Chemical Risk202-331-1010 • www.cei.org • Competitive Enterprise Institute
Although we don’t think much about them,man-made chemicals are essential to almost ev-erything we do. They make our cars run; theyclean everything from our teeth to our dishes;they reduce illness by disinfecting bathrooms athome and operating rooms in hospitals; theyare used on food products, such as poultry, toeliminate E. coli and other deadly pathogens;and they keep our computers, television sets,and other electronic products running. Con-sider just a few of the critical functions theyperform in making our lives better:Chlorination of water supplies has saved
millions of lives. For example, since localengineers and industry introduced chlori-nation in the 1880s, waterborne-relateddeaths in the United States dropped from75 to 100 deaths per 100,000 people tofewer than 0.1 death per 100,000 annuallyin 1950.
Rather than curtailing the use of chlorina-
tion as Thornton suggests, we should beexpanding access. According to the WorldHealth Organization, because of such prob-lems as poor sanitation and unsafe drinkingwater diarrheal diseases (such as choleraand dysentery) kill about 2.2 million peoplea year, most of whom are children underfive years of age.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention notes that fluoridation of water(fluoride is yet another chemical targeted by
10. J. Michael LaNier, “Historical Development of Mu-nicipal Water Systems in the United States, 1776–1976,”
Journal of the American Water Works Association
68,no. 4 (1976): 177.11. “Water-Related Diseases: Diarrhoea,” World HealthOrganization website, http://www.who.int/water_sanita-tion_health/diseases/diarrhoea/en/, access November 29,2007.
environmentalists) has proven a tremendousbenefit for oral hygiene.
Nearly 85 percent of pharmaceuticals cur-
rently in use require chlorine to be used intheir production.
Thanks to chemicals used for pharmaceu-
ticals, combination drug therapy reducedAIDS deaths by more than 70 percentfrom 1994 to 1997.
And more recently,researchers estimated that AIDS drug treat-ments have saved a total of 3 million yearsof life in the United States since 1989.
Fifty percent of the reductions of heart dis-
ease–related deaths between 1980 and 1990(total death rate decline of 30 percent) areattributable to medicines and the chemicalsthat are in them.
12. “Ten Great Public Health Achievements—UnitedStates, 1900–1999,”
Morbidity and Mortality WeeklyReport
48, no. 12 (1999): 241–43.13. Gordon W. Gribble, “Chlorine and Health: Evaluat-ing Chlorine and Chlorinated Compounds” (New York:American Council on Science and Health,1995), http:// www.healthfactsandfears.net/docLib/20040503_chlo-rine.pdf.14. Frank J. Palella, Kathleen M. Delaney, Anne C. Moor-man, Mark O. Loveless, Jack Fuhrer, Glen A. Satten,Diane J. Aschman, and Scott D. Holmberg, “DecliningMorbidity and Mortality among Patients with AdvancedHIV Infection,”
New England Journal of Medicine
338,no. 13 (1998): 853–60, https://content.nejm.org/cgi/con-tent/abstract/338/13/853.15. Rochelle P. Walensky, et al., “The Survival Benefits of AIDS Treatment in the United States
,” Journal of Infec-tious Diseases
194, no. 1 (July 1, 2006): 11–1916. M.G. Hunink, L. Goldman, A. N. Tosteson, M. A.Mittleman, P. A. Goldman, L. W. Williams, J. Tsevat,and M. C. Weinstein, “The Recent Decline in Mortalityfrom Coronary Heart Disease, 1980–1990,”
Journal of the American Medical Association
277, no. 7 (1997):535–42, abstract available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9032159&dopt=Abstract