Washington: Researchers have said that industrial chemicals, heavy metals and pesticides are derailing normal brain development and robbing kids and society of dollars, IQ points and future potential.
Dr. Philippe Grandjean, one of the co-authors, said that the world is facing a "chemical brain drain."
Grandjean has spent decades to investigate chemicals capable of damaging the developing brain. He started with lead, then mercury.
Grandjean said that the line-up has now grown to a dozen "bona fide brain drainers" asserting that's twice as many chemicals as he and co-author Philip Landrigan, chairman of the department of preventative medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, listed in their first review of the science in 2006.
Joining methylmercury, lead, arsenic, PCBs, toluene and ethanol, according to the authors' updated list, are manganese, fluoride, DDT, chlorpyrifos, tetrachloroethylene and polybrominated biphenyl ethers.
