[Shadow_Group] US study links more than 200 diseases to pollution

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

US study links more than 200 diseases to pollution

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor

14 November 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=582743

Pollution has been linked to about 200 different diseases, ranging from 
cerebral palsy to testicular atrophy, as well as more than 37 kinds of 
cancer, startling US research shows.

The study, which the authors say probably underestimates the full toll 
of the contamination, will focus attention on the need for information 
on the tens of thousands of chemicals routinely released into the 
environment.

But Britain has weakened the proposed European Union regulations to 
provide safety information on the substances at the behest of the US 
government.

The research, by doctors at what was then the University of California 
and at the Boston Medical Center, was restricted to listing only effects 
that had been found by several different studies and which are often 
well known.

More than 120 diseases have been definitively linked to pollution, and 
in another 33 evidence of a link is judged to be "good". For the rest 
the evidence is "limited".

Nine different pollutants have been "verified" to cause asthma - 
including four from car exhausts, the subject of an Independent on 
Sunday campaign - the study shows. Testicular atrophy is caused by 
oestrogen, increasingly found in British rivers that supply drinking 
water. Mercury poisoning can cause cerebral palsy, while more than 50 
pollutants - ranging from dioxins to PCBs - have been shown to cause cancer.

Other effects include: kidney disease, heart disease, hypertension, 
diabetes, dermatitis bronchitis, hyperactivity, deafness, sperm damage 
and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.

One of the authors, Dr Ted Schletter of the Boston Medical Center, said 
yesterday: "The human body is in constant conversation with this 
chemical milieu and some substances have turned out to be important 
contributors to disease." He said pollution often acted in concert with 
genetic predispositions to developing particular illnesses.

Dr J Peterson Myers, chief executive of the Virginia-based Environmental 
Health Sciences, said because science continued to find new effects of 
pollution, the number of diseases linked to it was "very much higher".

At the last count - more than 20 years ago - more than 100,000 chemicals 
were in use in Europe. Few have been properly tested.

Blood tests in the UK, the rest of Europe and the US indicate that most 
people carry potentially hazardous chemicals in their bodies.

The European Commission has been trying to introduce a new directive 
requiring industry to provide safety information on the 30,000 most 
common chemicals, but this measure has been watered down because of 
pressure from the Bush administration.

A leaked cable signed by Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, 
complains that the measures "would be significantly more burdensome to 
industry and government" and would "impact" on US exports to Europe. 
Tony Blair, President Jacques Chirac of France and Chancellor Gerhard 
Schröder of Germany wrote a joint letter to the Commission and succeeded 
in weakeningthe measure.

              







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