More than 80,000 new chemicals have been developed since World War II, according to the Children’s Environmental Health Center at Mount Sinai. Even of the major chemicals, fewer than 20 percent have been tested for toxicity to children, the center says.
Kristoff – Cancer From the Kitchen? – NYTimes.com (via rahmin)
Think about how cost-prohibitive it would be to test every single substance known for short and long-term effects on humans. It’s impossible. The FDA does it (for things we willfully put in our body), and look how expensive medications are. It’s pretty obvious substances that aren’t supposed to enter our body do so through daily living. Can we test all 80,000 chemicals? And that’s not even considering how flawed the legitimate tests are when analyzing long terms effects of x on a very complicated human culture.