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In both cases people in lab coats created synthetic chemicals (or modified organic chemicals), companies started mass-producing them, and then years later a few people started to realize how bad they were after they were already saturating the environment and human bodies. In both cases, they were assumed safe until proven otherwise. This is how industry works. This is also why the Environmental Working Group (EWG), in six studies, found “455 industrial pollutants, pesticides and other chemicals in blood, urine, and breast milk in 72 people altogether.”

Toxic synthetic chemicals are unavoidable. We have PFCs in waterproof and stain-resistant clothing and Teflon, arsenic in wood decks and lawn furniture, mercury in fish, pesticides in food, phthalates, PVCs, PCBs, organochlorines and organophosphates, and countless other chemicals no one can pronounce, let alone recognize, in the kitchen. EWG found chemical fire retardantsča thyroid toxinčin breast milk of every woman tested. In one study, “researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals.”

They’re in cosmetics and other “personal care products” too. According to EWG, “the government cannot mandate safety studies of cosmetics, and only 11 percent of the 10,500 ingredients FDA has documented in products have been assessed for safety by the cosmetic industry’s review panel.”

Yet corporate scientists continue to churn out new types of chemicals never seen by nature every year. Then the companies that make the chemicals test it for safety and send the results to the FDA for review. The FDA, underfunded, understaffed, and (like all other government agencies) run primarily by people who used to work in the industry they’re supposed to regulate, approves the chemicals. Soon we all start accumulating a few more molecules in the chemical soup stored in our cells.

Within the industry and regulatory agencies, no one tests the long-term effects of the chemicals. No one tests how they combine with all the other chemicals in our bodies and environment. Rarely are they tested on a cellular level.

Instead watchdog groups are left to look into these toxins and get the word out. A website compiling many of the studies of the effects of widespread chemical contaminants can be found at www.ourstolenfuture.org. Included are studies finding that the level of endocrine disrupting chemicals in mothers greatly increases the risk of cancer in their children, that scientific studies by industry are corrupted by vested interests, brain development is altered or impeded by exposure to many of these chemicals, and that chemical contaminants affect cancer rates, fertility, immune system function, and affect wildlife and the ecosystem.

And despite all this, in 2001 the state legislature, led by Governor Pawlenty, ended a program to study large numbers of deformed frogs in Minnesota. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and the EPA are doing little to regulate the chemical industry. Meanwhile, cancer isn’t going away, sperm counts have dropped substantially, as much as 50 percent throughout the United States and Europe in the last 50 years, and various other maladies are piling up.

So what can we do about it? Obviously voting for politicians hasn’t helped, government in general is no longer accountable to the public, corporations are certainly not accountable, and contaminants don’t go away. There is a solution-don’t buy crap. And when you do have to buy things, buy them as local and natural as possible. Organic produce, although not totally free of pesticides contains substantially fewer pesticides than conventional produce, and it supports farming which does not rely on heavy chemical use. Buying local provides more accountability than buying corporate brands or imported products. It’s time to stop being consumers before it’s too late.