Poisoned Profits – The Toxic Assault on Our Children

I feel very fortunate to have grown up and had 2 of my 3 kids in Arizona. The area was very nice with no factories, plants, or landfills anywhere near. We lived in the burbs where none of the industry of the city, some 30 minutes away, touched us much. Even as a child I knew I was lucky in that sense because I spent summers in my hometown, in rural Ohio. A small town, lots of corn fields and farms, cows grazing in the pastures… it sounds dreamy and serene right? But my hometown has a dark little secret. Many years ago the US military chose a site there to burn and bury toxic chemicals from an armory. It was a military waste dump. Years after they left, a middle school and a high school were built on top of it. My mom went there.

In the late 90’s and early 2000’s it became clear that many of the students that went to that school were sick. A large number of them were getting leukemia and it didn’t take long before people put the pieces together. The soil and the groundwater were contaminated with deadly chemicals and people in the area paid a heavy price. On top of it the victims also received death threats from people who claimed that their property was now worthless because the contamination had been brought to public light.

Not far away in another state where I have family, another small town was under siege. A waste dump there from a big corporation was making children sick. One woman I know very well has six kids. 2 of them were born with a cleft palate. One was born blind. Many other children in the area where born with the same defect. This woman’s little sister got leukemia. That little sister survived but married a man who died at 22 years old from stomach cancer. Her twin sister’s husband died a few months later from brain cancer. Another sleepy Midwest town…another terrible secret.

All of this came flooding back when I read the book Poisoned Profits – The Toxic Assault on Our Children. I highly recommend that every parent read this book. Quite frankly it is the Silent Spring of our generation. It is a whistle blowing book that exposes how we and our children have been poisoned in the name of profit and how our government seeks to protect the guilty instead of the innocent.

It opens by telling the story of a small Tennessee town where the birth of a baby with a cleft palate and lip spurred a mom to investigate. She found 19 other babies had been born in the same town with the same defect in the past two years. Four babies had been born with a condition where the lobes of their brain did not fuse. Several children had a rare condition where one of their eyes would bulge out to the size of a water balloon. With all of this tragedy, this town had a heck of a time getting anyone to do any testing but eventually it was discovered that a nearby automotive company was dumping toxic liquids illegally in the town landfill. When that was too risky they hired people to bury the waste in various spots all over the county. They had been doing this for MANY years. Even more outrageous was the fact that when this was discovered… nothing was done about it. The company did not get fined or have to clean up their mess. The federal government opted to do nothing. New home buyers were not told about the the fact that their water had dangerously high levels of toxins. Many children were poisoned and the attitude was too bad, so sad.

This book goes on to show that these instances are not rare by any means. Our children are being assaulted everyday by companies and corporations who only care about profit and our government, whose primary responsibility is supposed to be defense, stands by and watches in silence.

These are the words of a State Senator from that small town in Tennessee. He is named in the book.

We have to understand that we are a capitalistic society. To try to implement something that might be good for the public but that could create a burden, embarrassment, or hardship for the business community creates a a real challenge for you if you are trying to pass legislation.

Obviously it is more important to protect horrendous companies from embarrassment or hardship than to protect public health.

Certainly some children are more at risk than others, like children born in towns and cities close to industry that may create toxic byproducts but ALL children are effected in some ways. Cord blood testing has shown that most children are born now with over 300 different chemicals in their blood. No one is 100% safe nowadays. Chemical companies, unlike drug companies, do not have to prove their product is safe before it is approved for use. Any info they do provide about safety is industry funded and addresses adult safety, not child safety. As a nation we have to start making better choices and that is what this book is about.

The chapter titles show how hard hitting this book is… I loved them… victims, evidence, scene of the crime, forensics, perpetrators, co-conspirators, indictment, etc. It is about it time that someone tells it like it is. Right now 1 in 3 children in this country has a chronic disease or illness of some sort. It is predicted that this will only get worse, not better. That is seriously scary stuff! And it is no wonder since according to the book there are 82,000 industrial chemicals formulated into more than ten million products. There are 900 active pesticide ingredients formulated into 18,000 different products.

Kids are exposed to BPA in their toys and food, pesticides in their food and clothes, mercury and heavy metals in food and vaccines, chemical flame retardants in their pjs and mattresses, PCBs and VOCs in the air, chemicals in their food that preserve and enhance flavor, and the list goes on and on. Everything around them releases chemicals to be absorbed into their bodies.

The chapter titled Scene of the Crime shows how our homes are often the place where our kids are most violently assaulted by all these chemicals. In the book we go on a walk through of a typical home showing all the places where danger is lurking from the bed the baby sleeps in, to the shower curtain in the bathroom, to the pan we cook bacon in on Sunday morning. It is very alarming.

In the co-conspirators chapter we get to see how companies get free reign to poison our kids via the ideals of free market capitalism. This chapter take no prisoners and names many groups, companies, and politicians who have done some dastardly things to our kids.

In the chapter Witness for the Defense we begin to see how these corporations take a page from the Tobacco handbook and use science to mislead people. These companies have created  a new branch of scientific exploration called Made-to-Order science that enables them to derail regulation, kill lawsuits brought against them by victims of their products, and mollify public fears.

This is an amazingly informative and hard hitting book. Since every child is potentially a victim, every parent need to read it and arm themselves with knowledge. Only then can we as parents and as a society try to get justice for our kids.

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