> I found that the real issue was not this particular group of 12 chemicals. Most of them are already being heavily restricted. This dozen is meant to illuminate something bigger: a broken system that allows industrial chemicals to be used without any significant testing for safety.
I think this is the real take-away. How many times have we found a particular Chemical X to be harmful, only to have it replaced by something whose hazards are less known rather than known to be lower just so that things could be marked "Chemical X-free"? Look at the replacement of saturated fats with trans fats, for example.
The chemicals they called out as developmental neurotoxins in 2006 were methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls, ethanol, lead, arsenic, and toluene. The additional chemicals they’ve since found to be toxins to the developing brains of fetuses—and I hope you’ll trust me that these all are indeed words—are manganese, fluoride, chlorpyrifos, tetrachloroethylene, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, and dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane.
While concentrated hydrofluoric acid is well-known as a nightmare mode poison, it's still scary to see a toothpaste icon make the same list as the rest. Chalk it up to industrial accidents though, which is certainly a reasonable argument against municipal flouridation.
Bags like these are loaded into the potable water supply as part of a routine program:
It seems like a pretty low-tech operation, and trivial errors involving accidental concentration foul-ups (maybe two bags of mix in the water supply, instead of one) probably fly under the radar, and the dynamic changes during a hot summer when everyone's using more ice cubes and drinking more iced tea. Decades later bones are more brittle and everyone's senile.
Meanwhile, growing up, I think I must have inhaled kilograms of toluene vapor, given all the airplane model kits I built.
I avoid dry cleaning simply because it costs too much, takes too long, and those sorts of expensive clothes just feel generally wasteful.
Mercury is probably the most threatening item on the list, given that I enjoy lots of seafood, but I feel guilty enough already, given the rampant destruction of the oceans my appetite contributes to.
Pesticides and other persistent bioaccumulative toxins, I pretty much feel powerless to control, and so I try not to think about them.
In the article Landrigan says that fluoridation is a good thing in small doses. He agrees with what you've posted. He doesn't appear to be particularly concerned about water fluoridation at all, but says in HIGH doses it can cause problems, which is true.
I think this is the real take-away. How many times have we found a particular Chemical X to be harmful, only to have it replaced by something whose hazards are less known rather than known to be lower just so that things could be marked "Chemical X-free"? Look at the replacement of saturated fats with trans fats, for example.