As originally seen onPrevention.com
Last week, the Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center (CEHC) released a list of the top ten toxic chemicals suspected to cause autism and learning disabilities.

This list can't come soon enough, as last month, the CDC reported that autism spectrum disorder (ASD) now affects 1 of every 88 American children -- a 23% increase from 2006 and a 78% increase from 2002.

And while there is controversy over how those numbers are reached, it still is worth repeating.  There has been a 78% increase in children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in the last ten years.  At the same time, the CDC also reported that ADHD now affects 14% of American children.

As these disorders continue to affect more children across the U.S., researchers are asking what is causing these dramatic increases.  Some of the explanation is greater awareness and more accurate diagnosis. But clearly, there is more to the story than simply genetics, as the increases are far too rapid to be of purely genetic origin.

According to the Mount Sinai Children's Environmental Health Center (CEHC) release this morning and data from the research article, "Environmental Pollutants and Disease in American Children (July 2002), "the National Academy of Sciences reports that 3% of all neurobehavioral disorders in children are caused directly by toxic exposure in the environment and another 25% disorders are caused by interactions between environmental factors and genetics. But the precise environmental causes are not yet known". (Note: the first version of this article included a link to the National Academy of Sciences study from 2000 and has been updated to include a link to the July 2002 study).

So while industry can claim that there is little evidence that these chemicals in isolation or in combination (which doctors now refer to as "synergistic toxicity") cause autism, the truth is that there is still very little evidence or the toxicological safety studies.  In other words, there is a gap in the science.

There is a huge gap.  According to CNN, the EPA has tested only about 200 of the 80,000 chemicals in use.

But thankfully, that is changing with the work of the team at Mt. Sinai and the extraordinary leadership, courage and intellect of Dr. Phil Landrigan and the urgent call by experts to reform chemical laws.

To guide a research strategy to discover potentially preventable environmental causes and to arm parents and those hoping to be parents with knowledge, the Children's Environmental Health Center (CEHC) has developed a list of ten chemicals found in consumer products that are suspected to contribute to autism and learning disabilities.

This list was published today in Environmental Health Perspectives in an editorial written by Dr. Philip J. Landrigan, director of the CEHC, Dr. Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and Dr. Luca Lambertini, also of the CEHC.

The top ten chemicals are:

1. Lead
2. Methylmercury
3. PCBs
4. Organophosphate pesticides
5. Organochlorine pesticides
6. Endocrine disruptors
7. Automotive exhaust
8. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
9. Brominated flame retardants
10. Perfluorinated compounds

As the Children's Environmental Health Center shares, the editorial was published alongside four other papers -- each suggesting a link between toxic chemicals and autism.  Both the editorial and the papers originated at a conference hosted by CEHC in December 2010.

The first paper, written by a team at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, found preliminary evidence linking smoking during pregnancy to Asperger's disorder and other forms of high-functioning autism.  The next two papers, written by researchers at the University of California - Davis, show that PCBs disrupt early brain development. The final paper, also by a team at UC - Davis, suggests further exploring the link between pesticide exposure and autism.

Ultimately, all five papers call for increased research to identify the possible environmental causes of autism in America's children.

This importance of this call to action can not be emphasized enough, because while our children may only represent 30% of our population, they are 100% of our future and we need to protect them like our country depends on it.  Because it does.

So what can you do to protect the health of your children?  Thankfully, a lot.  And while none of us can do everything, all of us can do something, so choose one, some or all from the list below:

• Eat organic food whenever possible to reduce exposure to synthetic pesticides which by law are not allowed for use in its production
• Open your windows to clear the air in your home from the toxins that can accumulate there
• Take your shoes off as you come inside to keep pesticides on the soles of your shoes from entering your home
• Look for cans and plastic bottles that are "BPA-free"

Fifteen year ago, if someone had suggested that I'd be writing this column, I'd have asked what planet they were on.

I was working as a financial analyst that covered the food industry.  My day to day consisted of meeting with management teams, taking factory and store tours and cranking out reports on companies like Kroger, Safeway, Costco and Whole Foods.  I wasn't a foodie, and I couldn't cook.

My job included crunching the numbers, learning business models and evaluating the costs of production and distribution of our food supply.

Thank goodness.

Because today, that experience has served a greater purpose: the ability to look at the current state of our food system, the financial engineering of the science behind it and the economically motivated decisions that food industry executives make to meet their fiduciary duty to drive shareholder return and sheds light on how these decision are affecting the health of our families.

And it's becoming increasingly obvious that we've got a broken economic model at work in our food system.  Farmers are rewarded with taxpayer funded resources called subsidies for growing crops in a chemically-intensive, genetically and financially engineered kind of way to drive shareholder return for the chemical companies.  While on the other hand, farmers that are growing things organically, which means by law without the use of synthetic pesticides and crops genetically engineered to require increasing doses of toxic weed killer, have to pay fees to prove that their crops are safe, then fees to label those crops with the "USDA Organic" seal and then they don't receive the same crop insurance and marketing assistance programs that the other farmers do.

Add to that the fact that American companies formulate their products one way for eaters over seas, without the use of artificial colors, genetically engineered ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, and it's enough to get anyone going.  But the fact of the matter is that what we have to label as "organic food" here in the United States is more or less called "food" in other countries.  Because overseas, it's the products that contain all of the novel ingredients like, genetically engineered ones, that have to be labeled.

So what's a consumer to do?  Learn the Big 8.  These are the ingredients which, by law and according to our very own United States Department of Agriculture, are not allowed into the production of foods that are made organically:

Food fraud.  Not something you really want to hear about given our love affair with food.  But given that the landscape of food is changing so dramatically due to extraordinary gains in technology and our access to foods from around the globe, it's a subject worth addressing.

New research published in the April Journal of Food Science is apparently the first analysis of "food fraud" or as it is called in the scientific literature, "economically motivated adulteration in food."

Having worked as a financial analyst that covered the food industry among others, I am all too aware of this economic motivation, the need to meet quarterly earnings and the desire to drive shareholder returns.  As a matter of fact, that economic incentive is at the heart of our current capitalist model, and is given the regal-sounding name of "fiduciary duty."  In other words, it is what executives in the food industry are paid to do: reduce costs of production by replacing natural ingredients with their cheaper, synthetic alternatives in order to increase profit margins.

According to the study, "the authors found 95 percent of records involved replacement -- an authentic material replaced partially or completely by another, less expensive substitute." 

So where is this happening? It turn out that based on a review of records from scholarly journals, the top seven adulterated ingredients in the database are:

1. Olive oil
2. Milk
3. Honey
4. Saffron
5. Orange juice
6. Coffee 
7. Apple juice

But if we were to take the literal definition of food fraud, which as defined in a report commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security and funded by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense (University of Minnesota) as:

"A collective term that encompasses the deliberate substitution, addition, tampering or misrepresentation of food, food ingredients or food packaging, or false or misleading statements made about a product for economic gain." 

Wouldn't that also include our corn and soy that have been engineered to contain patented, distinctly characterized traits that enable the crops to either synthesize and create their own insecticides or to withstand increasing saturation by other chemicals like weed killers?

So should genetically engineered ingredients be #8 on the list?  

If the lawsuit against Frito-Lay for the labeling of their corn products as "natural" despite the fact they contain these patented, genetically engineered ingredients, and a similar suit against ConAgra for doing the same with their cooking oils are a leading indicator, it is certainly food for thought.  

And if the beef industry can serve as an example, with a beef processing company filing for bankruptcy (perhaps to avoid shareholder litigation or any false and misleading claims filed by consumers) as consumers opt out of "pink slime" and the USDA calls for its labeling, shareholders might want to start asking some tough questions.

A food awakening is happening in the United States, fueled in part by the escalating rates of diseases and in part by the social media.  And with genetically engineered ingredients labeled in over 40 countries around the world (as seen in the image below) and patented by the United States Patent and Trademark Office for their distinctly different characteristics, it just might be a smart move for investors interested in both the health of their families and the health of their portfolios to be mindful of the continued adulteration of our food supply. 

To learn more about the economically motivated adulteration of food, please visit the database www.foodfraud.org

As to be expected, there is a scientist in the field of genomics aggressively speaking out against one of my TEDx talks.  

It’s not the first time that my work has come under fire, nor will it be the last as the information that I present is disruptive.  To many, it creates a cognitive dissonance - a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas, beliefs or values and can often elicit a strong emotional reaction.

And it did just that over the weekend from a scientist at the University of Florida which houses the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

So when I looked into the work of the person making the accusations, I was not surprised that he had dedicated his life to plant research and genetic engineering.  His commitment is remarkable.  I understand it, because it is that same dedication that I have to my research and work into the financial engineering and the role it can play in the integrity of science. 

That dedication, that level of commitment, is something to be honored, not slandered, as it is not without sacrifice. 

But his criticism was that of a subject that continues to raise itself as to whether or not genetically engineered crops are safe. 

The scientific debate tends to center around whether genetically engineered crops have been “thoroughly tested,” while a debate around the financial engineering of the science continues to grow.

So let’s look at the science, because as the Union for Concerned Scientists states:

“Political interference in federal government science is weakening our nation's ability to respond to the complex challenges we face. Because policy makers depend on impartial research to make informed decisions, we are mobilizing scientists and citizens alike to push for reforms that will enable our leaders to fully protect our health, safety, and environment.”

In a Science Magazine in 2000, a Spanish researcher named Jose L. Domingo who later went on to write a 2007 paper, “Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants: A Review of the Published Literature,” found only seven peer reviewed papers on genetically engineered crop safety as of 2000, most of them dealing with short-term nutritional effects.  

According to Dr. Charles Benbrook, who worked in Washington, D.C. on agricultural policy, science and regulatory issues from 1979 through 1997, served for 1.5 years as the agricultural staff expert on the Council for Environmental Quality at the end of the Carter Administration, and following the election of Ronald Reagan, moved to Capitol Hill in early 1981 and was the Executive Director of the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Agriculture with jurisdiction over pesticide regulation, research, trade and foreign agricultural issues, what that means is that at the time that two genetically engineered products were approved for the food supply, there were no studies in the open scientific literature.

Let’s stop and think about that for a minute in the context of something that is more familiar. 

Can you imagine if a medical device or a new pharmaceutical drug were introduced with no studies in the open scientific literature for public review?  Or if a car was introduced onto the highway in the same manner?

The concern is shared by the National Academy of Sciences in the paper, Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Consequences, "As with all other technologies for genetic modification, they also carry the potential for introducing unintended compositional changes that may have adverse effects on human health."

Furthermore, according to Benbook, as of 2007 and Domingo's more recent and comprehensive review, a “Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants: A Review of the Published Literature", there are still no more than about ten studies assessing the toxicological impact of genetically engineered ingredients in our food supply, almost all are limited in scope (there is a review of 24 studies focusing on nutritional equivalency), and short term, with most of them dealing with genetically engineered foods other than corn and soybeans.  

Which means that the bottom line is that there are no published, peer reviewed studies on the toxicological impacts of today's commercial genetically engineered ingredients now found in our food supply, and almost none on older genetically engineered ingredients, that provide evidence that show that these foods are toxicologically safe.  

At the conclusion of the abstract for the paper, the author himself poses the question: “where is the scientific evidence showing that GM plants/food are toxicologically safe?”

To me, that is a question so important that it was unequivocally an “Idea Worth Spreading,” a question worth asking, a dialogue worth having.   

Correlation is not causation but with the Centers for Disease Control now reporting that cancer is the leading cause of death by disease in children under the age of fifteen, that there has been a 265% increase in the rates of hostpiatlizations related to food allergic reaction, it is worth noting that “no evidence of harm” is not the same as “evidence of no harm.” 

What we are witnessing, through 55 members of Congress that have called for the labeling of these ingredients, the over one million Americans who have sent comments to the FDA asking for the same, interest in a TEDx talk given by a former financial analyst, author and mother of four, is a movement, perhaps begun by the Spanish researcher with his ask for the scientific evidence showing that genetically engineered foods are toxicologically safe, and a call for the labeling of these foods, as they are labeled in over 40 countries around the world, until we have more science.

It is a call for studies that might alert a pregnant woman working on a farm about the impact that her exposure to these crops and the chemicals used to produce them might have on the health of her unborn babies.

It is a call for science and for the research that tells a mother if her child is allergic to conventional soybeans, the kind that has been in our food supply for generations, or if her child is allergic to the genetically engineered components now found in soybeans that were introduced in the late 1990s. 

It is a call for the scientific tests that would enable a father to test his child for those differences at his allergist’s office.

It is a call for science and our right to know about the foods that we are eating and what their impact might be on the health of our families. 

Is correlation causation?  Not at all, but with millions of Americans beginning to wake up to the fact that we have additives in our food supply, from lean beef trimmings, to artificial growth hormones to genetically engineered ingredients, additives that were not in our foods a generation ago, we are asking for more science, integrity in science, full disclosure of the financial engineering behind the science, and for labels and the right to make an informed choice about what we are feeding our families. 

We have learned what can happen otherwise, from the tobacco industry to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, so I hope that the TED team will continue the conversation with consumers, genetic engineers as well as financial ones, economists and the medical community in a forum in which attendees can express their opinions and one that requires full disclosure of any institutional ties, research grants or patents of those involved to preserve the dialogue and the scientific integrity of the discussion.  

Because as Carl Sagan once said, "We have designed our civilization based on science and technology and at the same time arranged things so that almost no one understands anything at all about science and technology."

An idea worth spreading?  A dialogue worth having? Absolutely.

Additional Resources: 

Scientific Integrity: Union of Concerned Scientists: http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/
Toxicity Studies of Genetically Modified Plants: http://www.biosafety.ru/ftp/domingo.pdf
Faculty Endowments: http://www.uff.ufl.edu/FacultyEndowments/ProfessorshipInfo.asp?ProfessorshipFund=007489
Kevin Folta's Blog: http://kfolta.blogspot.com/2012/03/complete-insanity-in-theater-built-by.html
UF Scientists Collaborate with Monsanto: http://news.ifas.ufl.edu/2011/10/14/uf-scientists-collaborate-with-monsanto-to-develop-improved-computer-model-for-corn-production/
The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster: A Study in Organizational Ethics http://pirate.shu.edu/~mckenndo/pdfs/The%20Space%20Shuttle%20Challenger%20Disaster.pdf
Safety of Genetically Engineered Foods: Approaches to Assessing Unintended Health Consequences http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309092094

According to the National Academy of Sciences, genetically engineered foods, which were introduced into the U.S. food supply in the 1990s without labels, can introduce new allergens and toxins into the food that we are feeding our families and loved ones.  For this reason and others, over 40 countries around the world have chosen to label these ingredients due to their potential risks.

Want to learn more?  Take a peak at the graphic below and join me and almost one million Americans, as well as AllergyKids and 500 other organizations at Just Label It, and urge the FDA to label these ingredients and the toxins and allergens they may contain here in the United States, too.  Given the rates of diseases that we are seeing in our families, labels will help us rule out a potential systemic risk. And given that the United States already spends more on disease management and health care costs than any other country on the planet, this just might be one of the most patriotic things that you could do to help protect the health of our country.

Intense.  It's the only word to describe today.  

The weekend had been full of revelations about funding ties between non-profits and industry, an issue close to my heart given what I'd learned in the food allergy world back in 2006.  And quite honestly, I began to wonder, given the enormous wealth, vested interests and interplay between industry and non-profits, if we even stood a chance at open and fair science.  

And then I had an email in my inbox from a mother of three battling breast cancer.  Then another from a 25 year old about to enter the army, more from cancer survivors and then one from an EPA scientist worried about the foods that his kids are eating.

His stopped me in my tracks.

And once again, I reflected on the fact that there is so much more that unites us than divides us.  And the common thread that weaves our stories together is the love that we have for those that we care about.  It's universal.  It's a rocket fuel. It makes the impossible possible. It gives us permission to lend our talents. 

And it is our collective talents that will create the change we want to see in the world.