THE DUMBING
DOWN
OF AMERICA
Assault on the Human Brain, IQ and Cognition
by EDC Chemicals and Environmental Factors,
the War on Science, the War on Education,
and the Abdication of Intelligence
This landmark NIEHS/EPA ‘Impact Report’, entitled, ‘Protecting Children’s Health Where They Live, Learn and Play”, (published in 2017-120 pages) is the ‘smoking gun’ to a mass crime against humanity, of allowing millions of American fetuses, babies, and children to be harmed by the debilitating effects on brain development and function caused by Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs).
We will start by focusing on one of the most widely used agricultural pesticides, Chlorpyrifos, sprayed on corn, soybeans, wheat, alfalfa, apples, grapes (wine, table and raisin), oranges, grapefruit, sugar beets, asparagus, pecans, almonds and peanuts. It is finally in the process of being banned by Biden’s EPA, long after it had been found to be so poisonous, that it was voluntarily banned for household use in the year 2000 in conjunction with Clinton’s EPA, and after it was about to actually be banned by Obama’s EPA in 2016, a process that takes years, and is next to impossible. But, tragically, that ban was reversed by Trump’s EPA in March 2017, when they reauthorized its use for another five years, after Dow Chemical had donated a million dollars to Trump’s Inauguration Fund. All the while, certainly since the 2000 ban on household use of this lethally dangerous pesticide, scientists and regulators have been fully aware of the harmful effects on brain development, confirmed after the chemical had been identified in umbilical cord blood, indicating certain culpability for this morally reprehensible crime of maiming our children and their ability to learn and process complex information, for life.
Prenatal exposures to pollutants have shown a relationship to adverse cognitive and behavioral outcomes, demonstrating links to: ADHD, reduced IQ, lessened self-regulatory capacities, anxiety, depression, attention problems, lower memory function, and structural changes to the brain.
Prenatal
exposure to chlorpyrifos can interfere with children’s brain development.
Chlorpyrifos is a pesticide still widely used in agriculture, however, in 2000
it was banned for almost all homeowner use.
In a 1998 sample of pregnant women in New York City, detectable levels of chlorpyrifos were found in all indoor air samples and 70 percent of umbilical cord blood samples. Since the ban, levels in indoor air and blood samples have decreased significantly in study participants. Children exposed to higher levels of chlorpyrifos before birth displayed adverse cognitive and behavioral outcomes compared to children exposed to lower levels, including:
• Significantly lower scores on mental development tests and increased attention problems and symptoms of ADHD at 3 years old.
• Lower full-scale IQ and working memory test scores at 7 years old. The effect on working memory was more pronounced in boys than in girls with similar chlorpyrifos exposures.
• Structural changes in the brain in regions that serve attention, receptive language, social cognition, emotion, and inhibitory control, and are consistent with deficits in IQ.”
Direct quote from page 30 of EPA/NIEHS report on the connection with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder):
Children were 60 percent more likely to develop ASD if their mothers resided near agricultural fields where organophosphate (OP) pesticides were applied during their pregnancy. The association was strongest for third-trimester exposures and second-trimester chlorpyrifos applications.
This report was published in 2017 under the Trump administration, which, by itself, was remarkable, because it directly contradicted Trump’s, and his EPA head, Scott Pruitt’s, stated agenda of Deregulation, actually listing many of the ongoing negative health effects on children of this lack of regulation. For a prime example, and the reason we call this report, the “smoking gun”, is that it warns specifically about the dangers of Chlorpyrifos to babies’ brains, the chemical they had just yanked back from a completed Obama EPA ban, reauthorizing it just months before. We were fearful that this report would be buried, but because it had already been leaked to the press by the scientists working on it, and the content was already out, Trump’s EPA had no choice, but to let it be published. It would have looked worse if they hadn’t. But just as they had handled the National Climate Assessment shortly before, which had also previously been leaked to the press, they published it with the intention that it be ignored.
This EPA/NIEHS report was first commissioned in 1997, and it is not brand-new cutting-edge science. This science of brain damage and lower IQs from exposure to Chlorpyrifos has been carried out for over 20 years. There have been multiple studies, not just with hundreds of human subjects, whose IQ’s have been shown to have been reduced, (on average, in one of the studies, by 7 points) where the mother and the child had been tested, and found to have Chlorpyrifos levels in their blood, but also in testing with rats, which were fed Chlorpyrifos, and, besides memory and behavioral changes, it had been found that in the offspring of the rats, the brain structure had been changed. The amount of gray matter in the prefrontal cortex, where, in humans, intellect resides, was found to be reduced. MRI testing has confirmed similar brain structure defects and brain activity anomalies in human subjects, who had been exposed.
Again, this report is not at all theoretical, and the authors were very conservative in what they decided to include. In fact, in order to not appear the least bit political, it’s authors stress that this is not an Advocacy Report. “We don’t do advocacy. We conduct the science and provide it in a way that can empower both the communities and the policymakers to do something about it.” - Frank Gilliland, Director, University of Southern California Children's Center.
So, this is a science report on the impacts of environmental pollutants on children, purely to help the children, their parents, and policymakers, without going on to advocate for change, in order to keep even the appearance of politics out of it. This is not left-wing intellectuals with a “liberal agenda” to harm the chemical companies, and who have come up with some wild exaggerated theories, which its critics might profess that it is. No. This is accepted science, which has been known by scientists since Chlorpyrifos was first banned for homeowner use in 2000, certainly, if not since it was first produced in 1965. Thousands have died around the world from lethal doses of this dangerous chemical. That’s how toxic this chemical is. And it’s extremely toxic to the development of the brain and central nervous systems in fetuses, infants and children, in minute concentrations, just parts per million.
Yet, the USDA, in conjunction with the EPA, has established acceptable levels for Chlorpyrifos for every specific crop and meat, (which I will put in this report, listing those, so that you can see how many points per million they deemed tolerable.) On a poison like this, the level of what is acceptable should always be zero, especially for pregnant women. You put this in the food supply, and statistically you know a certain number of women are going be pregnant, and many times, before they even know they are pregnant, the baby’s brain and central nervous system has started to develop, and at that point, if this chemical, and others, are in the baby’s system, through the umbilical cord, which blood has been tested and found to contain the Chlorpyrifos feeding into the fetus, the baby’s brain is already in the process of being harmed. It’s an unspeakably horrible crime that our society allows this to be done to defenseless fetuses. It’s not the fault of the pregnant mother or father. It’s not the fault of any of us, and I’m not talking about assigning blame, other than to the chemical companies and the government, which have been knowingly allowing this crime to be foisted on American families for decades.
In this complex, ever-expanding, technological world, these kids are going to need every IQ point they can get, as much as they’ll need their right arms. And maiming them in the womb, and beyond the womb, in their infancy and their childhood, (and the human brain continues to develop all the way up through teenager), is an inexcusable travesty against the innocent. How can we hold our heads up and talk about education, and putting money into education, and investing in our future, while we’re maiming our own children’s ability to learn and process complex information for life? By any standards, this is a horrible crime, and what makes matters worse, is that this crime is still ongoing, with millions of victims being assaulted with brain damaging endocrine disrupting chemicals as we speak.
And the public should have been aware. Chlorpyrifos has been in the news multiple times, in major newspapers, like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the LA Times, etc., And even the local newspapers published short articles, since it was first banned for household use in the year 2000. “Wasting babies’ brains.” These words have appeared in dozens of newspaper articles, numerous times, every time a new lawsuit against its use was filed, at every court ordered ban, and every time a ban was lifted, and still those words, “wasting babies’ brains” had little impact, and were largely ignored by the public.
Just like with the wildfires and floods of Climate Change, there’s plenty of evidence, everywhere you look, of the chemical assault on our children, the high rates and increases in childhood cancers, in childhood chronic diseases, in ADHD (Attention Deficits with Hyperactivity Disorder), in Autism, in Parkinson’s Disease, etc., and much of this may be related to this (Chlorpyrifos) and other chemical exposures.
But unlike the Climate Change issue, where Big Energy has fostered and financed a large group of Deniers, the Chemical Lobby has very seldom put forward advocates or quasi-scientists to deny that chemicals like Chlorpyrifos are poisonous, and to make false claims that they are safe. Instead, here, they rely on the media making so little impact, on the public largely ignoring any news that does get out, on lawmakers owned by the Chemical Lobby, and on a regulatory system that is anemic and ineffectual,
The 1976 law that assigns regulation and enforcement to the EPA, is called the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA), and was updated with the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, that was cheered and signed into law by Obama in 2016, but, unfortunately, this updated bipartisan TSCA law, approved by our Congressmen and Senators, turned out to be just as toothless and spineless as the original law. Under these laws, since 1976, less than 12 of more than 86,000 chemicals in the US inventory have ever been regulated. Like the first bipartisan TSCA law, signed by Ford in1976, it is a complete compromise to the interests of the chemical industry, and does nothing, and will do nothing, to protect us and our children. The EPA is so constrained by these laws, that it could never even regulate Asbestos, which is still used in brake pads in America today, unlike in many other countries, where it is, and should be, illegal, but Americans and American police are breathing in the Asbestos dust in the road smog, resulting in lung disease. (It took Congress to pass a separate law to ban Asbestos in insulation.) . The EPA isn’t even allowed to ask questions or even investigate a chemical, until they can prove it is harmful. In the US regulatory system on chemicals, everything is engineered to allow the businesses to do whatever the hell they want, with no culpability, and with no real oversight. As such, the EPA, governed by the limitations of the TSCA law, and few inspectors, is offering us no real protection.
Recognizing how inadequate the current state of law and regulation is, a new law has recently been introduced in Congress by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) called The Food Chemical Reassessment Act of 2021, which would create an Office of Food Safety Assessment within the FDA to ensure that chemicals that have entered the food supply chain through loopholes or that were reviewed by the FDA decades ago, are safe to eat. Food packaging, including baby food packaging, with endocrine disrupting chemicals that harm cognition is a particular focus of this legislation. Although there are dozens of Democratic Congressman and Senators, and perhaps some Republicans, that have already, or will, come out in support of this bill, it’ll take a miracle to withstand the chemical lobby’s efforts to kill it, and to get this to Joe Biden’s desk, to protect all of us, and especially our babies.
Although Republicans seem to have always been against regulation, what we are talking about here has nothing to do with politics. This is about the health of your children and about their brains, and their ability to live healthy, successful lives. These chemicals, however much we’ve known of their potential for damage, have been tolerated and allowed to be in our food supply for decades through Republican and Democratic administrations, and just like COVID, these chemicals do not pick and choose. Republican babies are just as easily brain damaged by these chemicals as Democratic babies. There’s nothing political about this. It’s about the health of your children.
Some “pro-business” people might say, it’s okay to tolerate using these chemicals, because it’s “good for the economy”, or because these chemicals are “necessary”, for any of dozens of rationalizations. That’s okay to say that, until it happens to your baby, or to your niece or nephew, or to your grandchild. Then it might not be so tolerable. Every baby is special. Every baby is somebody’s kid, part of a family, and we can’t be taking these chances, of leaving these toxins in our food supply, that a mother might eat, while she is pregnant, or before she even knows she’s pregnant, while the baby’s brain is already developing in the womb. And even beyond pregnancy, the child’s brain is still developing all the way through teenager, and needs to be protected. Even in adulthood, these hormone disrupting chemicals harm adults, as well. It’s just that the harm is much more acute in the developmental stages.
Whereas a Toxicology report might say a certain small concentration won’t kill you, the science of Endocrinology teaches us that a very tiny amount, just a few parts per million, of Chlorpyrifos (or other EDC chemical) is enough to alter the hormones that affect the brain structure and function. Before the mother even knows she’s pregnant, the central nervous system in the human embryo is already starting to develop, and any alteration in the hormones at that delicate point is an attack on the baby. Our babies are literally under attack in the womb.
There are many lifelong impacts from this attack, and by Trump’s allowing the ban, that was about to go into effect when he took office, to be delayed by another five years, just imagine how many babies’ brains, and how many points of IQ, have been decimated.
Any delay in this type of decision to ban something that is clearly poisoning Americans, and especially American babies, for whatever the reason, is an opportunity for the manufacture to make many millions more dollars. So even if it looks like, yes, Chlorpyrifos, may actually be banned soon by the Biden Administration EPA, what the Trump administration did, amounted to giving Dow and Corteva, and whoever else manufacturers Chlorpyrifos, another five years, to hell with the children they are poisoning. It’s more important that Dow Chemical and Corteva make more profit, and that the US government and politicians get to feel like they are helping the “economy”, by supporting the chemical industry, which is supporting their political campaigns with large donations. That’s more important than our babies’ brains., as they rationalize with the myth that spraying poisons on our food is the only way they can “Feed the World”.
But those same babies are our treasures, our hope for the future. And with more and more individuals being maimed for life by Chlorpyrifos and hundreds of other toxic EDC chemicals, in addition to Chlorpyrifos, their health, their developing brains, their cognitive abilities are under attack. And, the assault on every individual is escalating, now with hundreds of toxic EDC chemicals, with nobody coming to our children’s rescue.
Chlorpyrifos has been one of the most popular and highly used Organophosphate pesticides, and that whole class of pesticides, not just Chlorpyrifos, is known to harm brain development and cognition. Chlorpyrifos is not the only Organophosphate pesticide that needs to be banned. All Pesticides and Herbicides are Endocrine Disrupters, and have the potential to harm the development of babies’ brains and central nervous systems, so this is an urgent issue. More Pesticides and Herbicides must be banned, and for the same reasons. And people have got to learn how feeding their children chemical free Organic food, as the Obamas did, if they possibly can, is so much safer for their children’s health.
Glyphosate (Roundup), besides being carcinogenic, is an EDC that has been found to also have negative effects on cognition. Neonicotinoids, another widely used class of pesticides, besides killing the bees we, humans, need to pollinate our food, have recently been found to negatively impact babies’ cognitive abilities. We can’t go on without mentioning, Paraquat (linked to Parkinson’s Disease), Dicamba (that drifts, when sprayed near homes and schools, and this drifting is responsible for killing thousands of acres of neighboring crops), and an Herbicide called, 2,4-D (an herbicide related to Agent Orange). All of these dangerous Agrochemicals have been associated with harm to the central nervous system.
Many other chemical EDCs that negatively affect cognition, besides the Pesticides and Herbicides, are found in most of our blood samples, and in our drinking water (both Tap Water and in Spring Water). We are all being poisoned with these EDCs through what we eat, drink, breathe, and absorb through our skin, (and babies through their umbilical cords). Chief amongst these dangerous endocrine disrupting chemicals are: BPA (If BPA-Free, they often use BPS, just as estrogenic as BPA), Phthalates (in Soaps, Cremes, Deodorants, etc.), PFAS (“Forever Chemicals” from Nonstick Cookware and Runway Foam, etc.), Perchlorate (in Fireworks and Food Packaging, etc.), and PBDE (and other Flame Retardants in most Furniture, etc.). Besides links to cancers and other negative health effects from these pollutants, each of these have also been associated with harm to the brain and central nervous system.
It’s so important that you learn how to avoid each of these toxic EDC chemicals, especially for the benefit of children in developmental stages. Since we don’t have time in this article to review all of that, and to discuss how the disruption of hormones works to degrade health, it’s so important you read our post, Chemistry Gone Wild. We start that article with a strong warning about how you and your children are being poisoned with BPA, that same estrogenic chemical that was banned in baby bottles years ago, with every receipt and ticket you touch every day. Later in this new article, we will warn you about how retailers like Amazon are doubling down on poisoning you, with many square inches of BPA labels on each box and package, and Starbucks with new BPA labels on the cups. All it takes is for you to touch one of these labels, and pick up your child’s toy, which the child puts in his or her mouth, or, all it takes is a child playing with the boxes, like most children love to do, and your child is being dosed by this dangerous, estrogenic, hormone disrupting chemical, BPA. All paper money is coated with BPA, from touching cash register receipts. Wash your hands often, and not just for worries of COVID. Unless parents are told about the minefield of toxic exposures, and no one is telling them, how would they even know?
And
then there are the Heavy Metals, that are dumbing down our children, Lead,
Mercury, Arsenic, Chromium, amongst others, that maim children for life, attacking the child’s developing central
nervous system and brain, similarly to EDC’s, with the same effects on
cognition and social integration.
Most of us know about the dangers of children ingesting Lead in paint chips and in Drinking Water, with terrible lifelong consequences to their ability to learn and process information, and about Mercury in tuna fish, and in the coal ash contaminating our water, with grave consequences to brain function and cognition. In part 4 of our article, Living in a Toxic World, we offer lots of crucial information on the dangers we face with Heavy Metals, including adults. In that same article, in part 6, we again discuss the dangers presented by EDC chemicals, and in part 7, we discuss the Toxic Gases and Particulates in Air Pollution, not just in Emissions from Power Plants and Traffic Smog, but also in the Smoke from the massive Wildfires, all of which, besides other damages, to our Health and Climate, are dumbing our populations down.
The World Health Organization attributes the apparent lowering of IQ around the world to high levels of Air Pollution. Perhaps the cause of this is the Heavy Metals and other components in the Particulates in the smoke and smog, that penetrate, not just our lungs, but also into our blood and into every organ in our bodies, including our brains
Another factor, related to Carbon Emissions and Air Pollution, that is already dumbing down our students in schools is Carbon Dioxide (CO2). The CO2 levels in classrooms in the winter with windows closed, and with poor ventilation, routinely get as high as 1.000 ppm (parts per million). Tests have been conducted that clearly show diminished cognitive function at 700 ppm, so we are sending our children to schools to learn, while, at the same time, harming their ability to learn and process information. As the CO2 level goes up every year outdoors, (It’s already as high as 420ppm), CO2 levels inside will correspondingly increase. That’s why we must improve air circulation in schools and businesses so urgently, and not just for COVID concerns.
Poor nutrition is another significant factor dumbing us down. There have been numerous studies showing that highly processed ‘junk foods’ and ‘fake foods’ process out much of the nutritive value in the foods, and showing that high sugar, high fat, highly processed diets negatively affect learning and cognition in children, adolescents and in adults. We all know hunger degrades students’ abilities to learn. Also, in studies of victims of famine, there is clear evidence of long term cognitive developmental harm from poor nutrition, damage both in the mothers’ wombs, and in the babies, all the way through teenagers. One can also infer the same case in people not challenged by famine, many more of them obese, but with comparably poor nutrition, now on every continent. Even rich people eat poorly.
And there are more factors that are furthering the dumbing down of the populace, including the rise in Dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease in an aging population, the “Brain Fog” of long-term COVID, and, as always, the effects of Drugs and Alcohol.
And besides all these factors, and besides the Heavy Metals and the EDC Chemicals, the other major phenomenon that is dumbing down our society is what I call, the “Abdication of Intelligence”. I use the word, abdication, because I consider intelligence to be the throne of civilization, of humanity, and, in that sense, giving up our intelligence, and our critical thinking, is like abdicating our throne. Some have criticized, that the word, abdication, implies that this is being done intentionally or consciously. It is partially unintentional, being led by their mind-numbing social media, and it’s partially intentional, in that a lot of these people have that “Dumb-as-we-want-to-be” attitude. If we want to be Dumb, we can be Dumb, if we want to, for example, misspell everything, like Trump and his administration did, we can misspell everything. We don’t hold ourselves up to any standards, so we can do whatever we want to do. This is their notion of Freedom, the Freedom to be Dumb, the Freedom to be Anti-Science, the Freedom to be Anti-Environment, the Freedom to be Anti-Education. (If recounting History is not according to their accepted reality, that they get on their social media, from their people, only their people, they prefer to revise History. That’s called, Revisionism.). Whatever their people say, are the facts. What anybody else says, no matter how well credentialed as an expert or scientist, if it doesn’t fit narrowly into their reality, they consider it false, or better yet, fake. Their Alternate Reality becomes their Fact, so they’ve chosen not to even consider anything, if they identify something somebody’s saying as “Science”. Instead of dealing with something they don’t fully understand, like anybody else would, by realizing that the scientist or expert has years and a tremendous number of studies backing up what he or she is saying, and listening in an effort to understand it, instead of that, they take it as a challenge, that they’ve got to stand up to. Once they identify anything that an expert or scientist is saying as “science”, and then as “liberal” and “elitist”, they will not listen to it, so talking to them about it, or explaining it, is worthless, because they will not even hear you. They may as well just put their fingers in their ears and go “na-na-na-na-na-na-na”. They are not listening. They’ve abdicated their ability to learn anything about what you are telling them, even if just to criticize it. They don’t want to learn anything about it, because they’ve identified it as “liberal, elitist crap”, that they don’t want to have anything to do with.
The fact of the matter is that this type of dumbed down individual is ideal for an Authoritarian government. A Democracy is never as clean and monolithic as an Authoritarian society, because where the truth is identified by the leader, or by the government, and the people accept it in the 80% range, that usually can only be achieved through an authoritarian-type government, and what it takes is people that are willing to accept an Alternate Reality, as defined by the Leader, by the Authority. Once they’ve done that, once they’ve gone down that rabbit hole, it’s something that is not readily given up. People never want to admit they had been misled.
Whether or not they’ve been dumbed down by environmental factors, such as by the EDC chemicals, yet, or whether they haven’t yet been impaired, and would still score high on IQ, intelligence quotient, tests, but have given up their critical thinking, these people are ideal subjects and ideal officials for an Authoritarian government.
There is much evidence, for whatever the root causes, be they chemical and environmental, or whether they be sociological and political, of the dumbing down of America. Millions of Americans are so gullible, they deeply believe in whatever they’re told on the Internet and social media, from their side, and only their side, completely, 100%, with no question, with zero skepticism or thought. The dumber they are, the easier it is for them to believe anything you want them to believe. No matter how outlandish the conspiracy theories and beliefs are, there is no effort to distinguish between fact and fiction.
One of the most glaring examples is “America’s Frontline Doctors”. The fact that millions of Americans trust them as legitimate is hard for me to believe. 10 doctors, (or actors?) with spotless long white lab coats with their logo embroidered on the lapel, as if “America’s Frontline Doctors” was a real, years old organization, and as though they were really the doctors in our hospitals on the frontlines facing the onslaught of COVID. They first appeared on the steps of the Supreme Court to push Trump’s favorite, at that time, COVID cure, Hydroxychloraquine, and now, one year later, these same flimflam doctors are charging $90 per consultation, and prescribing and selling and profiting from the sale of Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug, they are selling as the sure cure for COVID, but their delivery is so unreliable, and the demand they’ve created is so high, that the Anti-Science people who, would never even consider, God forbid, taking the free FDA-approved Vaccine, are coming down with COVID, and are so desperate for the Ivermectin, convinced it is the only acceptable, effective cure, that they are going to Animal Feed Stores, and, sick as they are, willing to pay whatever it takes to get Horse and Cow formulations of Ivermectin, (They’re even eating Ivermectin Paste, a cream not intended for internal use, not even in Cows and Horses, even after being warned of possible liver damage, and then ending up so sick from taking their trusted cure, that they need emergency hospitalizations, at a time when hospital beds are so scarce.)
This is so Dumb, and it’s even Dumber that their belief in what they hear on their social media is so strong, they can’t even see that it is. They don’t see these doctors in long white lab coats, who call themselves, America’s Frontline Doctors, as the grifters, charlatans, scammers that they are. Their belief is so strong in those doctors, (and the anti-vax right wing politicians pushing this), that even when their brother or best friend almost died taking their advice to take the Ivermectin, and then after only being able to find it in the formulation for Horse and Cow De-wormer causing horrible symptoms, they still don’t see these doctors, at all, the way I see them. Instead, they see them as legitimate doctors, and, in fact, they see them as even more legitimate than any doctor in the medical establishment, which they distrust, distrusting Science, and most Scientists, and that includes any Doctor that does not have the seal of approval from their Leader.
There is no critical thinking as to the veracity of what these people are parroting back. They fall for it. They have no filter when it comes to what they get on their social media, and no thought as to the source, where it may have originated (Trolls, Russia?), so they enthusiastically retweet it and message it to their friends and family, for a never-ending echo chamber effect, that reinforces these beliefs in their own minds, and in their group’s, irrevocably.
Maybe it’s just me, growing older and lacking patience, but more and more often, it seems, I’m confronted with dumb and even dumber individuals, who just don’t seem to get it. I often have to control my impatience, reminding myself that the customer service person I’m dealing with might not just be trying to exasperate me. Maybe they really are that dumb, and perhaps it’s due to their environmental exposures, and I should consider that, and be more charitable.
No scientist has ever tested the effects of a cocktail of 200 or so chemicals in the bloodstream, on rodents, let alone on humans. But, when our blood is tested, that is what is already found in most of us. Considering that, we humans are the lab rats in an experiment of unbelievable proportions, that never happened before, and no one knows the end result.
These synthetic chemicals didn’t exist 75 years ago, and like plastics, they don’t break down easily, but only accumulate, year after year. For a few examples, 6 Billion pounds of BPA are produced and put into consumer products globally each year. That’s 60 Billion pounds in just the past decade, of BPA, a hormone disrupter, that is so estrogenic, at one time it was considered for hormone replacement therapy, and it’s been used heavily for at least the past 7 decades. 5.1 Million pounds of Chlorpyrifos are produced and sprayed on crops per year, and that’s only in the US. Each year 280 Million pounds of Glyphosate (Roundup and other formulations) are sprayed on 298 Million acres of crops in the US alone, not to mention the tonnage sprayed on millions of acres of conventional and GMO crops in South America, Canada, Central America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. No wonder these toxic EDC chemicals are in the water, in our blood, and in the rain..
The good news on some, not all, of these chemicals is, that you can expel them through normal kidney, liver, and digestive function, but that just puts these chemicals into the wastewater. They don’t simply disappear, but the good news for each of us is, that if you don’t re-tox(ify) yourself or your child with more of the same chemicals, like most people do, just as fast as you, or they, expel them (in urine and feces), keeping the toxic level in your blood relatively stable, you can actually detox in a relatively short time (for example, huge percentage drops in blood concentrations of EDCs, like BPA, in just a week or two). But there’s no detox from persistent EDCs, like the “Forever Chemicals”, or from Heavy Metals, or from the Developmental Defects, Brain Damage, etc., which stay with the victim for life. There’s no detoxing from that
Some of these EDC chemicals are already illegal in the EU (Chlorpyrifos was made illegal in January 2020 by the EU) and in various other nations. But the large quantities of all of these chemicals, not just the pesticides and herbicides, are accumulating year after year, and they have become so ubiquitous, that they can be found everywhere in the world. They travel in the dust on wind currents, through the air, and in the rain, so even on the highest mountains, you’ll find many of these toxic chemicals. Nowhere is safe from them, and it would be to the benefit of all the world for these chemicals to no longer be produced in hundreds or thousands or millions of pounds annually. It’s not prudent for us to continue to allow that, to continue adding on to the toxic burden of our planet.
Humans are not the only ones affected by these chemicals. Every vertebrate, (every animal with a backbone), even birds and fish, have endocrine systems, hormone systems, very similar to ours, with male and female hormones, etc., and are also harmed by these chemicals, as are our pets. And the horrible consequences of these chemicals, of these pesticides, herbicides, and other toxic EDC chemicals getting into the water and ecosystems, and disrupting hormones, are causing an increase in reproductive defects in wildlife, like frogs and fish having been found with both male and female sex organs, just as we are finding, in humans, more genital birth defects in infant boys, less fertility in young men, with less sperm, and sperm with less motility (swim-ability), and in females early puberty and less healthy eggs. The less the proliferation of these dangerous EDC chemicals, many of which are very estrogenic, the better everybody and every animal (vertebrates) in this world will be.
And regarding what I call the Abdication of Intelligence, it’s not just America and Americans being dumbed down, (nor being harmed by the chemicals and heavy metals, etc.). The Abdication of Intelligence is prevalent amongst right wingers, and perhaps some left-wingers, all over the world. Anti-Science, Anti-Environmentalist, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Democracy right wing political parties have sprung up everywhere, voted in by ideologically monolithic people, who have already, whether chemically or sociologically, been dumbed down, to fully believe and accept the reactionary program 100%. And the consequences of these non-thinking, dumbed down people is paving the way toward the possibility of authoritarian governments around the world.
I pray that bringing these subjects into the light might slow down the dumbing down of our world. In order to fight against the dreaded possibility of an Authoritarian (in other words, Fascist, Totalitarian) government, we have to elevate Science, elevate Education, elevate Intelligence, elevate Democracy. Scientists, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, Professors, Experts, the Intelligentsia of any society should be honored and extolled, not denigrated, ignored, and/or criminalized. We saw that in Maoist China, during their Cultural Revolution, where the Intelligentsia was purged. It seems that some sort of Cultural Revolution is being sought by millions of Americans today, in their downgrading of Science, History and Education, the revisionist takeover of school boards, and insistence on curricula in accordance with their social media beliefs, and not in accordance with History.
And we have to protect our children from a thousand attacks on their hormones, and on the climate, that they are facing as they grow older. It’s not okay to harm our children’s health, their cognitive abilities and their futures. We all have to make that message clear and forceful, and until we are able to change the laws, and ban these poisons, we have to educate ourselves and each other to protect our own children, by limiting their exposures as best we can. And we’ve got to vote in lawmakers, who care about the health of our children, our fellow human beings, our pets and wildlife, and who are willing to stand up to the Chemical Lobby on our behalf.
Part 2: Important Note on the Structure of this Report
As has been our practice, we try to tell the whole story, the whole thesis we’re presenting, in part 1. In the following sections, we again won’t attempt to cover the subjects listed, where each one could be a book. We’ll try to keep them as short as possible, but this time, instead of putting all the links to references in a Documents section at the end of the report, we’re going to include the links in each of these corresponding sections, with a separate General Documents section toward the end, for ones that don’t fit into one of the categories. Where the links are self-explanatory, we may not say much more, but will insert a few notes as we see necessary.
But, before you even delve into the following sections, since we’ve offered you so little background in this article, we recommend you read, or review, Chemistry Gone Wild, on the history of modern chemicals, how these chemicals can be EDCs and disrupt hormones, a little bit on the mechanics of how that all works, where you encounter these chemicals and how you are being poisoned by them in every day products, in order for you to better be able to avoid them, especially for your children’s sake. It’s important for you to understand the relation of the endocrine system, the hormonal system, with every other system and organ in the human body, and in all vertebrates, and how just a very tiny amount of these synthetic chemicals can throw off the delicate homeostasis, the balance, of hormones, with tragic results. it’s a miracle how the living body functions, and it’s no wonder that it doesn’t take much to throw it all off balance.
For more background on several other concerns, we urge you to read, Living in A Toxic World, where we discuss Heavy Metals, Lead, Mercury, Arsenic, etc. in part 4, EDC’s in part 6 and Air Pollution in part 7, all of which are significant contributors to the dumbing down of America.
In
our article, Beyond the Tipping Points, we don’t just address Climate
Change and Biodiversity, but in part 8 we discuss the combinations of all the various
EDC chemicals, as many as 200 in our water and in our blood, and whether we’re
getting close to a tipping point in the toxic burden on ourselves, and on our
planet, from all these chemicals.
NOTE: The remainder of this report is still in progress, so it is now just a skeleton of the post, with headings for each section, to give you an idea of the planned contents. Each section will be populated over the next several months. Thanks for your patience.
Part 3: Chlorpyrifos and Organophosphates - Dumbing
Down America
Part 4: Glyphosate (Roundup) – Dumbing Down America
Part 5: Neonicotinoids Pesticides – Dumbing Down America
Part 6: Dicamba, 2,4-D, Paraquat Herbicides – Dumbing Down America
Part 7: BPA, and Bisphenols: BPS, BPF, BPB – Dumbing Down America
Part 8: Phthalates – Dumbing Down America
Part 9: PFAS, PFOA, PFOS: “FOREVER CHEMICALS” – Dumbing Down America
Part 10: Perchlorates –
Dumbing Down America
Part 11: PBDE and Flame Retardants – Dumbing Down America
Part 12: Lead Poisoning –
Dumbing Down America
Part 13: Mercury Poisoning –
Dumbing Down America
Part 14: Arsenic Poisoning –
Dumbing Down America
Part 15: Hexavalent Chromium (6) Poisoning – Dumbing Down America
Part 16: Air Pollution; Particulates and Toxic Gases – Dumbing Down America
Part 17: Carbon Dioxide (CO2)
– Dumbing Down America
Part 18: Dementia and
Alzheimer’s Disease – Dumbing Down America
Part 19: “Brain Fog” from
Long Term COVID – Dumbing Down America
Part 20: Drugs and Alcohol –
Dumbing Down America
Part 22: Social Media – Dumbing Down America
Part 23: The Dumbing Down of America – Final Thoughts
Part 24: Message to our Readers
Part 25: General Documents
Part 26: Videos
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