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this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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You are ignoring three factors in this asessment:
Increased exposition due to the population having increased drastically as well as the amount of products causing exposition
Increased accumulation of long living and "eternity" chemicals in the biosphere, in the food chain and ultimately in the human bodies.
Higher vulnerability of the biosphere and humans due to stress from climate change, land conversion and competition, diseases, stress from traffic, work etc.
When we look at the measurable effects we still see effects like a loss in fertility over the past 50 years, more problems with endocrine (hormone like) substances, cancer rates etc.
Would it be worse, if we still had leaded gasoline, asbestos and co? Yes it would. But it is not better now to the extent that these are considered less of an issue. The deterioation of the biosphere and humans continues, just at a slower pace. Although in many categories it even accelerated, e.g. loss of insect biomass.
Oh absolutely, in the grand scheme of how fucked humanity is, most chemicals are barely a blip compared to ecosystem collapse and global warming.
They do play a major role in that collapse though. While most single compounds would play a role that seems like a blip, the effects of thousands and thousands of different compunds are cumulating into huge problems. In particular the loss of insects and biodiversity due to herbicides and pesticides, as well as the deterioation of surface and ground water bodies due to toxic chemicals and nutrients like Nitrate and Phosphates reduced the ability of these biotopes to recover and provide ecological "services". It is getting worse because of climate change, but the abundant use of problematic chemical compounds is just as harmful.