirting DDT in each other’s faces!

She showed slides of ads touting that “DDT Is Good For Me” and “Plastics Are An Important Part Of Your Healthy Diet”. This led to a look at the toxic aspects of plastics, and their impact on children’s diseases, such as asthma, ADHD, obesity, type 2 diabetes, leukemia, brain tumors, and autism.

Plastics-related diseases among young adults have also risen dramatically — particularly testicular and breast cancers. And, she asserted that toxins in pregnant women have been found to be transferred to unborn babies – making them, in effect, “pre-polluted”.

Phthalates are virtually everywhere – including a large number of products being ingested or absorbed by children. These include lotions, pharmaceutical pills, plastic in bottles and cups, the plastic lining in food and beverage cans, liquid soaps, and food products.

Dr. Galvez provided her research on looking for the impact of phthalates on girls and boys. Endocrine disruptors affect the functioning of the endocrine glands, which determine the sexual development of boys and girls. They have found that girls are reaching puberty earlier, and that the puberty stage is lasting longer.  Because of this, the phthalates have a longer time to impact the girls’ reproductive system, which in turn causes a higher risk of birth defects when they have children.

The suspected effect on boys is “increased feminization” – meaning lower testosterone levels and a greater propensity to playing games associated with girls. And studies have found evidence that when boys exposed to phthalates become adults they have lower sperm counts.
One problem with getting information is that many phthalate-laced products are not required to list their ingredients, for “proprietary reasons”.

During the question-and-answer period, most parents focused on wanting to know how they can avoid products with phthalates. Dr. Galvez mentioned a variety of websites with that sort of information, and all the attendants were given a folder with tips and contacts on “How To Green Your Daily Routine”.

Ellen Weininger, education coordinator of the Rye-based Grassroots Education organization, discussed the various programs they are doing to promote awareness about environmental toxins.

Among the men present were Rye Middle School science teacher John Borchert and two students. Mr. Borchert is considering two possible projects for students to carry out. One would have them do research from either the chemical manufacturer or environmental health researcher point of view, followed by a class debate. Another would have students publish an environmental newsletter that would include information about the pros and cons of phthalates and other commonly-used chemicals.

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Either way, those in attendance agreed this is a topic that will be important for all young people to understand, for their sake, and that of their children, in the years ahead.