You've opened a huge area, but I'll try to get really focused, to the point.
Again, I think the experience we've had historically with children and exposure to lead in communities is illustrative of the problems of trying to achieve what you're talking about, and there's also the need for a strategy that doesn't rely on getting to the end of the process when people are actually getting sick and you can actually measure the decrements.
There are some studies that have tried to do that in Canada. It's always on a big scale because you're dealing with a huge range. In one study in 2001, I think, looking at environmental exposures on diabetes, Parkinson's disease, neuro-development effects, and hypothyroidism, they looked at costs of $46 billion to $52 billion to the Canadian economy. But that's big-picture stuff. What we do know, and the evidence is in Massachusetts and their toxics use reduction strategy that they've had since the 1980s, is that if you mandate the progressive removal of the chemical, you will save costs in the long run and you will reduce the impact of those substances on human health because they're not there.
