Some folks want no part of government, even to address public health. Others trust the power of minds and lifestyles to protect individual health whatever lousy choices society makes. But with all the media attention on insurance reform and all the shared enthusiasm for lifestyle options, there's scant attention paid to near inescapable health risk factors that affect every single one of us.
Exposure to toxic chemicals is a major, known contributor to the rise in chronic diseases, cancer and childhood illnesses. Whatever the differences in our values or lifestyles, we're all exposed to them. As the individualistic bias in health keeps our focus on our individual bank account or health state, we forget that the best way to safeguard both is to protect our collective health and environment.
The moment to shift our focus is now. For the first time in 34 years, a newly introduced Safe Chemicals Act aims to do what so many of us wrongly assumed government was doing all along: Assure that the chemicals to which we're all exposed and which show up in 95 percent of Americans tested, are safe.
Yes, it's inconvenient to worry about how what we buy in the hardware store (or food market, beauty counter, pharmacy, doctor's office, flooring, or furniture store) affects our family's health. It's easier to choose to eat organic than to think about the health impact of what we can't control: the brew of interactive, toxic chemicals which the exterminator, house painter, road repair team, farmer, fish farmer, agribusiness, local industry, hospital, manufacturer and gas driller infuse into our air, water, land and food supply.
Who can figure out what's in what we inhale, eat, drink and absorb through our skin or via injection? Who has time to worry about what's tracked onto the floor where our kids play?
Since chemicals are invisible, we don't know that they are in our bodies, where they come from, how long they remain, or how they affect us. The only clue we get that this overall brew is dangerous is when we (or a loved one) get sick, as more and more people do. But even then, we can't trace that illness to any single exposure--so it's easier to blame our luck, our genes, or our attitude.
Over 80,000 chemicals are in use today, many of them known contributors to diseases like cancer, learning disabilities and reproductive disorders. The government we expect to guarantee their safety lacks resources for studies; nor are manufacturers required to prove safety. According to the Environmental Working Group (EWG), "chemical companies are not required to tell (the Environmental Protection Agency) EPA how their compounds are used ... (nor) to conduct basic health and safety testing of their products ... Eighty percent of all applications to produce a new chemical are approved by the U.S. EPA with no health and safety data.. in three weeks ..."
Absurdly, the burden is on the EPA to prove chemicals harmful, even though it lacks legal authority to compel industries to study, withdraw, monitor use, or modify any chemicals, including known carcinogens, neurotoxins and immune system modulators.
Where do these chemicals wind up? In us and in our children. At birth, newborns harbor over two hundred chemicals, testing reveals. Due to lower body weight and lesser ability to shield their developing brains, infants and children are at higher risk from exposure.
Fortunately, with strong public support, that can change thanks to the Safe Chemicals Act, introduced by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), to revise the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) which determines the policies for public protection. If the bill passes, for the first time, the burden of proof for safety will transfer to industry.
Safer Chemicals, Healthy Families is a coalition of groups that supports the bill and will monitor its progress to assure that effective provisions pass into law. Safe Chemicals Director, Andy Igrejas, who I interview this week on my radio program, wants the bill strengthened so the EPA is empowered to act immediately to curtail the use of the most highly toxic chemicals.
Concurrent bills will move through the Senate and House this spring and summer. Due to chemical industry pushback, passing a bill that protects public health will require strong public support. To receive action updates on chemical safety, please sign up at www.saferchemicals.org and for both health information, detox tips, and health action at www.healthjournalist.com
Follow Alison Rose Levy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AlisonRoseLevy
Frances Beinecke: Great Opportunity to Protect American Families from Toxic Chemicals
Holly Lohuis: Killer Whales, Toxic Chemicals, and a Mom
Lisa Guest: Who Are You Going To Trust?
Nancy Chuda: Chemicals Are Stealing Our Children's Future
WHO | Public health and environment
Center for Health and the Global Environment
Environmental health - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Citation please. The citations I see say otherwise.
Here's some citations on detoxification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detoxification#Alternative_medicine
http://www.quackwatch.org/search/webglimpse.cgi?ID=1&query=detoxification
http://whatstheharm.net/detoxification.html
Thanks for bringing this up.
Since the EPA doesn't test chemicals for safety or monitor them, this leads to the concern--there's no proof!
Why? Because we're not doing the studies for safety or determining appropriate levels. The point of the Safety Act is to assure that the appropriate studies are done.
Is there any reason we should allow those chemicals to be used and poured into the environment without studying them for safety?
I can't think of one.
Alison
http://rmforall.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.htm
Saturday, April 17, 2010
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aspartameNM/message/1599
Excellent article on a vital subject.
Even the antiperspirants and beauty aids are full of dangerous chemicals. There is no wonder that there is a steady increase in cancers and other killer diseases-curse of modern civilization!
bmhegde
Thank you so much. You are so right!
Many antiperspirants contain aluminum, a known contributor to Alzheimer's disease. It doesn't make much sense to get rid of aluminum cookware, and then apply it to under the armpits near the lymph glands. Also many over the counter drugstore products are in tubes, that are lined with it.
Also both health and beauty products and household cleaners and other products are filled with questionable ingredients- but these also have many industrial uses-- which we can't always control, which is why this legislation is so important.
I've been doing a series of radio programs and will be doing future blogs on toxins and detox which people can access via my ezine (free sign up at www.healthjournalist.com)
Alison
National Cancer Institute: Antiperspirants/Deodorants and Breast Cancer: Questions and Answers
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/AP-Deo
Higher levels are found in AD patients: Hollosi, Miklos et al. "Stable Intrachain and Intrachain complexes of neurofilament peptides: A putative link between Al and Alzheimer disease." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 91 (1994): 4902-4906.
Further, there is an individual variation in exposure to any chemical, and different capacity to detoxify. Since medicine does not routinely monitor an individual's load of metals, chemicals, and other contaminants, there is no way to determine the levels individuals have retained of aluminum or substances, nor has yet there been sufficient study of the synergies by which lower dose exposures have impact in combination.
Even respected publications like Consumer Reports (12/09) note that, Federal guidelines that set the levels for daily upper limit of safe exposure are woefully out of date-- based on experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating serious health risks could result from much lower doses."
Alison
That said, we should redouble our efforts at doing what we have control over, and that is our own bodies via what we choose to ingest or not.
Even thought the best intentions at supplementing for health, like ingesting fish oil rich in omega-3 fatty acids, are sometime foiled when you learn that PCB levels exceed maximum permissible levels
(http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2010/03/pcbs-salmonella/), we nonetheless must do all that we can to cleanse ourselves.
Many heavy metals and toxins can be purged from our bodies by cleansing, taking chlorophyll, cilantro, and various supplements such as these:
http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2009/08/detoxifying-your-way-to-nirvana/
Do get a blood test. It will tell the tale, and you will probably be shocked. The Life Extension Foundation has a good description. See this: http://www.garmaonhealth.com/2009/08/bloody-tests-to-get-your-health-score/
Yep.
Thanks for your reflections and for mentioning blood tests-- very important.
I've been covering and promoting health and lifestyle for over twenty years-- so I've been one of the first one to bring this to people and to say how vital it is for all of us to focus on our health.
At the same time, we need to do more. We need to step up and become a collective force.
Right now, people tested all around the world have 200 chemicals in their bodies-- moreover, children build up a body burden in utero and throughout their infancy and childhood. As do poorer populations with less access to integrative health services. We'll have less to detoxify if we address this as a society-- rather merely on an individual basis.
People avoid this because they feel disempowered but this bill is a great opportunity to protect our health.
Finally, in some parts of the country, the tests you mention are not available due to state laws. We may wish to escape the societal structures-- but in the end, we'll have to deal with them. Let's meet that challenge.
Alison
http://www.prlog.org/10343433-detox-or-die-new-evidence-suggests-americans-are-digesting-billions-of-tons-of-toxic-poisons.html
This is a wakeup call. We've taken natural resources for granted and made money more important than clean water and air, and healthy people.
We have to rediscover the true wealth.
Alison
happiness
pema
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sharon-salzberg/the-five-protections---pa_b_517305.html
It's true that New York State is under special threat right now-- and we've been lulled into thinking that it can't happen here.
I strongly support taking local action via the link mentioned above and this one; http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nodrilling/
Alison
www.healthjournalist.com
this is also very timely - you way of putting things is unique
do check out and comment on out blog on Oprah.com
I would love it! Joyfully, Ed
Direct Link
http://www.oprah.com/spirit/How-Meditation-Can-Save-Your-Relationship
talk about good family values ;)
i hope you had a chance to see william hordens blog of lifeway of flower and song. amazing.
still recovering from my head injury. taking much longer than expected. over a month now. but i had cranial massage so i could help out at earth day yesterday with my darling hubby. i hope to post them to fb later. will see you on oprah blog.
happiness!
p
will check out my mate Wm Horden
Ed
would love one of your great comments on our Oprah.com/spirit
article/post if you have a chance ...
Ed
Just signed in to Oprah to comment on your blog. Just adore the marital insight from the Dalai Lama.
Your honesty and heart are a gift to the world.
love.
Alison
blog/article
will you be at LOHAS this year?
you can answer me in an email to us if you like..