Every one of you sitting here today is carrying at least 500 measurable chemicals in your body that were never in anybody's body before the 1920s... We have dusted the globe with man-made chemicals that can undermine the development of the brain and behavior, and the endocrine, immune and reproductive systems, vital systems that assure perpetuity... Everyone is exposed.
The journey to a different future must begin by defining the problem differently than we have done until now. . The task is not to find substitutes for chemicals that disrupt hormones, attack the ozone layer, or cause still undiscovered problems, though it may be necessary to use replacements as a temporary measure. The task that confronts us over the next half century is one of redesign.
You are not exposed to one chemical at a time, but a complex mixture of chemicals that changes day by day, hour by hour, depending on where you are and the environment you are in... In the United States alone it is estimated that over 72,000 different chemicals are used regularly. Two thousand five hundred new chemicals are introduced annually-and of these, only 15 are partially tested for their safety. Not one of the chemicals in use today has been adequately tested for these intergenerational effects that are initiated in the womb.
