Oct. 23--According to Dr. Alan Greene, two-thirds of high school students
have either high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes, predisposing
them to a lifetime of chronic conditions. And a recent report from the Centers
for Disease Control shows an eye-popping 265 percent increase in the rates of
hospitalizations related to food allergic reactions.
According to Dr. Kenneth Bock, genetics don't change that quickly.
Environment does. And while we've got 80,000 chemicals in our everyday
products here in the US, the EPA has required testing on only 200 existing
chemicals and restricted only five of them, despite the fact thousands of them
have been banned, removed or restricted from children's products in developed
countries around the world.
Is it any wonder that the health of the American children is under siege?
Evidence continues to mount over the impact that environmental toxins
contained in vaccines, foods and sippy cups are having on our health. On any
given day, an American child might be exposed to formaldehyde in a flu
vaccine, endocrine-disrupting bisphenol-A in a sippy cup, and insecticidal
proteins in high fructose corn syrup, presenting a stunning assault on the
developing immune system of a child.
And rather than prevent and protect, as governments around the world have
done, we prescribe: insulin pumps, epinephrine injectors and asthma inhalers
in record numbers to the American children.
So while Mexico bans endocrine-disrupting chemicals from their plastics
due to the harm they've been shown to present to the reproductive system in
children, American children are experiencing early onset puberty. And while
France bans corn that has been genetically mutated to contain insecticidal
proteins designed to create neurological and gastrointestinal damage to the
creatures that eat it, 1 in 3 American children now has allergies, asthma,
ADHD or autism and the Corn Refiners Association of America insists that one
of corn's derivatives, high fructose corn syrup, banned in other developed
countries, is "natural. And while other developed countries offer a delayed
vaccination schedule, our children are being injected with compounds whose
safety has not yet been tested in combination.
With the environmental assault on the health of our children, is it any
wonder that health care related costs now contribute 17 percent to our
nation's GDP?
While our children may be viewed as an earnings stream for epinephrine
injectors, insulin pumps and asthma inhalers, perhaps we should also view them
as our 'canaries in the coalmine.' They just may be trying to warn us of the
environmental dangers in front of all of us.
Together, we can restore the health of our children.
According to the New York Times, Robyn O'Brien is "Food's Erin
Brockovich." Robyn is the founder of AllergyKids, an organization designed to
protect the 1 in 3 American children with autism, allergies, ADHD and asthma.
Robyn has appeared on the Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Evening News
with Katie Couric and CNN highlighting the role that chemicals in our food
supply are having on our health. O'Brien is the author of The Unhealthy Truth:
How Our Food Is Making Us Sick and What We Can Do About It (Random House/ May
2009) and it exposes the role that money plays in our federal food policy.
Born and raised in Texas, Robyn earned a Fulbright Fellowship, an MBA and
served as an equity analyst on a multibillion dollar fund prior to moving to
Boulder, Colorado with her husband and four children. Additional resources,
articles and information are available at www.robynobrien.com and
www.allergykids.com
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