How Environmental Pollution
Impairs Brain Development
— and How to Protect the Brains
of the Next Generation

Metals and Inorganics

Worker cutting metal with many sharp sparks

Metals as heavy brain drainers
A total of thirteen metals and their compounds are known to cause toxic damage to the brain: aluminum,* arsenic, barium, bismuth, lead,* lithium, manganese,* mercury (including methylmercury and ethylmercury), nickel carbonyl, selenium, tellurium, thallium, and tin.*
Those with an asterisk* belong to the high-production volume chemicals.
Only arsenic, lead, and methylmercury are known for sure to be brain drainers, but evidence on manganese is building.
In addition, the following inorganic compounds are toxic to the brain, at least in adults: azides, carbon monoxide,* cyanides, decaborane, diborane, fluorides, hydrogen phosphide, hydrogen sulfide,* pentaborane, phosphine, and phosphorus.*

21
JAN
2016

Predictable lead poisoning

Posted By :
Comments : 2
21 January 2016. A lead poisoning episode has unfolded right in front of us. About 100 km from Detroit, the City council of Flint, Michigan, decided to switch its water supply from Detroit’s Lake Huron water to the local Flint River. That happened in April, 2014, and the aim was to contain costs in a time of financial distress. Flint River was considered only a temporary solution, though, and a longer-term goal was to connect to another pipeline from Lake Huron. Soon after the...
Read More
06
JUL
2015

The price of a brain

Posted By :
Comments : 0
6 July 2015. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) did not appropriately consider costs when preparing its legislation that requires coal-fired power plants to spend an estimated $9.6 billion per year cleaning up mercury and other toxic air pollutants. The EPA had estimated that the quantifiable benefits from the resulting reduction in hazardous-air-pollutant emissions would only be $4 to $6 million a year – much, much less than...
Read More
07
JAN
2015

Manganese in water drains brains

Posted By :
Comments : 1
7 January 2015. Manganese contamination of drinking water can stain the laundry and result in an unpleasant taste, although thought to be of doubtful health significance. As late as 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to discontinue its guideline for maximal manganese in drinking water (400 µg/L, an excessive level). Because “this health-based value is well above concentrations of manganese normally found in drinking water, it is not considered necessary to derive a formal...
Read More
11
DEC
2014

If pregnant, avoid tuna

Posted By :
Comments : 1
11 December 2014. Given recent evidence of the total mercury exposure from tuna and the wealth of studies on brain toxicity due to methylmercury, the Danish Food Agency has changed the advisory regarding fish intake, which now advises pregnant women against eating canned white tuna and albacore as well as tuna steaks and any meals based on large carnivorous fish, such as pike, perch, walleye, halibut, swordfish, escolar, skate and shark. This advisory also regards women who plan to become...
Read More
09
SEP
2014

Mercury fillings

Posted By :
Comments : 2
9 September 2014. A new draft report from an EU scientific committee shows how difficult it is for experts to draw conclusions from incomplete evidence. When reviewing possible adverse effects from mercury-containing fillings in teeth, the committee says that “in vitro evidence provides new insight into the effects of mercury on developing neural brain cells at concentrations similar to those found in human brain”. The experts also recognize that “effects of genetic...
Read More
11
AUG
2014

Lead polluters jailed

Posted By :
Comments : 0
11 August 2014. Last week, three executives from Innospec, the world’s only remaining producer of lead additives to gasoline, were sentenced to jail. They will each spend between 18  months and four years behind bars. The company, previously known as Associated Octel Ltd., itself pleaded guilty in 2010 to bribing state officials in Iraq and Indonesia and was fined $12.7 million (see “Only one chance”, chapter 9). The bribes were intended to secure, or serve as rewards for having...
Read More
16
JUN
2014

Fishy advice from US agencies

Posted By :
Comments : 0
16 June 2014. Last week, US authorities – the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency – released draft recommendations how pregnant women and children should include seafood in their diet. The agencies now recommend women to include 8-12 ounces (240-360 grams) of low-mercury seafood in their weekly diet. The advisory has been a matter of controversy and its release has been substantially delayed. The main concern at the FDA is that 21% of pregnant...
Read More
27
MAY
2014

ADHD and brain drainers

Posted By :
Comments : 0
27 May 2014. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common behavioral disorder of childhood, and the prevalence among school children may be as high as 10%. Children with ADHD have a decreased attention span, they have difficulty concentrating, they are more impulsive and often hyperactive. The symptoms change with age, and ADHD in adults is associated with academic underachievement, employment problems, decreased income as well as unstable personal relationships and...
Read More
123

Get our updates via social media

Facebook
Twitter

“Only One Chance”

The book was released in mid-2013. It can be ordered directly from Oxford University Press – click here.

E-book versions are also available both for Kindle and Nook.

"Only One Chance shaves off layer after layer of ignorance, naiveté, and corruption as it exposes the hidden dangers from industrial chemicals. Grandjean's book reads like a thriller and gives us a unique chance to decide that the next generation's brains must be protected against toxic brain drainers." - Devra Lee Davis, PhD, author of The Secret History of the War on Cancer and National Book Award finalist.

See scientific journal reviews here and here.

A Danish version now available from Gyldendal: publisher page. E-book and audio versions are also available in Danish.

A French translation ("Cerveaux en danger") was published by Buchet/Chastel in February, 2016. A Kindle version is also available.

In a review for Le Monde, Hervé Morin writes: "La démonstration de Philippe Grandjean est implacable et désespérante... son ­exposé invite à l’indignation... il est plus que temps de protéger le cerveau des enfants." In Cerveaux & Psycho, André Picot concludes: “Dans cet ouvrage passionnant, Philippe Grandjean delivre un message clair: il est urgent d’agir, sans quoi le prix à payer pour les générations futures risqué d’être lourd. Merci à lui de nous informer si précisément, son témoignage nous est essentiel.”

RSS Environmental Health News on chemical brain drain

Recent Comments

Archives

Site map

Latest news posts

Recent comments

Latest tweets #chemicalbraindrain

Meta