An Exemplary Study

http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15391226 I consider this news both good and bad, but quite unsurprising. There are 100,000 chemicals in use today in America. Their impact on human health is not known, with a few exceptions. Do you know what it would cost to determine their impact? Hundreds of billions--plus which, these tests, to be thorough, would have continue for decades for each chemical, and new chemicals are invented every year. Also, these tests would not measure the interactions of exogenous chemicals in the human body--leaving a huge area of ignorance even if all this time and money were to be expended. For this case, the good side is reduced fertility in an overpopulated world--I've suddenly realized that Haiti and Africa and the Muslim world are in desperate need of flame-retardant lifestyles. The bad side is that this is the tip of the iceberg in a great many senses--this chemical has more nasty effects yet to be discovered, there are 100,000 other contaminants and essentially infinite possible interactions between them, and our life becomes more inescapably chemicalized every day.