[00:00:00] Aaron Goodman: Before we begin, I'd like to note that this is the 100th episode of The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. When I launched the podcast in twenty twenty-two, I didn't know we'd reach this milestone, and I'm deeply grateful to our guests, listeners, viewers, and supporters around the world who've helped make these conversations possible.

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[00:01:15] Thanks so much for being part of this ongoing journey. 

You're listening to The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I'm Aaron Goodman. What can the history of lead exposure teach us about risk, regulation, and MCS? My guest today is Dr. Bruce Lanphear, physician, epidemiologist, and professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.

[00:01:41] For over three decades, Dr. Lanphear has studied the health effects of lead and other toxic chemicals, helping to demonstrate that even low levels of exposure can have lasting impacts on human health. Together, we discuss how lead became one of the most important case studies in [00:02:00] environmental health and what it can teach us about chemical exposure more broadly.

[00:02:04] We explore the concept of body burden and cumulative exposure, why regulators are often slow to act, and how industries have challenged emerging evidence of harm. We also discuss the precautionary principle and the importance of listening to affected people when concerns about chemical exposures first emerge.

[00:02:26] Dr. Lanphear argues that the lessons of lead extend far beyond a single chemical. They raise broader questions about how societies assess risk, who bears the burden of proof, and what happens when people report harm before governments and institutions are prepared to respond. Whether discussing lead, fragrances, pesticides, or other environmental exposures, this conversation offers important insights for people living with MCS and anyone interested in protecting public health.

[00:02:59] Please [00:03:00] check out and share a link for the podcast new webpage. It's listen.chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org. It's easy to share with anyone in your life who may be interested in learning more about MCS, and please subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more, follow the Chemical Sensitivity Podcast on YouTube, Facebook, X, Instagram, BlueSky, TikTok, and you can reach me at aaron@chemcialsensitivitypodcast.org.

[00:03:26] Thanks for listening. Professor Lanphear, thank you so much for joining me. Would you like to briefly introduce yourself for listeners and talk a little bit about, um, your expertise? 

Dr. Lanphear: Sure. Uh, my name is Bruce Lanphear. I'm a professor at Simon Fraser University, uh, and I've been studying low-level lead poisoning and other toxic chemicals that impact mostly children, but people overall, for the last 30 years, mostly coming at it from the standpoint of population health and community-based studies. 

[00:04:00] Aaron Goodman: We were talking before we began recording, and you mentioned that sometimes people have the impression that lead exposure and contamination, if that's the right word, is an issue of the past. I mentioned it's come up for me when we've lived in different houses that had lead paint.

[00:04:19] But do you wanna talk a little about why should folks today have their eyes open to, to lead exposure? 

Dr. Lanphear: Yeah. Well, all of us, every single one of us and our fam- families have been affected by lead. Now, if we look back in time and look at maybe a father that died or an uncle that died of a heart attack, somebody who we know that might children who struggled in school, a mother who gave birth prematurely, somebody who had chronic kidney failure.

[00:04:56] All of those and more have been linked with lead exposure, which [00:05:00] isn't to say that lead is the only risk factor for those, but it will elevate the risk. So if we use my dad as an example, my dad was diagnosed with ALS in 2007. So quite naturally, as an epidemiologist, I wanna understand why. Well, only about 10% of cases are genetic, and we had no family history, so there might have been, undoubtedly was an underlying genetic susceptibility, but that didn't explain why he developed ALS.

[00:05:29] At the time, I went through the literature and I found three things that stood out. One was head trauma. He had a scooter injury when he was in Kenya, hospitalized with amnesia. Check. He grew up above a chauffeur service in Washagamo Island. He was born in 1935. They took care of a very wealthy clientele.

[00:05:53] They were absolutely using leaded gasoline. Next, he moved to [00:06:00] the family farm, Broadview Farm, which was downwind from the golf course. So we have head trauma, lead exposure, and pesticide. And when I tested his lead at 70, he had levels at about twice as high as a typical person his age. Now, most of the lead in our bodies is stored in our bone.

[00:06:22] So I can give you several examples like that where I know my family was impacted by lead exposure, even if I can't specifically target it and say that lead absolutely caused that condition. But every one of our families has been affected because lead is so widespread. Mm-hmm. In the 1970s, we were exposed to levels 1,000 times higher than our preindustrial ancestors.

[00:06:50] And even though blood lead levels have come down and bone lead levels have come down by about 95% since then, we're still exposed to levels 10 to 100 [00:07:00] times higher than our preindustrial ancestors. So we're just beginning to understand, in many cases, the impacts of lead, although we, we know quite a bit about how it causes some of the most common problems that we encounter.

[00:07:13] Aaron Goodman: Would you say that exposure to lead can add to the cumulative amount of toxins that we hold in the body? Because we know that is a contributor to multiple, multiple chemical sensitivity. Yeah. Well, it absolutely adds to the burden, and probably one of the largest burdens because it is stored in our bones.

[00:07:35] It doesn't pass through us. So for example, if you look at women around the time of menopause, their blood lead levels spike by about 30%. The spike is lower if they had given birth to three or more children because unfortunately, the lead in our bodies, the lead in women's bodies, is offloaded into the developing [00:08:00] fetus.

[00:08:01] So how lead and that cumulative burden of toxins specifically contributes to multiple chemical sensitivity, I don't think we know. I don't certainly have any particular sense of that. But it absolutely adds to the total body burden of, of toxic chemicals. It certainly may impact multiple chemical sensitivity in a number of ways.

[00:08:24] It absolutely can harm, uh, the nervous system. It's been known for centuries that it damages the peripheral nerves. We know that it alters behavior, that it damages the prefrontal cortex. Mm-hmm. Uh, that it can cause death of certain cells. All of those things certainly could contribute to sort of the total body burden and how we experience the world around us.

[00:08:50] Historically, our biggest exposure was from leaded gasoline, and so the cohort who was born and lived from, let's say, the [00:09:00] 1930s into the present have been probably the most heavily exposed. Although the peak exposures occurred during the 1960s, and that was because there was both leaded gasoline, lead in canned foods.

[00:09:14] Lead was used as a solder in 95% of canned foods in the United States. We had lead in paint. There was leaded aviation fuel. There was lead weights, wheel weights that were found on streets everywhere that would be ground into dust. Lead contaminated house dust from the fallout of leaded gasoline, the soil, both from disintegration of paint and deposition of leaded gasoline.

[00:09:42] It was found in our foods because it was used as an insecticide in the '30s and '40s, in particular into the '50s, lead arsenate. It was everywhere. It was in our serving plates, and it still is found that way in many countries, like lead glaze pottery in [00:10:00] Mexico and other parts of the world. Increasingly, we're seeing problems from industrial emissions, and that was true historically.

[00:10:10] Every major city had one or actually many different smelters, lead smelters inside the city limits. That's a problem now in many countries, like in Africa, for example, where Indian corporations are recycling lead-acid batteries, car batteries in communities, and the children and people living around them can be heavily contaminated.

[00:10:36] So the batteries right now are one of the biggest sources, but it can also still be found in paint, in spices, and a host of other products. Servingware that's made from recycled metals, for example, contain, can contain high amounts of lead What are the particular risks for children, young people, when it comes to exposures to lead?[00:11:00] 

[00:11:00] So what can we learn from lead? Well, first of all, young children oftentimes are more heavily exposed to lead and many other chemicals, partly because of their hand-to-mouth behaviors, partly because they're crawling on the floor and you can imagine sort of a pigpen effect where they're crawling on the floor.

[00:11:19] They're right there next to the surface. So if it's an old carpet, for example, they're gonna get a lot of material puff up, and that'll get on their hands, but they'll also inhale it. So pound for pound, children eat more, drink more, and breathe faster- Hmm ... than older children and adults. And so if the food or the drink or the air is contaminated, they're gonna get a higher body burden than older children and adults.

[00:11:50] So there's exposure mechanisms that we can understand better because of what we've learned from lead. We also know that in some cases children are [00:12:00] exposed in utero. As their mother tries to provide adequate calcium for their bones and tissues, they will oftentimes leach calcium from their bones, and if there's lead there, and there is in all of us, they'll also leach out the lead and transfer that to the fetus.

[00:12:18] Certain things like mercury we know can be concentrated across the placenta. So we've learned a lot about not only lead, but other toxic chemicals and how the developing child can be uniquely vulnerable or susceptible. Hmm. You mentioned that the levels that we're exposed to in the West have come down by about 95%, so that must have something to do with regulation.

[00:12:41] Aaron Goodman: Do you want to talk a little bit about regulation and maybe effort by governments, corporations to kind of minimize the, the risks in the public consciousness? 

Dr. Lanphear: Absolutely. And really, most people think that the tobacco industry originated those strategies [00:13:00] to create uncertainty, to create doubt. It really was the lead industry that did it before them, and then the sugar industry, and then the tobacco industry.

[00:13:08] And now we've seen it across many different corporations that try to create uncertainty about new science that shows chemicals might be harmful or are harmful. And so that gums up the regulatory process. And so we might see decades or even century-long delays in regulation. 2025 is the 100th anniversary of the US Surgeon General's meeting to ask scientists and industry representatives if it would be safe to add tetraethyl lead to gasoline.

[00:13:45] The independent scientists said, "No, don't do it." One of them, Yandell Henderson, who was the leading, the nation's leading chemical warfare expert, said, "If you do it, you're gonna create a scourge worse than [00:14:00] tuber- tuberculosis with slow lead poisoning and hardening of the arteries." The industry representatives, headed up by Robert Kehoe, said, "Look, we know lead's a poison, but until you've proven that lead is a poison when it's been added to gasoline, you have no right to prohibit us from using it."

[00:14:20] That set the stage, it's called the Kehoe Rule, that basically says, "Look, until you've proven definitively that this chemical or that chemical is toxic, you have no right prohibiting industry from using it." And that clearly is relevant for multiple, multiple chemical sensitivities, right? Along with all the other chemicals out there.

[00:14:42] Aaron Goodman: Are there any examples of people pushing back against regulators or governments, corporations when it comes to lead that we can perhaps look to as an example? You know, people perhaps who've become ill by lead exposure, who've taken it upon themselves [00:15:00] or worked with researchers like yourself and others to measure the body burden and to say, "Hey, wait a second. We are being impacted. You need to listen to us"? Because that's kind of... Those models can be really helpful for people with multiple chemical sensitivity because we're often dismissed and told by scientists, researchers, regulators, "No, it is safe. It's all in your head." So any examples that we could draw to, draw from or, or look to?

[00:15:29] Dr. Lanphear: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's been true for lead as well as many of the other things that I'm familiar with, that until there are community groups who begin to push back about the failure of regulations or the lack of regulations, and until there is a good science base, very little will happen. You have to have both.

[00:15:53] You need the people who are affected, the community. You need advocates who will persist. [00:16:00] You know, traditionally, scientists, and I used to think naively that this was true, that my job was just do the science and then move on to the next study. The problem with that is

[00:16:17] Creating regulation or policy to protect people from toxic chemicals or air pollution is a uphill battle. You have to fight against industry. You have to fight against the inertia of government. Hm. You have to fight against other things that are seen as bigger priorities. And so really until you have people in government, researchers in the community, advocacy groups working, and unfortunately it usually takes years, decades, before things happen, it won't happen until all of those forces come together.

[00:16:55] Now, sometimes you can have a big crisis- Mm-hmm ... that accelerates the [00:17:00] process. Mm-hmm. And oftentimes, a crisis will bring about regulations. Unfortunately, we seem to need those crises to act. Mm. And for many of the chemicals we're talking about, unless you have a very heavy exposure that kills people all at once, the tendency is to not see it.

[00:17:19] Mm. Because the exposures that we're concerned about, let's say with my dad, who had ALS, might have happened 70 years ago, or might have happened throughout his life, but they were not causing acute illness or death. Mm. They were slowly accelerating the wear and tear on his nervous system. And so we don't see it, because we're just so used to, say, if something happens and I see it the next second or the next day, maybe even the next week- Yeah

[00:17:50] like measles, then we get it. But these long, slow disasters- Yeah ... we have a harder time. The research shows that there's upwards of, [00:18:00] um, 33% of people in the US who self-report having some degree of multiple chemical sensitivity. Over a million Canadians have been officially diagnosed, but there are many others who can't get a diagnosis.

[00:18:12] I would say I'm certainly, I'm a fraction of the population that probably has some degree of multiple chemical sensitivity. There are some very clear smells, fragrances, that really just turn my stomach, make me nauseated. I hear you when you say that you're affected by, by chemicals and, um, I wanted to turn to, you know, uh, were people affected by lead exposure who developed illness, were they ever dismissed?

[00:18:46] Perhaps- Oh ... in the same way that people with chemical intolerance are mostly dismissed. Yeah. "It's in your head. There's not a, a scientific evidence that this is a real thing. It's a psychological condition." Did, did that occur? [00:19:00] Well, they were certainly dismissed in the sense that in the '60s and '70s it was blamed on the mothers.

[00:19:06] If a child was lead poisoned, uh, the industry representatives and maybe a few scientists who receive funding from industry would say, "Look, this is your fault. You don't keep your house clean. You don't wash your child's hands. That's why your kid is lead poisoned." Uh, one of the first studies I did as a young scientist was to try to work with families because this was the expert advice.

[00:19:33] If you do a better job cleaning, you can reduce your risk of lead poisoning. So we did two randomized controlled trials of dust control and cleaning in the home, and we found that didn't reduce lead exposure. But what did work, if you take lead out of gasoline, if you take lead out of canned foods, the solder used in canned foods, boom, we saw this huge drop-off.

[00:19:58] That's what led to this [00:20:00] 95% drop-off, and that's why the idea of population strategies is so important. Most often what we do is if there's a problem with lead poisoning or fragrances, we'll put the burden on individuals. You've gotta do a j- a better job picking out what kind of fragrances you use. You've gotta ask people in the workplace not to use them.

[00:20:23] You've gotta do a better job cleaning your house. You've gotta do a better job exercising so you don't get sick, right? The typical strategy has been, and government's involved in this, to put the burden on the individuals. But what we know is population strategies, for example- Mm ... taking lead out of gasoline, right?

[00:20:46] People don't have to do a better job cleaning their house because the lead isn't coming from the tailpipes and contaminating their home. Yeah. Now, they may still have other things in their home, dust, but it shouldn't be [00:21:00] toxic. It is toxic, not just with lead, but so many other things because we've failed to regulate these chemical industries that use it.

[00:21:08] Whether it's flame retardants, whether it's lead, whether it's fragrances, we haven't regulated them adequately. We put the burden on individuals. So yeah, it's absolutely almost always been an uphill battle. It is often presented as, uh, an individual problem, as you say. It's my problem. Yeah. I think that brings up an important point, though.

[00:21:29] Okay. And that is in our household we've got multiple generations. Yeah. Uh, and my daughter, uh, typically in the past used Tide. Mm. Um, it may do a really good job cleaning, but it also has this smell that just- Mm ... it does the same thing, like cer- certain fragrances. Yeah. And so we try to avoid those fragrances.

[00:21:49] We try to, at a population level, that would be a good strategy. Well, yeah. That, you know, this is low-hanging fruit. Like, one of the things that we were able to do in five provinces in Canada [00:22:00] is get rid of cosmetic pesticides. Mm-hmm. Pesticides that help you make your garden look pretty. There are alternatives.

[00:22:07] We could do the same thing with fragrances. Yeah. That generally speaking, we should be avoiding fragrances because they don't add anything really to the products. And if we could- That's right ... get to that point, I think we would all benefit. We'd still get clean clothes. They just wouldn't have this odor attached to them.

[00:22:26] Yeah. No, I hear what you're saying, and the laundry detergents and fabric softeners, uh, uh, et cetera, dryer sheets, are a major, um, challenge for, for millions of people, right? With multiple chemical sensitivity, uh, and, and others. Um, and you know that Tide was, is... I think it's banned in, in Europe. Yeah, yeah.

[00:22:49] Yeah, it's- I didn't know that. So- Why is it banned in Europe? Well, because I think they have a different regulatory- Uh, model, don't they, right? Yes. I understand that some states in the US, [00:23:00] like New York and maybe Washington, have been more proactive in terms of banning certain laundry products. Uh, and, you, you know, what, what kind of models could there be in the future?

[00:23:11] The European Union, while it still has some flaws, is much more geared towards the precautionary principle. That is where you require less evidence. It could be suggestive evidence to try to take something off the market. Now, I say they still struggle with that because industry still is quite powerful there, even if they don't have quite as much power.

[00:23:36] But it does set the framework differently to require suggestive evidence as opposed to definitive evidence. Mm. So you might have one or two small laboratory studies involving couple dozen, maybe a f- 50 r- rodents that a pesticide company uses to get something approved [00:24:00] And this is actually quite typical.

[00:24:04] Hmm. Then once it's approved, it has this seal of approval. Mm-hmm. And it would require, it has required dozens if not hundreds of laboratory studies showing it's toxic- Mm-hmm ... dozens if not hundreds of epidemiologic studies showing that it's toxic before it's taken off the market. And some of them still aren't taken off the market.

[00:24:25] Paraquat, which is a risk factor for Parkinson's disease, was finally banned in Canada. It's still on the market in the United States despite compelling evidence both from the laboratory and in human studies. Mm-hmm. industry documents that show that they knew about this 40 years ago. They knew how neurotoxic paraquat was.

[00:24:49] Mm-hmm. But for whatever reason, maybe it's because the EPA doesn't have adequate resources, maybe they're afraid of litigation- Mm-hmm ... maybe the mandate isn't [00:25:00] strong enough, and I think it's actually all three of those. Hmm. But they're failing to protect us. With- Hmm ... the solution is not to weaken the EPA further.

[00:25:09] Hmm. The solution is to give the EPA more resources, more money, and a stronger mandate. Drawing on your years of research and an expert in lead and other chemicals, what's your option about fragrance and regulation? Well, I know there's a few exceptions to this, but generally, if you can smell something, you should assume that there are chemicals in there, like phthalates, for example.

[00:25:35] So they should really be a red flag to say, "Hmm, maybe that's not a product I wanna use." Whether that's perfumes, whether that's cleaners and detergents, we try to avoid those. We avoid the fragrances. They're not essential. They're likely to increase your exposures to chemicals. Do you think the regulators are gonna wake up one day and listen?

[00:25:58] Aaron Goodman: You mentioned it earlier, it's a long road, [00:26:00] but can we have any hope? 

Dr. Lanphear: Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I, I mean, things rarely happen on the schedule that I hope they do. But yes, I do have a lot of hope. MCS- If the evidence isn't as definitive or in your face, um, a- as some of the evidence I know about lead poisoning, then that probably is an important avenue to, to follow up on.

[00:26:23] Um, but even when there's some evidence, and even when you think the evidence is enough, it probably isn't, given the forces at play, the industry pressure- Mm-hmm ... the inertia of government, the lack of regulatory mandate that the EPA currently has. So, and sometimes it might be the FDA as well, right? So I think it, you've gotta be in it for the long haul, because these things don't change quickly, unfortunately.

[00:26:51] Aaron Goodman: You've been listening to The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast. I'm the host and podcast creator Aaron Goodman. 

The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast is by and for the [00:27:00] MCS community. The podcast is generously supported by the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation and listeners like you. If you wish to support the podcast, please visit listen.chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org, and your support will help us continue making the podcast available and creating greater awareness about MCS.

[00:27:20] To learn more about The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast, follow the podcast on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky, and TikTok. And as always, you can reach me at aaron@chemicalsensitivitypodcast.org. Thanks for listening. 

The Chemical Sensitivity Podcast and its associated website are the work of Aaron Goodman, made possible with funds from the Marilyn Brachman Hoffman Foundation, supporting efforts to educate and inform physicians, scientists, and the public about multiple chemical sensitivity.

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