The Mass Poisoning
Of Humanity
An Exploration Of Human Stupidity
http://www.rense.com
By Mike Adams
NewsTarget.com
11-27 -5

The mass poisoning of humanity: an exploration of human stupidity As human beings, we're the only species stupid enough to actually poison ourselves. As part of modern living, we create a wide variety of chemical toxins that go into the ecosystem through rivers and streams, the air, the soil and so on. Not only that, we actually synthesize toxic chemicals and then inject them directly into the food supply -- knowing full well that they are poisonous and are major contributors to the epidemic rates of chronic disease we are experiencing today.

What are these chemicals I'm talking about? Well, you're about to get a whirlwind tour of humanity's toxic chemicals. And if you look at toxic chemicals, you have to start in the realm of dentistry, because in no other profession (save medicine) will you find the use of so many toxic chemicals that are deliberately prescribed to patients or injected into their bodies. We're talking about, of course, mercury fillings and fluoride dripped into the public water supplies.

Dr. Poison Mercury, DDS

When we talk about mercury fillings, you have to keep in mind that mercury is simply one of the most toxic substances you can put into the human body, aside from radioactive substances. Right now, today, dentists all across the country and around the world are taking this highly toxic metal and literally putting it into the teeth of human beings. Those teeth are then used to chew food, and as a person chews; they effectively grind away the surfaces of these mercury fillings. These fillings release gas mercury vapor and mercury particles, which people then breathe into their lungs, or digest in their stomachs.

Now, I can understand that maybe 50 years ago, the dental industry was too ignorant to realize that it was advocating this toxic metal and putting it into patients' mouths. The industrial revolution is full of examples of companies that used lots of toxic substances and therapies, thinking they were good for you. Recall the X-rays and radiation of the first half of the twentieth century, people thought that radiation was great for you. Manufacturers were equating radiation with energy and thinking that if you consumed radiation pills, you would be more energetic. These were actually sold and sponsored by  physicians and doctors, it was a mainstay of the medical industry in those days.

Later, we had the lead issue with industrial companies like DuPont, which has an interesting history in the manufacture and distribution of lead. People were convinced lead was great for everything. They put it into the gasoline, and leaded gasoline was born. We later found out that lead causes nervous system disorders and that it's very unhealthy to have lead emissions in the air. We ended up getting rid of lead paint, and banning the use of lead in foods and cosmetics.

But for some reason, today dentists still think mercury is perfectly good for you. It's like they're living in the Dark Ages. Gee, why don't they have you swallow radiation pills at the same time they're putting mercury fillings in your mouth? That way you can be energized and have fillings, too!

Some of the greatest quackery in the world right now takes place in dentists' offices; and dentists strongly deny the problems associated with mercury toxicity and mercury fillings. Of course, I don't mean all dentists, some dentists are slowly coming around to this issue. In fact, these selected dentists are leading the change; they are pioneering dentists, just as those in the world of medicine that are trying to change conventional medicine.

These few dentists that are trying to make changes and get mercury fillings banned deserve tremendous credit for taking the lead and standing up and fighting against the dogma of their own industry to protect their patients. There's no doubt in my mind that within a few years, mercury fillings will be banned and they will join the ranks of lead paint, asbestos insulation, leaded gasoline and radiation pills. They will go into the historical annals of bad medicine, and some day future generations will think we were absolutely crazy to be putting mercury in people's mouths.

More Poison From Dentists - Fluoride

That's not the end of the toxicity in the world of dentistry, we also have dentists pushing for, get this, the dripping of a highly toxic chemical waste product into the water supply... a substance that's scraped off the smokestacks of industrial polluters. They want every person in the community to actually drink this substance.

This material is a toxic waste that's regulated by the EPA. It would be illegal to drip it into a river or a stream, but for some reason, it is perfectly legal to drip it into the public water supply and let people drink it. It's a bizarre cycle of rationalization that can only be called medical lunacy. They no longer consider this toxic substance toxic if it passes through the bodies of human beings first. What substance am I talking about? Fluorosilicic acid, otherwise known by its short name, fluoride.

Across the country and around the world, dentists are insisting that we drip fluoride into the public water supply. For what purpose? To protect the teeth? Can you be serious? People are swallowing this liquid. They're not rinsing it in their mouth and spitting it out, they're ingesting it. Now as a result we have fluorosis, and bone disorders that are related to the over-consumption of fluoride.

For some reason, dentists have decided that they now have medical degrees, and that they want to medicate the entire population with a drug, a biologically active drug, without first diagnosing any individual in that community. In other words, they want to medicate everyone across the board with the exact same dosage, regardless of that person's individual health needs, and regardless of how much other fluoride they may be exposed to on a regular basis. This is the insanity of the modern dentistry community. Remember, these are the same people that want to put mercury in your mouth, so it only makes sense that they also want to poison your entire body by putting fluorosilicic acid into the water supply.

They don't call it fluorosilicic acid of course, because that might scare people. They call it fluoride -- and in fact they will even deceive the public and call it "naturally-occurring fluoride." There's nothing natural about fluorosilicic acid.

If you go to any community water supply where they are dripping so called "fluoride" into the water system, you will find out where they actually get the fluoride -- ask them, "Hey, do you dig this out of the ground in natural fluoride deposits?," and they will tell you "No, we buy it from an industrial waste processing company because it's cheaper than fluoride out of the ground." I've asked this question myself of people who are in charge of dripping fluoride into the public water supply, and that's exactly what they have told me. You can verify this yourself and find out just how your local community is poisoning you and your family with this highly toxic waste chemical.

How To Poison The Entire Population

Again, we are the only species stupid enough to actually poison ourselves. And we do it in highly efficient ways. If you want to poison a population, there's no easier way than to drip a substance into the water supply. And if you really want to make sure everyone is poisoned, you would pass laws that mandate the dripping of this poison into the water supply (i.e. fluoridation laws). That would ensure that everybody gets some, whether it's an infant, an adult or a senior citizen. This is increasingly what is happening across the United States and around the world.

There's absolutely no good science behind any of the fluoride arguments. Even if they were using genuine natural fluoride, there are no studies that show the ingestion of fluoride decreases the incidence of dental caries in modern society. Yet this myth persists in the dental community, and the American Dental Association stands firmly behind this national poisoning agenda. They will call anybody who disagrees with it a "nut," and they will say that every population must be fluoridated -- for their own good, of course. That's the only way to ensure they have healthy teeth, the logic goes.

Put More Chemicals In Our Food, Please

If you wanted to poison the entire population, but you were worried that not everyone drinks from the water supply, there is another way: just poison the food supply. This, too, is happening today, with food manufacturing practices and the FDA looking the other way on toxic food ingredients.

Our population is being poisoned with artificial chemical sweeteners. Let's take a look at these. Aspartame is a sweetener that was never proven safe; in fact, the original safety recommendation panel at the FDA recommended that aspartame be denied approval as a safe food ingredient. It was none other than Donald Rumsfeld at the time who helped push aspartame through the FDA to get it legalized as a food additive.

Today, we now see the vast majority of complaints of food side effects sent to the FDA being caused by aspartame. Aspartame is an excitotoxin, that is, a neurotoxic chemical, and it breaks down in your body into both formic acid and formaldehyde. Now, would you like to go out and drink some formaldehyde? Well, you might do that if you were a biological specimen that needed to be preserved for dissection, but if you're a normal, healthy, sane human being, you'd never drink formaldehyde. Unless, of course, they put it in an artificial sweetener compound and added it to cans of your favorite carbonated soft drink, in which case Americans will gladly drink formaldehyde in can after can, poisoning their nervous systems, going half blind, experiencing epilepsy and increasing the onset of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Again, we're the only species stupid enough to actually poison ourselves with these chemicals. And yet we have entire groups, food lobbies and public apologizers who run around saying that these ingredients are perfectly good for you. There's nothing wrong with drinking formaldehyde and formic acid. You'll be fine! Drink more! Here, in fact here's a 50 percent more coupon, so you can buy even more!

Want Some Chlorine In Your Food Today?

Some say, "Well, aspartame is on the way out -- the big sweetener now is Sucralose or Splenda." This is the artificial sweetener that claims to be made from sugar. Well, I suppose you can claim that it starts out as sugar, but it's made by removing some of the atoms from sugar and replacing them with atoms of chlorine, which is of course one of the chemical elements used during the atrocities of World War II to create poison gas, the same element used in chlorine to disinfect pools and public water supplies.

When it's put that way, you might start thinking, "Well, gee, maybe there's something wrong with this sugar, maybe I shouldn't be putting chlorine atoms into my body." Would you go out and drink chlorine? If you know anybody who works on pools, or who has a pool maintenance business, they will tell you that chlorine gas will kill you. In fact, just to handle chlorine, they have to wear protective rubber gloves and protective respiration devices, because if they get chlorine powder wet and touch it or inhale it, they are in for a world of hurt. Chlorine gas can cause serious injury or even death. In fact, if you just take household ingredients like chlorine bleach and mix it with ammonia, you will create a highly toxic gas that will literally kill you, which is why these products often contain warnings that they should not be mixed.

And yet, in our food supply, we take chlorine atoms and we attach them to molecules that used to be sugar, and we call that a safe sweetener. And now we're putting it into all kinds of foods, whether it's soft drinks, muffins, pancake mixes and pretty much everything in the low-carb arena. I'm not sure people realize that they are actually ingesting chlorine atoms. Maybe they're too dazed from the fluoride.

Okay, so far we have dentists putting mercury fillings in your mouth that give off mercury vapor and cause neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease. We have the same insane dentists mandating the dripping of EPA-regulated environmental pollutants into the public water supply, making sure that human beings in the United States have to drink toxic waste product... after which it enters into the rivers and streams as part of human waste, even though if such chemicals were dripped directly into the rivers and streams in this country it would be a violation of federal law. We have food and beverage companies using artificial chemical sweeteners to replace sugar and claiming that their products are healthier than sugar products. And yet, these artificial chemical sweeteners break down into dangerous chemical components such as formaldehyde and formic acid, or they are made with chlorine atoms that simply do not belong in the human body. These chemicals do not appear anywhere in nature attached to a sugar molecule.

Yummy Poison: Hydrogenated Oils

So, what else can the money-hungry corporations think of to put into the food or the water to poison America? They are quite creative and they have a lot of poisons at their disposal. The next terrible poison on the list is hydrogenated oils. They're called brain poisons, and they're present in perhaps half of all the foods found at every grocery store. It's listed right on the label -- you can see it as hydrogenated oil" or "partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil".

This artificial fat directly causes cardiovascular heart disease, it destroys normal cardiovascular health, it destroys the healthy functioning of the nervous system, it causes brain disorders, it causes heart attacks -- it is one of the most prominent and yet toxic ingredients put into the food supply. It also causes birth defects and essential fatty acid deficiencies in both the mother and her fetus.

And it's put in foods on purpose, for the convenience of the food manufacturers. Hydrogenated oils don't go bad, which means they save money for the food manufacturing companies, because their foods don't go bad on the shelves. And how do you make hydrogenated oils? Well, you don't find them anywhere in nature -- you have to have a chemical processing facility to make hydrogenated oils. And you do it by bubbling hydrogen gas through liquid soybean oil or other types of oils, using a catalyst (in most cases the catalyst is nickel). So with this nickel and the bubbling of hydrogen gas, you get extra hydrogen atoms attached to the molecules in oil, which makes them solid at room temperature. Since they are solid at room temperature, they can be more easily used to make margarine products, or used in crackers and cookies. And all of this, again, is for the convenience of the food manufacturing companies.

Food manufactures don't care what happens to your health, their job is just to sell food products. If you have a health problem as a result, that's your problem, not theirs. You won't find food companies offering to pay for your medical bills if you have a heart attack from eating hydrogenated oils. They are basically passing the buck and demanding that you pay for the health consequences caused by their foods. In fact, they're working hard to pass legislation that would outlaw lawsuits against food companies!

Pepperoni-Shaped Poison

Not to be outdone, the meat processing companies in this country also want to make sure they get lots of poison into your food products. It's not enough to just sell you red meat, which is by itself an extremely unhealthy food ingredient that promotes colon cancer, heart disease, obesity and many other disorders, they also have to put cancer-causing chemicals in various meat products.

This makes sure that you get colon cancer from the additives, if not from the red meat itself. This additive is called sodium nitrite, and you'll find it in virtually every packaged meat product found at the grocery store, whether it's pepperoni, breakfast sausage, or bacon. You can buy sliced ham, sliced chicken, deli slices, lunch meat, packaged ham, pepperoni, the meat that goes into soups, the meat that goes into those little lunch trays ... pretty much any form of packaged meat at the grocery store has this toxic ingredient in it. That's why the daily consumption of processed meats has now been clinically shown to produce a 6,700% increase in the risk of pancreatic cancer!

Guinea Pig People

And what is this ingredient again? Sodium nitrite! When you ingest sodium nitrite, it mixes with the digestive juices of your stomach and creates a class of chemical compounds called nitrosamines. These nitrosamines are potent cancer-causing chemicals. In fact, as I've mentioned before, they are so potent that lab researchers actually inject mice with nitrosamines when they want to give those mice breast cancer or other form of cancer they can study. And yet, as humans, we put sodium nitrite (see related ebook on sodium nitrite) right into the food supply. It's almost as if we were treating the entire population as lab rats -- and in fact that's not far from the truth.

Drugs are frequently released in this country on an experimental basis, using the population as guinea pigs to find out how many people might die from that drug in order to get more safety data. Let's face it, when the FDA approves drugs for public use, they are not at all proven safe. The American public is routinely treated as a collection of guinea pigs in order to promote prescription drugs, foods, artificial sweeteners or other elements.

Toxic Personal Care Products

So now we've got toxic chemicals in our mouths, in our public water supplies, and in our foods and beverages. Where else can money hungry corporations put toxic chemicals into our immediate environment and get them into our bodies? Well, think hard and you might come up with some other ideas. Let's look at the personal care products industry, because practically every brand name shampoo, cologne, perfume, deodorant, antiperspirant or other personal care product on the market is made with toxic fragrance chemicals. These can contain solvents, carcinogens and compounds that are registered in government databases as having strong liver toxicity.

The reason these ingredients are allowed in these products are because the FDA has mistakenly assumed for many, many years that whatever you put on your body doesn't get absorbed into your body. They think, for example, that you could just coat your body with toxic chemicals and you would be fine, because your skin is a barrier. I've even heard pharmacists tell me that the skin is a great barrier, so whatever you put on your skin won't go into your body.

That's utterly ridiculous! As pharmacists, haven't these people ever sold nicotine patches? How do you think those work? They work by releasing nicotine that gets absorbed directly through your skin into your bloodstream. If your skin didn't absorb nicotine, the nicotine patches wouldn't deliver a dosage. You have to be half-crazy to think that the skin is some kind of permanent barrier that keeps out everything you put on it.

In fact, the skin is very porous -- the skin breathes. Yes, it keeps out bacteria, but it sure doesn't keep out chemical solvents, and it doesn't keep out molecules as big as nicotine. Nicotine molecules are not very small, by the way. There are many things that go right through your skin, and those include fragrance chemicals, solvents, and a lot of other toxic ingredients that are found in personal care products. One such ingredient called MIT was recently discovered in most brand-name shampoos, and this MIT ingredient is known to cause brain cancer.

Voluntary Chemical Suicide

So now we are really stupid as a species, because we've poisoned our mouths, our water supply, our food, our beverages and even our shampoos and personal care products. And if you use dryer sheets, then you've got your clothes poisoned as well, they're coated in a layer of toxic chemicals found in dryer sheet products. So what else could we use to poison the population? There are still many other options.

One way would be to sell a toxic chemical that people voluntarily put into their mouths because another person in a position of authority told them to do so. This is describing the prescription drug industry, where people are poisoning themselves each and every day with toxic painkiller drugs like COX-2 inhibitors or toxic anti-cholesterol drugs like statin drugs. People are poisoning their minds with antidepressant drugs that promote violent behavior and suicides. They're poisoning their cardiovascular system with beta-blockers and other drugs. And of course they're poisoning their livers.

And yet people volunteer to do this -- each and every day they will put these toxic chemicals into their bodies simply because someone with a degree from a school of disease (also known as medical school) told them to do so. And, not only that, they will actually pay for the privilege of poisoning their own bodies.

They'll pay good money too, not just a few hundred dollars a month, but several thousand dollars a month. Some people will spend six figures a year poisoning their bodies because their doctor told them to do so. And, then when something goes wrong and they have a small tumor show up on a mammogram, or some other blood test comes back positive that indicates they may have some sort of cancer tumor, they will gladly pay another $100,000 or more in order to destroy their entire immune system with a treatment known as chemotherapy.

They will literally sit there and let other doctors inject highly toxic poisons directly into the bloodstream and allow them to circulate through their body. How toxic is this stuff? Well, gee, think about it, your hair falls out, you get sick and you vomit -- are these signs that maybe this stuff doesn't belong in your body? I don't know about you, but I think that's a very strange way to heal someone.

If I were a medical professional and I were healing someone, and I had them do something which made their hair fall out and they started vomiting and it looked like they were going to melt away right before my very eyes, I would think that, hey, maybe this isn't good for them.

But that's not what conventional oncologists think. They think, oh, this is great stuff. Look, we're going to destroy the cancer tumor and, if we're lucky, there may even be a patient left by the time we're done. And if not -- that's alright, as long as they pay the bill.

Official, Government-Approved Drug Dealers

We as a species actually have a class of professionals, highly-paid professionals, who we give the right to poison us with toxic chemicals. These people are called doctors. I call them drug dealers. Just like illegal drugs, their drugs kill people. The main difference is that these "legal" drugs enrich politically influential corporations, whereas illegal drugs enrich drug lords. Our national "War on Drugs" is quite selective in its targets, don't you think? Industrial hemp is outlawed, but doping up millions of children on powerful narcotics is perfectly legal: it's called Ritalin.

So, remember, we're the only species stupid enough to actually poison ourselves. And if we don't do it in just one or two ways, we do it in half a dozen different ways! Then we regulate that poisoning, we make it federal law! And we have lobbyists and groups out there defending this use of poison in the food supply, and defending the use of it in cosmetic products and personal care products. We have defenders of the drug industry, people who say, "Yeah, well there was a study five years ago that showed a 1200 percent heart attack increase, but we thought that really wasn't relevant to this drug and we decided to go ahead and market that drug anyway." That's what we have today. And the real details of this gruesome story have only begun to be uncovered. Wait until the rest of the story comes out...

We're #1!

Is it any wonder, with all of the poisoning going on at all the different levels in our bodies, that we are now the most chronically diseased population that has ever been recorded in the history of civilization? It's true -- there is no population that has suffered from diseases like we do in America today. You would have to be clinically insane to not think that there's a correlation between the poison we are putting into our bodies and the diseases we are getting as a result.

Plus, as recent studies have shown, we're the #1 nation in the world in terms of mental disorders as well! Let's see: #1 in obesity, #1 in diabetes, #1 in cancer, #1 mental disorders, and we have the HIGHEST health care costs in the world, too. We have the most expensive drugs in the world. We have more doctors and health care professionals per capita than any country in the world. And, frighteningly, we're the country with the most nukes. Great idea, huh? Put the nuclear weapons under control of the most mentally disturbed population in the world... now if only our leaders were at least sane...

But no, wait a minute -- the doctors are right, all diseases are just genetic. None of these poisons matter, it's just your genes. They say the gene pool of the human race was perfectly fine 100 years ago when people didn't have all these diseases, but it has somehow mutated to a gene pool that gives you heart disease and cancer and osteoporosis and diabetes, and, by the way, there's nothing you can do about it. That's what they want you to believe, because then they take away your power. Then you have no ability to make changes.

Actually, We're Pretty Darned Clever, Aren't We?

Not only are we the most stupid species on the planet, because we're poisoning ourselves, we are simultaneously the cleverest species, because we find ways to justify all that poisoning. We find scientific gobbledygook to claim that, yes, NutraSweet is good for you! Or that these chlorine atoms attached to sugar are great for you, or that mercury in your mouth somehow doesn't have a toxic effect on your body. Or that hydrogenated oils are perfectly fine for your heart health.

We stupidly say if you take those and you drink this weight loss shake made with sugar, you'll be healthy. And if you have this barbaric surgical procedure called gastric bypass surgery, you'll no longer be obese. And if you're not healthy, don't worry; we have magic bullet prescription drugs that will make you even healthier. So we're a clever population at the same time that we're incredibly stupid. Do you know what that's called? That's called being a population of great technicians and lousy healers. And that's exactly what we are today.

Having used the word "stupid" throughout this editorial, I use it deliberately. I don't mean it in the way that a teenager might say, "My stupid little brother flipped me off." I mean it in a more precise way, in the way defined by Dictionary.com:

Stupid:

1. Slow to learn or understand; obtuse. 2. Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes. 3. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish or careless: a stupid mistake. 4. Dazed, stunned, or stupefied.

Can you think of a better word to describe the people around here?

As Einstein once said, "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."

http://www.newstarget.com/008511.html
 

The A to Z of Children's Ailments
Poisoning
by Dr Trisha Macnair

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/kids_ailments/poisioning.shtml

What is it?
Poisoning means ingesting chemicals or other materials which are toxic to the body. Poisoning is very common in childhood. Fortunately in most cases the child takes in just a tiny amount of the poison and comes to no harm, but every year in the UK some children become very ill and a few die because of it. Most poisoning occurs in the child’s home, where they are not being adequately supervised.

What causes it?
The vast majority of cases are accidental poisoning but older children may self-poison (as in a suicide attempt) while younger children are sometimes poisoned during child abuse. Poisons range from medicines (particularly those often found in homes of young families, such as pain killers, contraceptive pill, iron tablets, vitamins, antidepressants) to typical fluids or items found in the house (cleaning fluids, alcohol, cigarettes, crayons, button batteries) to dangerous garden plants (foxglove, laburnum seeds). The main causes of chronic poisoning are lead (sources include old paintwork or water pipes, or surma - Indian eye make used on babies) and cigarette smoke (from passive smoking).

Who is affected?
Most accidental poisoning occurs in younger children who are too small to know the perils of swallowing something that may be harmful. Peak risk is about 30 months when children are most inquisitive but haven’t yet acquired any real sense of danger.

What are the symptoms
In most cases there are no symptoms, either because the carer swiftly discovers what has happened and takes the child for treatment, or more often because the child only ingests a very small amount of the poison. Symptoms are determined by the nature of the poison, and may include nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, drowsiness, convulsions and coma. In unexplained illness in small children, especially if they are drowsy or unconscious, poisoning should always be suspected.


How is it diagnosed & treated?
Whenever poisoning is suspected the child should be taken straight to hospital. The first step in treatment consists of identifying the poison. Bring any evidence, such as an empty pill packet or bottle, with the child to hospital. If the poison cannot be identified, blood tests may be needed. Next the potential for toxicity must be assessed, then appropriate steps can be taken to remove the poison (e.g. giving charcoal to mop up certain poisons or washing others out of the stomach), and give specific antidotes where they exist.

Further help
Every family should take active steps to prevent poisoning, by safely storing or disposing of medicines and potentially dangerous chemicals, checking the garden for dangerous plants and teaching children about the risks.


Disclaimer

All content within BBCi HEALTH is provided for general information only, and should not be treated as a substitute for the medical advice of your own doctor or any other health care professional. The BBC is not responsible or liable for any diagnosis made by a user based on the content of the BBCi HEALTH website. The BBC is not liable for the contents of any external internet sites listed, nor does it endorse any commercial product or service mentioned or advised on any of the sites. Always consult your own GP if you're in any way concerned about your health.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/?newsid=9681

We come into contact with more than 500 chemicals and toxic substances every day 19 Jun 2004

We are the first generation of people ever exposed to such an unprecedented number of chemicals on a daily basis - there are now over 70,000 chemicals commercially produced in the U.S., and the number is increasing. Not only do we have “acceptable limits” of contaminants in our food, air and water, we are constantly "upping the ante." We come into contact with more than 500 chemicals and toxic substances every day, and the Sierra Club tells us that there are already approximately 200 chemicals in the average person’s body fat. It is not a question of if we are carrying a burden of toxic compounds, but how much.

No young person alive today has been born without some in utero exposure to synthetic chemicals that can disrupt development. Dr. Marion Moses in her book, “Designer Poisons,” says there is evidence to strongly suggest that chemicals can affect the health and sexual functioning of offspring if either parent has been exposed to toxic chemicals.  The toxins reaching the womb depends not only on what the mother takes in during the pregnancy, but on the contaminants accumulated in her body up to that point in her lifetime. Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of chemicals because their neurological systems are still developing and are more susceptible to permanent damage - one study suggests that lawn sprays can cause a four-fold increase in cancer in children. Also chemicals in school buildings can affect a child’s attention span and mental abilities.

We are creating new diseases symptoms that cannot be diagnosed. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that 15% of the population has Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (MCS), however, physicians who practice environmental medicine estimate that chemical sensitivity affects up to 50% of today’s population. The general public, the media and the government are now recognizing MCS.

Chemical Sensitivity/Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, sometimes called Environmental Illness (EI), is a chronic condition marked by greatly increased sensitivity when exposed to chemical substances, and thought to be caused by short-term or chronic exposure to one or more chemicals. MCS is often referred to as "chemical allergy" but the mechanism is not the same as in traditional allergies to dust, animals and pollen.

The unfortunate paradox of environmental illness (or MCS) is that the same biological and toxicological factors reside in lesser or greater degree in all of us. The difference lies in constitutional genetic differences that make the environmentally ill manifest chemical sensitivities first and then succumb to malignancies, neurological, vascular, and other diseases, while others will succumb to these same diseases, but not manifest chemical sensitivities (National Library of Medicine’s Toxicology Information, 1992).

Those with chemical sensitivities are like the "canaries in the mine," they warn that certain substances are toxic for everyone. No one is immune, and even a normal person can become chemically sensitive after a single exposure to a particular chemical substance, especially if that person’s body detoxification pathways are overloaded or damaged from previous exposures.

Here are a few of the toxins that contribute to chemical "overload": pesticides, secondhand smoke, alcohol, fresh paint, scented products and perfumes, food preservatives and flavor enhancers, aerosols, tap water, cosmetics, new carpets, petroleum products, formaldehyde, outdoor pollutants, cleaning compounds, printing and office products.

The symptoms that may be manifested from these toxins can be any physical and/or mental complaint; headaches, flu-like symptoms, nausea, fatigue, dizziness, "brain fog," depression, anxiety, and even vision and hearing problems. There are also other factors that seem to predispose individuals to increased sensitivity to chemicals such as low thyroid, nutritional deficiencies, and other stressors.

The classic patient who has developed chemical sensitivities has usually been to a dozen or more specialists, has no definite diagnosis, and is often given a tranquilizer and referred to a psychiatrist. Most are told the symptoms are all in their heads, which can be partially true, as the chemicals do affect their brains. If one is totally ignorant of the biochemistry of detoxification, the victim seems to be a malingerer, faking it, or in need of psychiatric help, says Sherry Rogers, M.D. (Dr. Rogers has
had MCS and now teaches advanced courses in Environmental Medicine. She is also author of several books including “Tired or Toxic.”)

Traditional allergists typically do not understand MCS, and most MCS people poorly tolerate the preservatives used in the allergy shots.

Every time the MCS victim turns around it seems that he/she has developed another ailment. These sufferers may be afraid to talk about these added complaints with their doctor because the previous ailments are still a mystery. There are less than 1,000 out of 100,000 physicians in the U.S. who can diagnose and properly treat MCS. However, it is important for patients to rule out other more traditional causes for their symptoms before assuming that their problems are from MCS.

Drugs should be used only after all other possibilities have been ruled out, for any prescribed medication can further overload an already ailing system - - another chemical that can waste precious detoxification energy and nutrients, says Dr. Rogers. Intolerance of medications is described consistently in those who are chemically sensitive, and although some are able to benefit from some medications, it should be undertaken with caution and carefully monitored.

Because the total body burden of any environmental stressors is never the same at any two moments, symptoms not only may fluctuate, but may be inconsistent with exposure, therefore the standard “double-blind” studies and repeated exposure trials are almost impossible to do. These responses also cannot be tested in animals, for example, a rat has 6 times the level of some detoxification enzymes, so the rat would not be harmed as easily as a man. Symptoms resulting from exposure can be delayed for days and weeks, which adds to the frustration when trying to find cause and effect.

Many chemicals and their residues build up in the body’s tissues, others do immediate damage and disappear, leaving no trace whatsoever (“Living Healthy in a Toxic World,” Steinman & Wisner, 1996 book). Although we cannot totally avoid chemical exposure, our best protection is to keep our body’s toxic load to a minimum. June Russell, who had MCS for 25 years, is a retired health educator, researcher and writer. Vital Signs is a community health promotion column sponsored by UVA Health System.

Sources:

“Tired or Toxic,” Sherry Rogers, M.D., 1990 book. Dr. Rogers has had MCS, is an expert on Environmental Illnesses and treats patients who have MCS. She also lectures and teaches advanced courses in Environmental Illness.

“Multiple Chemical Sensitivity - A Survival Guide,” Pamela Reed Gibson, Ph.D., 2000, Associate Professor of Psychology at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Her book is based on the latest MCS research.

“Is This Your Child’s World? How You Can Fix the Schools and Homes That Are Making Your Children Sick,” 1996 book, Doris J. Rapp, M.D., FAEM, FAAP, FAAA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Board Certified in Environmental Medicine, Pediatrics, and Pediatric Allergy.

“Our Stolen Future,” by Theo Colborn, Dianne Dumanoski and John Peterson Myers, a 1997 book, according to the Washington Post World, this book picked up where "Silent Spring" left off.

“Living Healthy in a Toxic World: Simple Steps to Protect You and Your Family from Everyday Chemicals, Poisons and Pollution,” David Steinman & R. Michael Wisner, a 1996 book. (Dr. Steinman was a former representative of the public interest at the National Academy of Sciences, and author of a 1992 book, “Diet for a Poisoned Planet”)

“Designer Poisons: How to Protect Your Health and Home from Toxic Pesticides,” Marion Moses, M.D., an authority on pesticides, 1995 book.

Others: Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Rachel Carson Council, Inc., HormoneWise Digest, Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly, “Our Toxic Times” newsletter, a monthly publication of the Chemical Injury Information Network (www.ciin.org), Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides (NCAP),

Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA), Beyond Pesticides (ncamp.org),

EXTOXNET (Extension Toxicology Network). Sheila Bastien, Ph.D., is a neuropsychologist who has served on the California Senate Subcommittee Advisory Panel on Environmental Illness/Multiple Chemical Sensitivity, author of an article on “Multiple Chemical Sensitivity - How to Reduce Your Toxic Load,” on alternativemedicine.com, and dozens of other articles from health magazines and web sites.

This article comes from June Russell's Health Facts

 

U.S. Rethinks Human Studies on Pesticides

Katherine Stapp
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=26761

NEW YORK, Dec 21 (IPS) - Human studies involving dangerous pesticides are making a comeback in the United States, despite intense criticism from public interest groups which say that industry-sponsored research is inherently biased and designed to prove that its products are safe. After a six-year hiatus on accepting data from third-party human studies, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced it would begin vetting ”ethically problematic studies on a case-by-case basis.”

The agency is also seeking to conduct its own research -- with two million dollars in funding from the American Chemical Council, an industry lobby group -- into household pesticide use in Florida State.

Called the Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study, or CHEERS, the study targets children ranging in age from infants to three years old. For taking part, each family is promised 970 dollars, a free video camera and other perks, like a ”study bib.” Children are especially vulnerable to pesticides because they absorb more of the substances relative to body weight than adults, and have developing organ systems that are less able to break down toxic chemicals.

While the EPA's recruiting pitch states, ”participants are not required to use pesticides or to change any of their regular household routines,” opponents argue that the financial incentive is intrinsically unethical. ”They're enticing low-income people to undergo exposure,” said Jay  Feldman, executive director of Beyond Pesticides, a non-profit lobby group. ”The implication is that if you use these chemicals, you will be rewarded.”

The sorts of pesticides that would be studied include those used in cleaning and yard-care products as well as phthalates (chemicals used in plastics) and brominated biphenyl ethers (flame retardants). Following a barrage of criticism, EPA shelved the CHEERS study pending ”final review” by an expert panel made up of members of the U.S. Science Advisory Board, the federal Science Advisory Panel, and the U.S. Children's Health Protection Advisory Committee, whose report is due
early next year. However, half the participants have already been selected, and the agency has refused demands to abandon the research altogether.

”EPA scientists need to fully understand how children are exposed to pesticides and through what media,” the agency said in a statement given to IPS. ”CHEERS was designed to fill these critical data gaps ... ultimately leading to actions that would lower children's exposures to pesticides.”

The study is particularly controversial because children living in households where pesticides are used have been found to suffer higher rates of leukaemia, brain cancer and soft tissue sarcoma. A study by Greenpeace India in April determined that exposure to even small doses of pesticides impairs children's analytical abilities, motor skills and memory. The EPA says it chose Duvall County, Florida for the CHEERS study because the area has a particularly high concentration of pesticides,
and data from a previous study in 2001 was available to assist in planning the research.

But critics note that the three county health clinics from which subjects are drawn serve the poorest and least educated members of the community. If it goes forward, the study could give a boost to the chemical industry, which has faced increasingly strict regulation of its products. In 1996, following a congressional directive for extensive study of pesticide hazards by the National Academy of Sciences, the pesticide tolerance factor for children -- officially called the ”no observable effect level” -- was raised to be 10 times higher than for adults. This forced chemical companies to re-register most pesticides with the EPA and to determine what constitutes ”safe” exposure levels in the general population.

”Industry was not happy with that,” said Dennis McKinney of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, a non-profit alliance of local, state and federal scientists, law enforcement officers, land managers and other professionals. ”CHEERS is just part of a broader effort to gather data that will allow them to raise the bar on acceptable pesticide levels,” he added in an interview.

The gold standard of human research ethics is widely considered to be the Declaration of Helsinki, a statement of principles adopted by the World Medical Association in 1964. Among other things, it states that protocols must be approved by committees that are ”independent of the investigator, the sponsor or any other kind of undue influence.”

But a review of six human-dosing studies of pesticides conducted by the chemical industry between 1992 and 1999 -- and which specifically claimed to comply with Helsinki -- found that all the experiments were green lighted by ethics committees that were part of the sponsoring research organisation. The studies were conducted both in the United States and Europe but all were aimed at influencing EPA regulations.

”All had serious ethical or scientific deficiencies -- or both --including unacceptable informed consent procedures, unmanaged financial conflicts of interest, inadequate statistical power, inappropriate test methods and endpoints, and distorted results,” concluded Alan Lockwood, a neurology professor at the University of Buffalo whose critique was published in the American Journal of Public Health in November.

For example, three of the studies used consent forms that identified the pesticide only as ”the compound under test,” and failed to specifically list the participant's role and the potential risks. In a study of chlorpyrifos, manufactured under the trade name Dursban by Dow Chemical, the opening paragraph of the side-effects statement asserted, ”low doses of these agents have been shown to improve performance on numerous tests of mental function.”

It did not mention that studies have linked Dursban -- which is still found in products ranging from flea collars for pets to garden and insect control products -- to neurological and developmental damage in animals and young children.

In December 2003, Dow was fined two million dollars for claiming the chemical had no ”long term (health) effects” and posed ”no evidence of significant risk to the environment.” And despite the prevailing view that the adverse effects from pesticides can take many years to manifest, Lockwood said that none of the studies included plans for long-term monitoring of subjects, or even any consideration that there might be delayed effects.

Noting that the studies were submitted to the EPA but never published, Lockwood concluded, ”there is little doubt about their real purpose -- the production of data that will be used to affect the pesticide regulatory process.”




Back to page