PCBs. VOCs. Pthalates. Bisphenol A (BPA). The list of industrial chemicals on the minds of consumers is crowded with confusing new acronyms as growing scientific data show a link between chemical exposure and a range of behavioral, reproductive and immunological problems.

Lawmakers in Washington have taken notice, albeit long after the European Union, which banned pthalates in 2000. In August, President Bush signed the Consumer Product Safety Act banning lead and six types of pthalates from baby products. However, in January the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a one-year stay of enforcement of aspects of the law. California then became the first state to approve a similar ban, which went into effect last month.

For parents wanting to make healthy choices for their kids, it can be a struggle, even for the most eco-savvy, to strike the right balance between a kind of paranoid parenting, where dangers are seen lurking in every plastic toy and nonorganic mattress, and blithe acceptance that the benefits of living in our convenience-driven industrial world comes at a cost.

'Stunned by the findings'

Marie McGlashan, an acupuncturist and health-conscious Mill Valley mother of three, says she "stays up on the health issues surrounding pesticides and chemicals, especially when it comes to what to feed my family." So when she joined a group of parents at San Francisco's Katherine Delmar Burke School last fall to hear environmental advocate Ken Cook speak, she didn't expect to be "so stunned by the findings I heard. Seeing his '10 Americans' presentation was a dramatic moment for me."

Cook is the energetic and persuasive co-founder of Environmental Working Group (EWG) in Washington, D.C., a research organization and public health lobbying powerhouse. Cook has been traveling the country since 2005 presenting the findings of EWG's "10 Americans" study, which tested the umbilical cord blood of 10 babies born in U.S. hospitals from a random sample supplied by the Red Cross on the same day in 2004.

287 chemicals found

The research was the most comprehensive testing ever conducted on human umbilical cord blood. It found 287 industrial chemicals in the samples, nearly half of which are known carcinogens. Also detected were dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants (PBDEs) and their toxic by-products, and numerous pesticides, including DDT and others, which were banned more than 30 years ago.

"The placenta does not filter out toxins to the degree scientists and doctors once believed," said Cook by phone from Washington, D.C. In reality, a baby in utero "lives in a critical window of vulnerability," according to Cook, with an immature blood-brain barrier that efficiently transfers nutrients - as well as contaminants - to his or her internal organs.

"Learning that industrial pollution begins in the womb hit me so hard," says McGlashan, echoing the reactions of thousands of people who have heard Cook's data-crammed multimedia presentation. "As scary as it is, I knew more people were ready to hear his message and I was inspired right away to do something to help." McGlashan contacted fellow mom-activists Kimberly Pinkson, founder of EcoMom Alliance in San Anselmo, and Debbie Friedman of Mothers of Marin Against the Spray. They invited Cook back to the Bay Area to give an expanded version of his "10 Americans" talk at Cavallo Point in Sausalito on Tuesday.

Like 'Inconvenient Truth'

Cook's "10 Americans" presentation has been described by some as the "Inconvenient Truth" of environmental toxicity issues. "It was very much our goal to affect people the way Gore did about climate change," says Cook. Using more wit and less wonkishness than the former vice president, Cook, bolstered by years of EWG scientists' research, helps people cut through the mass of conflicting information and misinformation on toxic exposure. He stresses that while causation is difficult, if not impossible, to prove, scientific data point toward chemical exposure as a real factor in the dramatic rise of many diseases in the United States.

"I'm not suggesting for one minute that just because you have a carcinogenic chemical in you it's going to cause cancer, or even that if you went out and got tested for a chemical that would necessarily tell you what you should then do for your health," Cook says. "But what we do know about the overlap between genetics and environment is profound.

"We're no longer talking about nature versus nurture. We simply don't mutate and evolve quickly enough to explain things like a 40 percent increase in childhood brain cancer, soaring autism and infertility rates or one in seven women getting breast cancer. One scientist I know says, 'Genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger.' "

To skeptics who question the impact of small concentrations of chemicals (measured in parts per billion) that show up in the "10 Americans" cord blood samples, Cook points out that many popular drugs - Paxil, Cialis and Albuterol, among them - have very real therapeutic effects at the same or lower concentrations. "If drugs are tested to make sure they are effective at these low levels, isn't it crazy to assume otherwise for industrial chemicals?"

Call it 'biomonitoring'

The "10 Americans" project is part of a rapidly growing field of study - and lexicon - to describe the toxic chemical load we carry. Cook hopes that through more widespread "biomonitoring" of our collective "body burden" (the number of pollutants stored in human tissues and bodily fluids), we will one day define the "human toxome" - named in deliberate contrast to the "human genome" - which he describes as the full scope of industrial pollution in humanity.

Environmental Working Group will soon make public the results of its second "10 Americans" study. Cook wishes their sample size were larger, but the lab costs for blood analysis are $10,000 per sample. "This is really something which ought to be undertaken and bankrolled by the government, not a small nonprofit like ours."

An additional EWG research project is investigating the chemical emissions from cleaning products used in California's public schools, with a spotlight on potential asthma-causing chemicals. Schools within the San Francisco Unified, Oakland Unified and Jefferson Elementary (Daly City) districts are involved in the study.

Now is the time

Encouraged by President Obama's recent pledge to "guarantee scientific integrity" in federal policy, Cook believes now is the time to overhaul our outdated Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), signed into federal law in 1976 to ensure the safety of commercial chemicals. The Act has not been amended for 33 years - longer than any other major environmental or public health statute on the books.

Cook says TSCA's main flaw is its failure to mandate health and safety testing by manufacturers before using a new chemical in consumer products. This is in stark contrast to the more than 100 studies on average that are required before a new pesticide or drug can be marketed. "Something's terribly wrong with a regulatory system that assumes a toxic chemical is innocent until proven guilty. Our safety net is in tatters."

During every "10 Americans" presentation, Cook urges his audience to support the Kid-Safe Chemicals Act, a comprehensive chemical policy reform that will be introduced in Congress by senators Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., Barbara Boxer, D-Cal. and Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Cal., this spring. Kid-Safe would reverse the burden of proof from the public to the chemical manufacturers to determine safety. It would require manufacturers to meet the "reasonable certainty of no harm" standard in place for pesticides used in the growing of food.

Leaving the burden to consumers to ensure their safety through guesswork and precautionary measures, Cook says, "is just folly. Even I resent having to go to (EWG's) Web site (which links consumers to "Skin Deep," its cosmetic safety database) to figure out which personal care products I should be worried about and which ones I should buy."

Unlike many proponents of eco-living that stress our purchasing power as green consumers, Cook is adamant that "we cannot shop our way out of this mess."

Simple lifestyle changes

He promotes making simple lifestyle changes that can minimize chemical exposures: Use cast-iron pans instead of nonstick; filter your water for cooking and drinking; buy organic; avoid products with added fragrance (which is often an indicator of pthalates).

And most of all, he urges people to "realize how much positive change we're capable of. We got lead out of gasoline, we banned PCBs, we got rid of DDT - and we still have cars, we still have an electrical grid and we still have food to eat. Now we need one additional step regarding chemicals and it's pretty simple: If they're in people, we ought to be damn sure they're safe."