To be honest before I had my own children I didn’t think a whole lot about the environment. I blocked out the back-and-forth between environmental types and their critics. Then, after I had my first baby, the debate crept into my head. Glancing at old peeling paint or a slab of barbecued salmon, my mind would race, remembering an article I had read weeks ago, tipping me off to a particularly vile toxin that wreaks havoc on our children’s nervous system.

As I had my second and third child more and more newspaper headlines began to report connections between environmental threats, like mercury, lead, and plastic with mushrooming childhood ailments. I began to become plagued by a gnawing dread that I wasn’t sufficiently protecting my children from serious environmental contaminants. Even so, because it is downright scary to think about the reported side effects — learning disabilities, asthma, cancer — I continued the campaign of denial, telling myself that not only were the media reports overblown, but there was nothing I could do about the toxins that supposedly contaminated my children’s food, air, and water. Then, just in my circle of close friends, as our kids became toddlers and went off to school, one little girl was diagnosed with a mild form of autism where she had difficulty walking and suffered seizures. Another learned her seven-year-old son had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). He was asked to leave the school he had attended since he was four. I began to wonder if there really was a connection between the chronic ailments suffered by my friend’s children and environmental toxins.

Childhood illness has changed dramatically in the last one hundred years. No longer do kids in industrialized countries die of infectious diseases like polio, measles, or meningitis. Instead more and more of our children suffer a host of chronic conditions scientists call the “new pediatric morbidity.” These ailments include asthma, cancer, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), poor motor skills, preterm birth, autism, and some birth defects. Just as these chronic conditions have multiplied in the last few decades, becoming alarmingly more common, 80,000 new synthetic chemical compounds have been introduced into the environment. Public health scientists have responded by aggressively examining the link between toxins and children’s health; and in 1996 the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established the Office of Children’s Health Protection.

Are these chemicals finding their way into our children’s bodies? In 2004 the Red Cross decided to take a look at umbilical cord blood and figure out what chemicals were pumped across the placenta to our children in utero, the most vulnerable time of their development. By analyzing the cord blood of ten newborns in two different laboratories they learned that babies in the womb have on the average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants running through their veins; and in total 287 toxins were identified in the cord blood of the ten babies tested. The pollutants detected can be found in pesticides, stain repellants, flame retardants, waste from coal burning power plants, gasoline, and garbage. Of these chemicals 180 are known to cause cancer, 217 are poisonous to the brain and nervous system, and 208 have been linked to birth defects in animal studies.

While it is clear that harmful pollutants and chemicals are in our children’s bodies, the debatable question is what amount of exposure is dangerous. Researchers are constantly uncovering new information, making it hard for medical professionals, government agencies, school officials, and parents to catch up with cutting edge findings. Furthermore, given the track record of business and the US government (the lead industry refused to acknowledge that this toxic metal was particularly hazardous to children years after public health scientists demonstrated a connection in multiple studies) it is nearly impossible for me to feel confident that these entities are sufficiently looking out for the welfare of our children.

Coupled with my own baffling experience getting to the bottom of my youngest child’s high lead count, in 2005 I made the decision to plunge into the world of public health scientists, government agencies, pediatricians, and environmental advocates so that I could really understand which toxins are the true culprits in deterring the proper development of children. My book and this blog chronicle my investigation and findings, providing important information about which contaminants truly matter and how we can all protect our kids so that they can properly grow and learn.