Yahoo! News: The nightmare inspired Grandjean, a doctor and medical epidemiologist at Harvard University, to write a book about the harm caused by industrial pollutants like mercury, lead, pesticides, and others, titled Only One Chance: How Environmental Pollution Impairs Brain Development—and How to Protect the Brains of the Next Generation.
"We seriously need to figure out how to protect the next generation so they will have optimal integrated brain function so that they can be fully capable of dealing with problems of tomorrow," Grandjean said.
One focus of the book is how vulnerable developing brains can be to industrial pollutants, and how early damage can be permanent. "You only have one chance to develop a brain, and that's the brain you have the rest of your life," he said.
Grandjean first got interested in epidemiology in the early 1970s when he heard press reports about widespread poisoning in Minamata, Japan, caused by contamination of seawater with methylmercury. That event created lasting toxicity, leading to mental retardation and numerous developmental problems in children.
In the years since, Grandjean has studied the brain toxicity of mercury and other substances. His work with mercury helped lead to an agreement known as the Minamata Convention on Mercury, formulated earlier this year at a United Nations meeting, which will outlaw certain uses of mercury and help reduce some types of mercury pollution, he said.
But much more needs to be done, Grandjean said. As he mentions in his book, three factors have kept society from taking appropriate action about the risk posed by pollutants: uncertainty, naivety and corruption.
The story of lead pollution illustrates these factors at work. Despite years of knowledge that lead could be toxic at certain concentrations, the metal was first introduced into gasoline in the 1920s to prevent "knocking." At that time, Dr. Robert A. Kehoe, a spokesman for the lead industry, demanded that adequate facts be presented to prove that lead was harmful; otherwise, nothing would be done, Grandjean writes. The influential Kehoe's argument became known as the "show-me rule." Industry used this rational to help keep lead in gasoline for 60 years in the United States, despite ample warnings that lead is highly toxic to the brain even in small doses, Grandjean said.
But evidence accumulated, and by the 1970s and 1980s, several scientists and environmental groups were calling for the removal of lead from gasoline and the reduction of lead pollution. By that time, however, lead had already "damaged brain cells in an entire generation of children, at least, worldwide," Grandjean writes in the book...