Baby Burden

Environmental group looks to autism community for support
By Cris Italia

Talking to Robert Wiles of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) is scary. Seriously. No one should know as much as he does about the contaminants in our body, but if someone has to, Wiles is a good choice. The co-founder of EWG is a former senior staff officer at the National Academy of Sciences’ Board of Agriculture, before joining President Ken Cook and forming the environmental advocacy group in 1993. Currently the executive director, Wiles says that he is setting his sights on autism.

Why autism? Because Wiles feels that contaminants not only in the infant stages of a child’s life but also during pregnancy can affect the immune system and make a baby more vulnerable to chemicals which may contribute to the cause of autism. "We’ve done tests here with over 100 individuals and found close to 500 chemicals in a person’s body," Wiles explains. "We’ve done testing on (umbilical) chord blood and found 287 chemicals just in chord blood and that’s affecting babies. The autism community understands the impact of chemicals on children’s development."

While autism is just one of the disorders that can be a result of these contaminants in their bodies before birth, Wiles believes it may also contribute to other childhood diseases such as cancer, asthma and several other developmental disorders. He also believes that lifetime chemical exposures lead to adult diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

So how do we find out if these chemicals are indeed contributing to body burdens that children might not be able to process and can potentially heighten the risk of sickness later on in life? In 2005 EWG supported a bill introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), which would overhaul the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The Kids-Safe Chemicals Act of 2005 did not get the support it needed two years ago, but will be reintroduced this year. Wiles is looking to the autism community to unite and support the bill the way they have in the past for bills such as the Combating Autism Act.

The legislation contains fundamental reforms of the TSCA, which has been criticized as being a "notoriously weak" chemical safety law and has not been reformed in about 30 years. "A lot of different chemicals have been introduced to our environment in that time," Wiles says. "So it’s due for an overhaul."

The bill would require chemical manufacturers to provide health and safety information on chemicals used in consumer products like baby bottles and food wrapping instead of presuming a substance is safe until proven dangerous. "It will basically give us a way of telling whether or not the chemical is safe for our child and if it is then they can continue using it," Wiles says. "Right now they can make any chemical and use it anywhere, and we never know if that chemical is hurting our children."

"Every day, Americans use household products that contain hundreds of chemicals," Senator Lautenberg said in a statement in 2005. "Most people assume that those chemicals have been proven safe for their families and children. Unfortunately, that assumption is wrong. We have laws to make sure that pesticides and medicines are safe, but we fail to require similar analysis for the chemicals used in baby bottles, water bottles, food packages and thousands of other products. This is inexcusable."

EWG has also worked on several autism related mercury bills in the past. "Just knowing how toxic mercury is and that it’s in our vaccines, looking into it was a no-brainer," Wiles says. "We owe it to kids to look into it. This is what we do."

A 2004 study conducted by EWG found that children with autism have a common weakened ability to protect themselves from the effects of small amounts of toxic metals in their bodies. This trait appears as a severe deficit of active glutathione in children with autism when compared to healthy children. Glutathione is a potent antioxidant that is the body’s most important tool for detoxifying and excreting toxic metals.

Wiles’ goal is to continue to support science that proves the mercury/autism connection, but feels that the Kids-Safe Chemical Act is extremely important to finding a cause. "There is no doubt that contaminants in a child weaken an already fragile body," he says. "Nobody wants a baby born pre-polluted. This is bad. I think everyone can agree with that. Similar legislation passed in Europe called REACH, resulting in a massive overhaul of their chemical tests. This bill basically says that you have to prove that you are safe for babies if you are found in babies."