Would you believe me if I told you even your unborn child has toxins flowing through her blood? It's scary, but true. More than 200 toxic chemicals were identified in the umbilical cord blood of unborn babies in a groundbreaking study by the Environmental Working Group.
Most Americans, including children, have dozens of pesticides and other toxic compounds in their bodies, many of them linked to health threats. A source of many of these toxins? Common, every day, run of the mill consumer products. There's no polite way of saying this: Your body is a landfill for a mind-boggling array of toxic chemicals. So is mine. So is your child's.
Experts call the total amount of chemicals and pollutants that are present in your body at any given time our "body burden." I don't know about you, but I didn't even know there was such a thing -- and in a sense, I wish I still didn't.
A few years ago, I persuaded experts at The Harvard School of Public Health, for the first time ever, to supervise a customized "Body Burden" test. The subject -- me! The "Body Burden" test analyzed my blood for hundreds of chemicals and showed me that, like most of us, I had flame retardant, non-stick coating, plastics, etc. streaming through my blood, including many chemicals that have been banned for years.
Did you know:
• Of the 80,000 chemicals permitted in the U.S., the EPA required testing of only 500.
• Every day, 42 billion pounds of chemicals are produced or imported -- we don't know the health risks of 75 percent of them.
• Asthma rates doubled between 1980 and 1995, and people diagnosed with asthma in the U.S. has grown by 4.3 million between 2001 and 2009.
We are participating in a giant chemistry experiment, and we are the test subjects.
Still not a believer? Then take a look at what I wrote in my New York Times bestselling book "Green Goes with Everything: Simple Steps to a Healthier Life and a Cleaner Planet."
Here's a little test you can take to get a feel for your own chemical body burden. Check any of the following that apply in these two lists.1. Do you:
• Suffer from asthma?
• Cough frequently?
• Have bouts of sneezing?
• Have irritated eyes?
• Often have a runny or stuffy nose?
• Have persistent itching?
• Suffer frequent headaches?
• Often feel fatigued?
These are, of course, common enough complaints, and there can be any number of causes. But before you blame them on some dire disease, answer the questions in this second list.
2. Do you:
• Frequently use conventional household cleaners?
• Often wear makeup?
• Microwave food in plastic containers?
• Drink a lot of water bottled in plastic containers?
• Have a lot of your clothes dry-cleaned?
• Experience more intense symptoms the more you're at home?
• Find the symptoms go away when you're on vacation?
• Find your children's symptoms disappear in school and then return at home?
• Have wall-to-wall carpeting?
• Use air conditioners or humidifiers?
• Have a pest control company contract?
• Find your house to be damp or humid?
• Find excessive moisture on your windows, walls, or ceiling?
Look at the first set of questions. Did you check some of them? Now look at the second set. Did you check some of them, too? Bingo! I want you to at least consider whether the activities or conditions you checked in the second list could be causing the health problems in the first list.
Years ago, the endearing cartoon character Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and he is us." In a sense that's the case here. But it's more accurate to say, "We have met the enemy and it is many of the products we use in our lives every day." If you wheeze, itch, scratch, cough, breakout, have headaches, suffer dizziness, are constantly tired, or just feel chronically crummy, the enemy might well live right at home.
It's shocking to learn that everything you breathe in and touch in your home makes its way through your skin and into your bloodstream.
I can hear you starting to hyperventilate. You're thinking about the unpronounceable chemicals in your blood, and in your child's blood. Take a deep breath. It's all going to be fine. We're going to tackle this problem in small, manageable bites. We're going to look at the priority aspects of your life from your food to your air to your water. We'll see what we can improve and what we might just have to live with -- one step at a time. So stay tuned in the days to come and go to greengoeswitheverything.com.
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Does this have anything to do with your company (Shaklee) that sells "green" products as opposed to toxic ones?
Just look at how much they care about you:
On February 22, 2002, Monsanto was found guilty for poisoning the town of Anniston, Alabama with their PCB factory and covering it up for decades. They were convicted of negligence, wantonness, suppression of the truth, nuisance, trespass, and outrage. According to Alabama law, to be guilty of outrage typically requires conduct "so outrageous in character and extreme in degree as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency so as to be regarded as atrocious and utterly intolerable in civilized society."
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/029325_Monsanto_deception.html#ixzz1a1UJdid2
"Monsanto's stranglehold over the nation's food and farming system is about to be challenged in a food fight that will largely determine the future of American agriculture.
This month, lawyers representing a broad and unprecedented health, environmental, and consumer coalition will file papers with the California Attorney General's office to place a Citizens Initiative on the Ballot in November, 2012 that would require mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods and food ingredients."
Perhaps we will have a choice in our selection of food and products.
Monsanto is fighting this with huge amounts of $$$$$.
You other states, get on the bandwagon and fight for your safety!
The problem is everything made with chemicals is cheap, and the natural products that are healthy and good for you are expensive.
It's a cost barrier that many people can't afford to live healthy and green. And companies know this.
It's a sad fact in America.
I shop at an organic supermaket and at a local farmers market, the prices are almost 2-3X more than in a regular grocery store...it is unrealistic to expect struggling families to make healthier choices
vegetables from EWG and try to avoid these. Also, detox with this:
http://www.vitacost.com/Yerba-Prima-Great-Plains-Bentonite-Detox-16-fl-oz?csrc=GPF-046352005195
It is less than $7. a pint - tablespoon a day. "Alimentary Detoxification-Binds herbicides and other potentially harmful substances by adsorbent action." You can do this off and on throughout the year.
Take for a few weeks at a time. Detox and cleanse. Use baking soda and white vinegar for cleaning in the home. Eliminate as much crap
from your household as you possibly are able. Filter your water.
The chemical companies and corporations are doing their best along with the gov't orgs like FDA and profiteers to kill us off.
You kids get offa my lawn! There's no proof humans have anything to do with man-made chemicals being hormone disruptors! All these EPA regulations are costing us jobs! How's the chemical industry going to make a profit? Huh, you liberal pansies! aaaannnnh! And it's funny that I don't care about 200+ pesticide residues in cord blood while I'm off blaming you for aborti..uh, wait,...it's funny you care about 200+ residues when I...wait.
I think chemicals are sensitizing the kids, but the real cause of asthma/allergies is probably due to our over reliance on antibiotics, antiseptics and even aspirin products.
Our immune system was meant to fight pathogens, but our over reliance on antibiotics and antiseptics makes for a hygienic environment whereby the immune system never really learns to differentiate between good molecules and bad....so when it "sees" a new chemical moiety (dye, fragrance, artificial flavor) it reacts strongly.
Aspirin makes it easier to mount an asthma response because Aspirin inhibits COX while leaving another enzyme LPO (which competes with COX) free to make leukotrienes...our bodies asthma "trigger"
Leukotrienes are elevated as a result of taking Aspirin products chronically....
And incidentally montelukast (singulair) which is used to manage asthma works by preventing the actions of leukotrienes
Consult with your Doc...... if you are taking NSAIDS/Aspirin to manage other conditions, he/she may have already factored in the effects.......