Drug Treatment & Alcohol Rehab

Treatment of Children with the Detoxification Method Developed by Hubbard

R. Michael Wisner, G.
Megan Shields, M.D.
Shelley L. Beckmann, Ph.D.

Introduction

The prevalence and variety of manufactured chemicals has exploded in the 20th Century. There have been over four million chemical compounds reported in the literature since 1965 with nearly six-thousand added to the list each week with the health effects from many only marginally understood.¹ Estimates have five billion pounds of chemicals released into the envirorunent in 1991. That's twenty-five pounds per square mile over the entire surface of the earth. In 1900 the environment accounted for 12% of deaths. In 1976 it was 59%.² Today it is higher. Chemicals represent nearly 10% of U.S. annual exports, totaling near $40 billion dollars.³

Cancer has been our primary measure of harm. Human exposure limits, when set, are based largely on carcinogenic effect. While better than none, cancer used as the final yardstick of harm, relegates environmental medicine to counting dead bodies. The human nervous and immune systems are far earlier sentinels of harm. Yet less than ten percent of the 70,000 chemicals in daily commercial and domestic use have been tested for neurotoxic or immunotoxic effects.⁴ In addition, the very ability of Man to reproduce is now suspect because of xenoestrogenic chemicals in our environment.⁵

The EPA reports that literally every American has accumulated measurable levels of some thirty different toxic chemicals in their tissues.6 More recent reports set the tally at one hundred and seventy-seven.7 Every woman's breast milk boasts pesticides, lindane, chlordane, dieldrin and sixty-five isomers of PCB's and dioxins. The average man's semen has thirty-five different forms of PCB's.8 The human body has become the final repository, the final toxic waste dump. Increasing toxic body burdens have been associated in the literature with increased risks, health effects, and symptomatology. It is not surprising this chemical plethora is having an adverse effect on the population at large.

Domestic Chemical Exposure

The sanctity and safety of the American home is questionable. The number of chemicals found in the average U.S. home reaches into the thousands. Homemakers show excess cancer deaths as compared to women who work outside the home.⁹ Every year there are between five and ten million household poisonings.¹⁰ The New York Poison Control Center reports 85% of product warning labels are inadequate.¹¹ Toxic solvents in paints and cleaning products, perchloroethylene in dry cleaning chemicals, ⁴ phenylcyclohexane in carpets, isocyanates in glues, lead in old plumbing and paints, pesticides, termcides, dioxins in bleached paper products, chlorine compounds in shower water, asbestos and formaldehyde insulators, and radon gas make up just the initial "dirty dozen." "le there is a dearth of pharmacokinetics data, many of these chemical compounds have oil-soluble metabolites that are known or suspected to store in the human body. Increased endogenous dose is linked to increase health risks.¹²

Domestic exposure to pesticides has been associated with a five-fold increase in childhood cancer.¹³ Parental exposure at work to solvents is strongly correlated with childhood leukemia at home. The exposure coming from the parent's clothes and breath. Domestic health consequences are exacerbated if the home is designed as a tight building or lacks adequate ventilation.

School Exposures

Schools often present a hotbed of chemical exposure normally outside parental control. Commercial-grade cleaning solvents, glues, waxes, polishes, paints, pesticides are often used. Radon and electromagnetic radiation from electric power substations are seldom monitored.

Many older buildings are permeated with lead from old paint chipping and dusting. Nearly 10% of schools have been found to contain dangerous levels of asbestos. An estimated three million school children and some six-hundred thousand teachers and school employees are exposed to dangerous levels of this carcinogenic substance.¹⁴

One Children

One consequence of widespread chemical contamination is the occurrence of chronic health effects in children. Nearly two million American children, ages one to five, suffer from lead poisoning. Fifteen percent of children under the age of six (three million preschoolers) have blood lead levels that exceed standards and can cause permanent neurological effects.16 Lead demonstrates that behavioral problems may well be the earliest sign of low level chemical exposure. The unanticipated damage from low levels of lead are a disturbing harbinger of the what the future may hold.

The effects on young children are often more severe than they are on older people in the same family. The effective concentration of the chemical may be higher in children. Also, children may be developmentally more usceptible to adverse effects. The blood brain barrier is less well developed, allowing more chemicals to pass through and cause damage.^{16 17}

Contributing factors include: smaller body mass, less developed immune system, higher rate of metabolism, increased susceptibility to developmental effects caused by hormonal disruption, and dietary intake.

Treatment of Xenobiotic Exposures

Amelioration of health effects can involve several approaches. Foremost is the removal of exposure source. Environmental sensitivities may respond to chemical desensitization. Proper nutrition may counter deficits-common to chemical exposures. Finally, the reduction of toxic body burdens may reduce symtomatology and accelerate recovery. EDTA chelation has demonstrated symptom remediation by eliminating toxic body burdens of lead.18 However, while EDTA chelation has proved successful with certain water soluble metals, it cannot eliminate the more pervasive lipophilic toxic compounds.

There are many instances where entire families have become ill following inadvertent exposure to toxic chemicals. In this presentation, we will focus on the treatment of eighteen children from ten such families with the detoxification method developed by Hubbard.

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