New York City, NY – Jessica Alba’s company is spending $3 million on research to test if certain chemicals make autism more prevalent.
The Sin City star co-founded The Honest Company when she got tired of lobbying for an overhaul of the 1976 Toxic Control Act. The act currently allows for 80,000 untested chemicals in common household products. Alba wanted to change that.
But when she realized it’s easier to tackle the red carpet then the red tape she did the next best thing: co-found a company that makes plant-based and sustainable products for babies such as diapers and shampoo.
Alba was interviewed by Forbes Magazine and said:
“I went about it in creating a for-profit business around a non-profit issue. I just felt like it would be a more sustainable way to address the issue.”
The company has made $150 million dollars in revenue, in under three years Honest has enough to found what it honestly set out to do: research.
In the famed Mount Sinai’s uber-clean room that disallows dust and keeps particles out, a team of epidemiologists working under the Children’s Environmental Health Center chair Dr. Philip Landrigan, are testing baby teeth for links between common chemicals and autism.
Landrigan, most known for his CDC research that led to the banning of lead-based paint for residential use, met with Forbes and acknowledged that every American knows that autism rates are on the increase. He further added:
Some of that is due to better awareness and earlier diagnosis, but that’s only part of it. We know there’s clearly a genetic bias, but genetic change doesn’t occur quickly. There’s clearly something in the environment. What might that be?”
To find the chemical culprits Landrigan and his teem will test teeth from children without, and with, autism. According to him this will allow them to see the child’s interaction with chemicals as far back as the third or forth month of pregnancy when teeth begin to form.
Contributed by Audrey L. Hollingshead.
Source: Clare O’Connor on the Forbes website: Jessica Alba’s Honest Co. Funding Research On Chemical Link To Autism