Transcript:
About 20 years ago Kent Anger and Barry Johnson
came up with 750 chemicals that could harm the brain during development. Nobody
has since then dared to update that number, it's just a guess today, there has
to be more than a thousand if there was 750 twenty years ago. But the problem
is also that we have put too little emphasis in this type of, uh, research. For
example, it has taken so far the OECD 10 years to devise a battery of tests
that they could recommend for systematic testing of chemicals for developmental
neurotoxicity. That panel, that battery, has not yet been completed and
authorized by OECD so it's taking way, way, way too long because it is
complicated. But there is so much at stake. Children are just losing IQ points
and losing their concentration span, memory or motor functions. But in the
present world where there's so much emphasis on knowledge and brain functions
this can also translate into dollars. The EPA has calculated that every time a
child loses one IQ point because of chemical pollution it costs society
something like $8,000 or $10,000.