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In an article published last week in Current Opinion in Pediatrics, a well-respected professor at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, Philip Landrigan, talks about the environmental chemicals implicated in neurodevelopmental disabilities. He discusses the possibility that environmental toxins may be contributing to autism, alerting the scientific community to the need for more research on the effects of common chemicals on brain biology. In his article, he states that synthetic chemicals that are ubiquitous at hazardous waste sites are commonly found in our air, food, and drinking water. And fewer than 20% of these have been tested for brain developmental toxicity.
As I sat reading the article, drinking my cup of tap water tea, I asked myself: What’s in your water?
According to the Environmental Working Group, a watchdog organization that compiles data from water utility companies and state departments, Baltimore ranks 69 out of 100 cities for quality of water with 1 being the best and 100 the worst. The list of chemicals found in the Baltimore City Department of Public Works water is astounding. In the past five years, two contaminants were found to be above legal limits with eleven others above health guidelines. A total of 22 pollutants were identified in Baltimore City water, 14 more than the national average. 22!
Let’s do a rundown on some of them:
- Lead: Even my 2-year old daughter knows this one is bad. The EPA has a restriction of 15 ppb for drinking water, and levels above that value (at 19.3 ppb) were detected in Baltimore City water in the past 5 years with an average of 5.16 ppb overall. Lead is known to cause brain damage.
- Total haloacetic acids (HAAs), Total trihalomethanes (TTHMs), Chloroform, Bromoform, and Trichloroacetic acid: Disinfectants that cause DNA damage and cell death. Carcinogens aplenty. Both HAAs and TTHMs were found above legal limits during the past 5 years. In fact, Baltimore City water ranks among the top 10 cities with the highest levels of TTHMs (at an average of 44.5 ppb).
- Alpha Particle Activity and Radium-226: Radioactive. Any chemical with a number after it is generally bad. Luckily, the data is from only one test and is at very low levels that we probably don’t need to worry about.
- Di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate: Phthalates, found in soft plastics, have been in the news for awhile now, so you probably have heard their name. They are beginning to be phased out of products in both the United States and Europe due to their toxicity. Phthalates can cause both reproductive and developmental problems. The level in Baltimore City water is at an average of 0.85 ppb. The danger lies in a build-up of phthalates within the body over time.
In his article, Landrigan stresses that in the examples of known chemicals that are relevant to autism (where women were taking certain medications that lead to a higher incidence of autism in their children, such as thalidomide, misoprostol, and valproic acid), exposure occurs prenatally, very early in the first trimester of pregnancy. Therefore, this may be the most important time to avoid harmful chemicals that can affect fetal brain development. Whether or not other chemicals or known neurotoxins, such as phthalates, organophosphate pesticides, and BPA, cause an increase in autism or other specific brain development disorders is not known, and Landrigan encourages future toxicological studies to answer these questions.
But I know one thing for sure: I’m off to get a water filter.
