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Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) Dangers

2008-08-25T08:28:14Z

Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) Dangers

"Both Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) and its close relative Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) are commonly used in many soaps, shampoos, detergents, toothpastes and other products that we expect to "foam up". Both chemicals are very effective foaming agents, chemically known as surfactants.

Unfortunately, both sodium laureth sulfate and its cousin are also very dangerous, highly irritating chemicals. Far from giving "healthy shining hair" and "beautiful skin", soaps and shampoos containing sodium laureth sulfate can lead to direct damage to the hair follicle, skin damage, permanent eye damage in children and even liver toxicity.

Although sodium laureth sulfate is somewhat less irritating than SLS, it cannot be metabolised by the liver and its effects are therefore much longer-lasting. This not only means it stays in the body tissues for longer, but much more precious energy is used getting rid of it.

A report published in the Journal of The American College of Toxicology in 1983 showed that concentrations of SLS as low as 0.5% could cause irritation and concentrations of 10-30% caused skin corrosion and severe irritation. National Institutes of Health "Household Products Directory" of chemical ingredients lists over 80 products that contain SLS and SLES. Some soaps have concentrations of up to 30%, which the ACT report called "highly irritating and dangerous".

Shampoos are among the most frequently reported products to the FDA. Reports include eye irritation, scalp irritation, tangled hair, swelling of the hands, face and arms and split and fuzzy hair. This is highly characteristic of sodium laureth sulfate and almost definitely directly related to its use.

Click here to learn of the possible health effects of sodium laureth sulfate

So why is a dangerous chemical like sodium laureth sulfate used in our soaps and shampoos?

The answer is simple - it is cheap. The sodium laureth sulfate found in our soaps is exactly the same as you would find in a car wash or even a garage, where it is used to degrease car engines.

In the same way as it dissolves the grease on car engines, SLES also dissolves the oils on your skin, which can cause a drying effect. It is also well documented that it denatures skin proteins, which causes not only irritation, but also allows environmental contaminants easier access to the lower, sensitive layers of the skin.

This denaturing of skin proteins may even be implicated in skin and other cancers.

Perhaps most worryingly, sodium laureth sulfate is also absorbed into the body from skin application. Once it has been absorbed, one of the main effects of SLS is to mimic the activity of the hormone Oestrogen. This has many health implications and may be responsible for a variety of health problems from PMS and Menopausal symptoms to dropping male fertility and increasing female cancers such as breast cancer, where oestrogen levels are known to be involved."

http://www.natural-health-information-centre.com/sodium-laureth-sulfate.html

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" Studies on SLS have shown that:" (Judi Vance, Beauty To Die For, Promotion Publishing, 1998)

1. "Shampoos with SLS could retard healing and keep children's eyes from developing properly. Children under six years old are especially vulnerable to improper eye development. (Summary of Report of Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc. conference."

2. "Sodium Lauryl Sulphate can cause cataracts in adults and delays the healing of wounds in the surface of the cornea."

3. "Sodium Lauryl Sulphate has a low molecular weight and so is easily absorbed by the body. It builds up in the heart, liver and brain and can cause major problems in these areas."

4. "Sodium Lauryl Sulphate causes skin to flake and to separate and causes roughness on the skin."

5. "Sodium Lauryl Sulphate causes dysfunction of the biological systems of the skin."

6. "Sodium Lauryl Sulphate is such a caustic cleanser that it actually corrodes the hair follicle and impairs the ability to grow hair."

7. "Sodium Lauryl Sulphate is routinely used in clinical studies deliberately to irritate the skin so that the effects of other substances can be tested." (Study cited by the Wall St Journal, 1st November 1998)

Ethoxylation: Ethoxylation is the process that makes degreasing agents such as Sodium Lauryl Sulphate (SLS) less abrasive and gives them enhanced foaming properties. When SLS is ethoxylated, it forms Sodium Laureth Sulphate (SLES), a compound used in many shampoos, toothpastes, bath gels, bubble baths, and industrial degreasants. The problem is, the extremely harmful compound 1,4-dioxane may be created during the ethoxylation process, contaminating the product. 1,4-dioxane was one of the principal components of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange, used to great effect by the Americans during the Vietnam War to strip off the jungle canopy to reveal their enemy. 1,4-dioxane is a hormonal disrupter believed to be the chief agent implicated in the host of cancers suffered by Vietnam military personnel after the war. It is also an oestrogen mimic thought to increase the chances of breast cancer and endometrial cancer, stress related illnesses and lower sperm counts.

Dr Samuel Epstein (Author and research Scientist) reports: "The best way to protect yourself is to recognise ingredients most likely to be contaminated with the1,4-dioxane. These include ingredients with the prefix word, or syllable PEG, Polyethylene, Polyethylene Glycol, Polyoxyethylene, eth (as in sodium laureth sulphate) or oxynol. Both polysorbate 60 and polysorbate 80 may also be contaminated with 1,4-dioxane. (Epstein, Dr Samuel, Safe Shoppers Bible, P.190-191)"
http://www.health-report.co.uk/sodium_lauryl_sulphate.html

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"...it is well known in Europe that sodium laurel sulfate causes softening of the gums and leads to gingivitis. "
http://www.webdeb.com/healthnews/sls.htm

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Fast Food Ads VS Reality

2008-03-26T04:53:32Z

http://www.thewvsr.com/adsvsreality.htm

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The World Bank: Driving the Corporate Control of Water

2008-02-06T18:28:31Z

The World Bank: Driving the Corporate Control of Water
article from the Corporate Accountability Monitor
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/cms/page1613.cfm

(We'll run outa oil and drinkable water will be the liquid gold)

Today, more than one in six people around the world lack access to enough water. When people don’t have clean water, they use whatever water is available to them—even if it is unsafe.

That’s what things were like in the U.S. around the turn of the last century. Many people were dying from waterborne diseases like cholera and typhoid. Water systems were privately owned, and less than 5% of the people in cities like New York had access to safe drinking water.

By late in the 19th century, private water systems began to be municipalized in a move to strengthen public health. Public control was backed by a sizable commitment of public revenue. Near universal access to water and sanitation was achieved. Within decades waterborne diseases were all but eliminated.

“Our national leaders seem to have forgotten this history,” said Kathy Mulvey, international policy director for Corporate Accountability International. “Once a source of pride and prosperity, U.S. public water systems are no longer getting the attention and funding they need. And in recent decades, water privatization by corporations has been presented as a cure-all for the global water crisis.”

The World Bank has been the engine behind this corporate takeover of water systems and services. The World Bank shapes how, from whom and on what terms people in developing countries receive their water—by investing $2 billion annually, and by influencing the policies of other international financial institutions.

Although it has shifted its rhetoric in recent years, the World Bank continues to press its privatization agenda:

*
By requiring countries to privatize water systems as a condition for receiving loans;
*
By advocating for water governance structures that favor large corporate users over individuals and communities;
*
By directly financing water giants like Suez, Veolia, Bechtel and Biwater;
*
By forcing municipal systems to adopt commercial approaches to water rates and service provision.

The stated mission of the World Bank is to alleviate poverty. Yet corporate control of water has proven a dangerous policy—in economic, social and environmental terms. There is much evidence that private sector involvement in water services delivery has failed to improve poor people’s access to water or save governments money. What’s more, it often leads to price hikes, reduced access, service cut-offs, loss of local jobs, contract renegotiations and broken promises for service delivery and network expansion.

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cloned food

2008-01-18T01:57:27Z

NO I DO NOT TRUST CLONING.

http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-CA&brand=sympatico&vid=5d5a6e7c-d559-4372-a257-0c72458db25d

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U.S. Food Safety: A Grocery List of Tainted Products

2008-01-17T18:13:43Z

From US News & World Report

Recent recalls covered everything from spinach to meat to children's snacks
http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/080114/us-food-safety-a-grocery-list-of-tainted-products.htm

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Why Poisonous, Unregulated Chemicals End Up in Our Blood

2008-01-14T12:30:25Z

I just came across this article from a few months ago. But I think it's still very relevant. ....

Why Poisonous, Unregulated Chemicals End Up in Our Blood
By Mark Schapiro
Harper's Magazine
October 2007 Issue
In the late 1990s, citizens of several European countries learned from newspaper reports that their infants were constantly being exposed to a host of toxic chemicals. Babies were sleeping in pajamas treated
with cancer-causing flame retardants; they were sucking on bottles
laced with plastic additives believed to alter hormones; their diapers were glued together with nerve-damaging toxins normally used to kill
algae on the hulls of ships. When European health officials tried to
look into the matter, they were confounded by how little they actually
knew about these and other potentially hazardous chemicals. Regulators
discovered that they had no way of assessing the dangers of long-term
exposure to everyday products. Some manufacturers of baby goods did not
even know what was in their own products, since chemical producers were
under no obligation to tell them. Such data, if it existed at all, was
secreted away in the vaults of chemical companies and had never been
submitted to any government authority.

In the years since those news reports, the nascent science of
bio-monitoring has provided further insight into how the industrial
chemicals that are in clothes, food packaging, cosmetics, toys,
electronics, and just about every modern convenience are actually
lodging in the human body. Greenpeace U.K. released a study in 2005
that found numerous toxic chemicals in the umbilical-cord blood of
European infants. That same year, World Wildlife Fund International
tested the blood of three generations of women from twelve European
countries. The largest number of chemicals-sixty-three-was found in the

group of grandmothers. Given the number of years they had had to
accumulate exposure, this result was perhaps not surprising. But the
next-highest level was among their grandchildren, aged twelve to
twenty-eight, who in their short lifetimes had amassed fifty-nine
different toxic chemicals. The blood of a nineteen-year-old Italian,
who later sent me her test results, included brominated flame
retardants, which are potential liver, thyroid, and neurological toxins

that are used to coat many electronics; the pesticides DDT and lindane,

the latter of which is suspected of contributing to breast and other
cancers; perfluorinated chemicals, known carcinogens that are used as
stain- and water-repellents on clothing, furniture, and nonstick
cookware; and artificial musk aromas, found in soaps and perfumes, that
scientists claim can reduce the body's ability to expel other toxins.

Bio-monitoring tests in the United States have revealed the same
dangerous chemicals making their way into the blood of Americans. In
2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention completed
screening for the presence of 148 toxic chemicals in the blood of a
broad cross section of Americans; it found that the vast majority of
subjects harbored almost all the toxins. In the same year, the CDC's
National Survey on Family Growth concluded that rates of infertility
were rising for women under the age of twenty-five, a spike many
scientists attribute, at least in part, to routine exposure to toxic
chemicals. The Environmental Working Group conducted tests on the
umbilical cords of ten newborns in 2006 and discovered that
cancer-causing, endocrine-disrupting, and gene-mutating chemicals had
passed from the mothers to their fetuses through the placenta.

Up until the 1970s, no country had imposed any meaningful
oversight
of the tens of thousands of chemicals that had entered the marketplace
since World War II. Then, in 1976, the U.S. Congress passed the Toxic
Substances Control Act (TSCA), which granted the government the
authority to track industrial chemicals and to place restrictions on
any that proved harmful to humans or the environment. Because the
United States was the world's preeminent economic power, other major
chemical producers-Germany, France, and Britain-soon brought their
national regulations into line with TSCA so as not to lose the U.S.
market. Shortly thereafter, Japan and other countries hoping to conduct
trade with the West also had to adopt the central principles of the law
as their own. Thus, America set the rules for chemical regulation
across the globe.

But TSCA came with an enormous loophole, a caveat leveraged into
it by the powerful chemical industry: every chemical already on the market
before 1979 was exempted from the law's primary screening requirements.

Three decades after TSCA came into being, 95 percent of all chemicals
in circulation have never undergone any testing for toxicity or their
impact on the environment. The extent to which TSCA has failed to
regulate hazardous substances is now evident in the bio-monitoring
results in Europe and America.

Europeans have recently decided to do something about all the
untested chemicals that are ending up in their blood. "The assumption
among Americans is, 'If it's on the market, it's okay,'" explained
Robert Donkers, an E.U. official who was asked to review Europe's
regulatory laws after the baby-product scare. "That fantasy is gone in
Europe." Donkers's efforts were the first steps in what became, seven
years later, a new E.U. chemical regulation called REACH-Registration,
Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals. REACH amounts to a
revolution in how chemicals are managed, and in how production
decisions around the world will be made from now on. Regulations set by

the most powerful countries have quickly become, through trade, the
international standard. And the European Union, with a market of 480
million people stretching across twenty-seven countries, is now significantly larger than the United
States in both population and wealth; Europe's gross national product surged
past that of the United States in 2005, and the gap increased when two
more countries joined the E.U. earlier this year. The E.U. is now the
most significant trading partner for every continent except Australia.
The ripple effects from this shift in economic power have been one of
the great untold stories of the new century.

Indeed, Europe is now compelling other nations' manufacturers to
conform to regulations that are far more protective of people's health
than those in the United States. Europe has emerged not only as the
world's leading economic power but also as one of its moral leaders.
Those roles were once filled by the United States.

When TSCA took effect in the late 1970s, the United States was
seen as a pioneer of health and environmental regulation. The Environmental
Protection Agency had been established only a few years before, and the
government had recently set standards for fuel economy, hazardous-waste
disposal, and many other factors affecting the country's air and water
quality. Currently, some 42 billion pounds of chemicals are produced in

or brought to America each day, but because of TSCA exemptions, fewer
than 200 of all the chemicals on the market have ever undergone any
serious risk assessments. Among the 62,000 chemicals the act excused
from testing or review were thousands of highly toxic substances, such

as ethyl benzene, a widely used industrial solvent suspected of being a

potent neurotoxin; whole families of synthetic plastics that are
potential carcinogens and endocrine disrupters; and numerous other
chemicals for which there was little or no information.

The EPA is actually allowed to place restrictions on the chemicals

grandfathered onto the market if the substances present an
"unreasonable risk to human health." In order to demonstrate this risk,

however, the agency must surmount tremendous legal and administrative
obstacles. The EPA is required to weigh the "costs to industry" of any
regulation, and it is obliged to impose restrictions that are the
"least burdensome" to chemical manufacturers. According to a 2005
Government Accountability Office analysis, the EPA relies too heavily
on industry test data when making safety assessments and allows
companies to keep critical data from the public through
"indiscriminate" claims that information is proprietary. Even for those

few new chemicals brought to market after TSCA, the screening record is

not reassuring. Ninety days before commercial-scale production of a
chemical begins, manufacturers are required to provide the EPA with all

exposure and toxicity data. Theoretically, this information enables the

agency to determine whether regulatory action is warranted before
chemicals hit the market. But according to the EPA's own figures, 85
percent of the notifications submitted contain no health data.

One result of this industry-friendly screening is that the EPA has

banned only five chemicals since its inception in 1970. For a brief
time the banned list included a sixth substance: asbestos. In 1989, the

EPA prohibited nearly all uses of asbestos, which it classified as a
"known carcinogen." The chemical industry challenged the agency,
however, and in 1990 a federal court vacated the ban, asserting that
the EPA had neither met TSCA's requirement that the conclusive dangers
of the chemical should exceed its perceived usefulness nor demonstrated

that the ban was the "least burdensome alternative" for eliminating the
"unreasonable risk" of exposure. The EPA has not acted to ban a
chemical since that decision, even though other countries have outlawed

asbestos and numerous toxins that are still in use in the United
States. (Since 2004, the E.U. has banned entire categories of hazardous

chemicals from use in cosmetics, toys, electronics, and other consumer
goods.) By making it easier to hang on to old chemicals than to develop

new ones, TSCA provides no incentive for manufacturers to create less
toxic alternatives. The absence of even minimal toxicity data insulates

the industry from the normal supply-demand dynamic of the market;
consumers, in other words, have no means of expressing their potential
preference for a less toxic substitute.

Chemical companies have spent lavishly to preserve these lax
standards. Since 1996, the industry has contributed $47 million to
federal election campaigns, and it pays about $30 million each year to
lobbyists in Washington. Lynn Goldman, who served as assistant
administrator for toxic substances at the EPA from 1993 to 1998, told
me that she and her colleagues knew TSCA was largely ineffectual.
"There were thousands of chemicals out there, and we didn't know what
they were. We weren't able to get the data, weren't able to assess the
risks, nothing." Goldman recalls a party held in Washington to
commemorate TSCA's twentieth anniversary. "Someone from the chemical
industry got up to salute TSCA and said, 'This is the perfect statute.
I wish every law could be like TSCA.'"

The primary target of Europe's new chemical regulation is the more

than 60,000 compounds TSCA allowed to stay on the market without
testing. Under REACH, these chemicals will have to be registered,
evaluated for toxicity, and authorized before being permitted to remain

in use. Fifteen hundred chemicals are expected to be placed on a 2008
list of "substances of very high concern." These toxins, which are
known to cause cancer, alter genes, and affect fertility, will be the
first to be removed from the market unless producers are able to prove
that they can be "adequately controlled." In addition to assessing
chemicals in their raw form, REACH

also extends to the endless array of consumer goods that utilize
these compounds; thus, tens of thousands of "downstream users," from
construction companies to tennis-shoe manufacturers and fashion houses,

will be forced to find out and report what chemicals are in their
products and what effects they have on human health and the
environment.

By the end of 2008, the first sets of risk data are to be
submitted
to the E.U. Manufacturers will then have ten more years to complete
what amounts to a scientific cataloguing of the chemical makeup of the
global economy. Whereas U.S. regulators are forced to find
scientifically improbable definitive evidence of toxic exposure before
acting, REACH acts on the basis of precaution. European authorities
consider the inherent toxicity of a substance and, based on an
accumulation of evidence, determine whether its potential to cause harm

is great enough to remove it from circulation. Unlike TSCA, REACH
places the burden of proof on manufacturers, who must demonstrate that
their chemicals can be used safely. The law also proposes to
drastically limit the amount of health-related data that companies can
claim as proprietary.

Critics of stricter chemical regulations have long contended that
the price of compliance would be far too steep. But the E.U. estimated
that REACH would cost European chemical manufacturers about $4 billion
over fourteen years-a figure that amounts to less than 1 percent of
their combined yearly revenue. The E.U. further calculated that these
expenses would be repaid many times over by the resulting health
benefits. According to their figures, REACH would prevent some 4,500
occupational cancer cases each year and reduce European health-care
costs from ailments related to chemical exposure by $69 billion over
the next three decades. Moreover, by establishing what will be the
first open, actually free market in chemicals, in which informed
consumers will be able to make decisions as to what risks they are
willing to take, REACH promotes new research into the development of
safer chemicals. Chemists have already come up with substitutes for
some of the most problematic toxic chemicals on the market, and the
E.U. estimates that its environmental initiatives have spawned billions

of dollars in "green" industries and technologies.

U.S. companies could be put at a serious competitive disadvantage
if they do not acknowledge the changes taking place across the
Atlantic. Americans are already losing ground to Europeans in the
chemical business, having slipped in the past decade from a trade
surplus with European manufacturers to a more than $28 billion deficit.

That deficit promises to increase as environmentally aware consumers
are given the opportunity to choose between European goods with
chemicals that have undergone toxicity screening and American goods
with unscreened chemicals. Because American companies interested in
exporting to the E.U. will also have to supply toxicity data to the
European authorities, REACH does present opportunities for U.S.
consumers. Not only will these chemicals be subject to their first-ever

health- and environmental-impact review but the findings will then be
available on the European Chemical Agency's website. At that point,
U.S. consumers may no longer choose to use untested American goods.

The American public, along with the American media, has so far
been
mostly oblivious to the new chemical regulations coming out of Europe.
The Bush Administration and U.S. manufacturers, however, have been
fixated on it for years. REACH is far more than just another foreign
ban of a specific chemical with which U.S. industry will have to
contend; it strikes at the fundamental belief that the United States
decides what can and cannot be contained in the goods sold all over the
world. So as REACH was being debated in the European Parliament from
2003 to 2006, the U.S. government and the nation's industries teamed up
to undertake an unprecedented international lobbying effort to kill or
radically weaken the proposal.

The assault came from an assortment of government and industry
offices. A memo that circulated at the State Department's Bureau of
European and Eurasian Affairs denounced REACH as too "costly,
burdensome, and complex" for industry to follow. If chemicals were put
through the rigors of review, a Commerce Department brief warned,
"hundreds of thousands of Americans could be thrown out of their jobs."

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick submitted a protest to the
World Trade Organization asserting that REACH amounted to a
"non-tariff" barrier to foreign exporters. A delegation of State
Department officials joined two Dow Chemical executives in Athens to
lobby the Greeks, who then held the presidency of the European Union.
Colin Powell himself sent out a seven-page cable to U.S. embassies
throughout the world claiming that REACH "could present obstacles to
trade" and cost American chemical producers tens of billions of dollars
in lost exports. At the same time, Washington sent emissaries to such
new E.U. members as Hungary, Poland, Estonia, and the Czech
Republic-formerly Communist countries where environmental consciousness
was far less developed than in Western Europe-in an effort to peel off
support within the E.U. by claiming that REACH would hurt European
firms competing in foreign markets. The State Department
also recruited a coalition of allies to oppose REACH from
countries heavily reliant on exports; pleas went out to Brazil, India, Japan,
Malaysia, South Africa, and others to develop a "coordinated outreach"
strategy among "E.U. trading partners." In E.U. parliamentary hearings
on REACH that I attended, I was able to identify lobbyists not only for
the U.S. and European chemical industries but also for such downstream
chemical users as cement, automobile, textile, and pharmaceutical
companies. The U.S. lobbying effort amounted to an historic intrusion
into European affairs. Robert Donkers, who in 2003 was stationed in the
United States to explain REACH to Americans, invited me to consider the
reverse scenario: European officials descending on Washington to lobby
against a bill being considered in Congress. "It wouldn't be
tolerated," he said. "We wouldn't last ten minutes!"

By early 2006, REACH had already undergone a rewrite by the
European Commission and had passed its first reading in the parliament.

Nearly a thousand amendments had been voted on and consolidated.
Environmentalists in Europe felt the standards had already been
weakened in significant ways. Priority had been put on "high-volume
chemicals" produced in excess of a thousand tons a year, with
diminishing data requirements as the volume declined; broad exemptions
were issued for certain plastics. But REACH still retained its core
principles: that thousands of existing chemicals would be reviewed for
their toxicity, that the data from those reviews would be made public,
and that responsibility for demonstrating a chemical's safety would
rest with the manufacturers.

In Washington, however, President Bush signaled that the struggle
was far from over. He sent C. Boyden Gray to Brussels in February as
the new U.S. ambassador to the E.U. A veteran Republican operative and
an heir to the R. J. Reynolds tobacco fortune, Gray had spent a career
in and out of government rewriting the rules of environmental oversight

to reduce the burden on business. As general counsel to the first
President Bush, he helped transform how the EPA and other federal
agencies were managed so that cost-benefit analyses would be given
precedence over risk-based decisions. "This is the beast we have
confined and tamed," he told me, referring to his success in limiting
U.S. regulatory laws.

One of Gray's first public undertakings as ambassador began at
AmCham E.U., an affiliate of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Brussels.
AmCham E.U. lobbies the E.U. on behalf of 140 U.S. companies, including

Apple, Boeing, Dow, DuPont, General Motors, and McDonald's.
Environmental policies are one of their top concerns. In June 2006,
Gray orchestrated a joint press release, from the United States and
twelve other countries, that objected to REACH's hazard-based system
for assessing risks and called for weakening its registration
requirements. That press release, it turns out, was written at the
offices of AmCham E.U. and sent from the U.S. Mission in Brussels. One
morning that June, I received a leaked copy of the original draft,
which, thanks to Microsoft tracking software, included the editorial
changes that were written into the document as it made its way through
various readers. Where AmCham E.U.'s address had once been now ran the
imprimatur of the United States Mission to the European Union. This
edit and others offered a rare glimpse into the routine merging of the
U.S. government with American corporations. When U.S. Representative
Henry Waxman conducted an investigation into the Bush Administration's
efforts to undermine REACH, he unearthed dozens of pages of diplomatic
cable traffic showing how the government had coordinated its efforts
with those of industry. Talking points, lobbying junkets, statistics
(many of them proven inaccurate) had been shared. Instead of
considering these reforms on their merits, or revising its own failed
regulations, our government demonstrated once again that it puts
business interests ahead of the safety of its own-and the
world's-citizens.

The European Parliament finally voted to approve REACH on December

13, 2006. By February, the U.S. Department of Commerce, which had
lobbied so vigorously against the proposed regulation, was hosting a
seminar in Charlotte, North Carolina, to explain to companies doing
business in Europe how to comply with the law intended to protect
Europeans. It was the first of a series of sessions to be held with
American businesses across the country. In the same month,
representatives from the Pentagon, defense contractors, U.S.
scientists, and California state officials met in Monterey to discuss
the effects REACH would have on military hardware being used on U.S.
bases in Europe. Several major American electronics and cosmetics
companies are already reformulating their products to meet the new E.U.
standards. And DuPont, Dow, and other large U.S. chemical manufacturers
are busy preparing toxicity data to submit to the E.U. In many
instances, smaller American chemical companies and most downstream
manufacturers that utilize chemicals will have to purchase this data
from the big corporations, which now stand to profit from the REACH
strictures.

Many American states, tired of waiting for direction from
Washington, are now looking to Brussels for ideas on environmental
reform. California, Massachusetts, and New York have begun exploring
the possibility of implementing elements of REACH in their state
regulations; Maine and Washington have cited Europe's precedent in
their efforts to ban particular chemicals, such as those
poly-brominated flame retardants found in children's sleepwear.
Elsewhere in the world, governments have worked to bring their own
policies into line with REACH. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce had
REACH translated into Mandarin within days of its passage. European
consultants also traveled to China to show industry and government
officials there what exporters will have to do to abide by the chemical

regulations. The Europeans were willing to aid their competitors in
China, with whom they have a significant trade deficit, because just
about anything made in Chinese factories can end up in the hands of
Europeans. To protect its population, Europe is working backward,
toward the potential sources of future chemical contamination. European
consultants also fanned out to Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, South
Korea, Thailand, and other major players in the world economy. And in
the upcoming year, Robert Donkers, who had long tried to forewarn
American businesses of this tectonic shift in environmental influence,
is expected to be transferred to India, where he will be advising that
up-and-coming economic powerhouse.

The European Union is demanding that its industries take
responsibility for the collateral health damages that its products may
cause, and it is doing so with innovations that are leading the world.
In the process, American consumers are being put in a position that
would have been unimaginable as little as a decade ago. Shortly after
the EPA was founded, the United States imposed domestic restrictions on
some of the most dangerous pesticides and other chemicals, and U.S.
companies responded by exporting millions of pounds of these toxins to
Third World countries, where such regulations didn't exist. The irony
is that our nation's steady retreat from environmental leadership means
it may soon become a dumping ground for chemicals deemed too hazardous
by more progressive countries. Meanwhile, Americans may also be the
incidental beneficiaries of protective standards created by the
government of a foreign country in which they have no say. In recent
years the United States has opposed a multitude of environmental and
human-rights initiatives that have gained international legitimacy
without its participation. Indeed, this country is no longer where it
likes to imagine itself to be-at the axis of influence around which the
rest of the world revolves.

Mark Schapiro is the editorial director of the Center for Investigative Reporting. His new book, "Exposed: The Toxic Chemistry of

Everyday Products and What's at Stake for American Power," was
published this year by Chelsea Green.

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can this be true?

2008-01-10T23:45:57Z

This is really horrible news. Hope you read it.

As our World continues its entrance to this new century, and as our Global food supply continues to plummet, and as new diseases continue their rampage, it remains to be seen if the Western World will ever awaken to threat they have created, not just to themselves, but to the entire human race.
[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]

January 6, 2008

Media Blackout Ordered As UK Begins Mass Burials

By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers

Disturbing reports from Britain today are showing that their government has invoked their dreaded Official Secrets Act as a mysterious pandemic sweeps their Nation leaving an, estimated, 3,000 people dead and leaving ‘no choice’ for British Health Officials but to begin mass burials.

British media sources are reporting on this pandemic as being due to a virus, and as we can read as reported by Guardian News Service in their report titled "Vomiting bug to get worse", and which says:

"Infections from the debilitating Norovirus stomach bug will peak this week as millions return to work after the holidays and spread the germs, the government has warned. The virus, which was responsible for closing more than 100 hospital wards last week and Doctors estimate that more than 100,000 people a week are catching the infection - and the rate may peak this week as the virus takes the opportunity to spread in the workplace and classrooms.

Reported cases of the illness from early December are at a five-year-high, but the real figure is likely to be much greater as most sufferers do not seek medical attention. People struck down have been urged by GPs not to go back to work until the symptoms have fully disappeared."

Russian scientists, however, though noting that the Norovirus is indeed a highly contagious disease, are in disagreement with their British counterparts and are stating that the symptoms being reported by the British victims being attacked by this disease are more consistent with a variant of the H5N1 Avian Influenza virus which the United Kingdom has been reporting numerous outbreaks of this past year.

Russian Health Authorities were, also, highly critical of the British Governments decision in mid-December to lift their remaining restrictions following an outbreak of the deadly Avian Flu in southeastern England, but even more strongly condemned Britain’s decision to allow the continued sale to their citizens of poultry for their Christmas season.

To the fullest truth of this mysterious disease affecting millions of British citizens, and which has now been reported in Ireland, it is not in our knowing, but what is a matter of record is Britain’s Health Authorities engaging in cover-ups to hide from their people the true and catastrophic deaths attributed to disease, and as we can read as reported by London’s Daily Mail News Service:

"Edwin died on April 12 last year aged 82. He had been in hospital for just a fortnight after complaining of feeling frail while on holiday. Although Edwin had suffered from rectal cancer in the past, the disease was in remission and Joan says that he was expected to make a full recovery at the hospital - until he caught C. diff.

His death, and thousands of others, lie at the heart of a growing scandal over NHS superbugs. Yesterday Tory leader David Cameron said hospitals should be fined for every patient who catches an infection on their wards. But would such a crackdown just lead to more secrecy about superbugs?

In 2006 almost 56,000 elderly hospital patients caught C. diff, which is spread by poor hygiene, dirty hands and soiled bedding. Amazingly, we still don't know how many of these people died because the figures have not yet been released by the NHS. In 2005, the latest year that death statistics for C. diff were available, 3,807 hospital patients died, a rise of almost 70 per cent over the previous 12 months.

But the truth is that this figure may be utterly meaningless because many people, including Joan, believe there is a cover-up over the figures.

As this investigation has discovered, when a person dies from a hospital superbug the details are often left off the death certificate. The practice has become so widespread that last autumn the Government's chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, wrote to hospitals and doctors warning them that any dishonesty has to stop."

Of the greatest concern, however, of these events are the British peoples following the dangerous path of their American counterparts by consuming vast quantities of genetically modified (GM) foods, and which scientific reports have proven allow new viruses to enter the human body leading to weakened immune systems.

It is interesting to note, too, that while the death toll mounts in Britain from this mysterious pandemic, the French government, and seeing the disaster unfolding in their European neighbor, is contemplating the total ban of all genetically modified crops in their country.

As our World continues its entrance to this new century, and as our Global food supply continues to plummet, and as new diseases continue their rampage, it remains to be seen if the Western World will ever awaken to threat they have created, not just to themselves, but to the entire human race.

© January 6, 2008 EU and US all rights reserved.

[Ed. Note: The United States government actively seeks to find, and silence, any and all opinions about the United States except those coming from authorized government and/or affiliated sources, of which we are not one. No interviews are granted and very little personal information is given about our contributors, or their sources, to protect their safety.]

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 2 replies

Warning: Drug Ads Can Make You Sick

2008-01-03T15:23:18Z

I often noticed the abundance of tv commercials on American television every year when I visit the US. So this makes sense, sadly. Especially with criminals like Donald Rumsfeld so involved in pharmaceutical companies.

By Terry J. Allen, In These Times
Posted on January 3, 2008, Printed on January 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/72357/

Jane's family is suffering from plagues of biblical-lite proportions. Her teenage son is unruly and easily distracted. Her daughter has menstrual cramps, is 12 pounds overweight and shy. Her husband sleeps fitfully and has occasional heartburn and irregularity -- not to mention that his libido is falling and his cholesterol rising. As for Jane, her menopause generates more heat than a blowtorch. Her knees twinge, her breasts are less perky and her jaw line more blurred. Her personality is flat and her legs restless. All of them are less happy than they think they should be.

Although there is a diagnosis, pill or surgical treatment for each of their ills, the family members could simply be suffering from exposure to advertising that sells a fantasy of flawless health, perfect skin, clockwork bowels, extended youth and perpetual cheerfulness in the face of disappointment, aging, money woes and the reign of George Bush. They may, in fact, be healthy people snookered by the pharmaceutical industry, the media and their doctors into believing that ordinary frailties are diseases; that the human condition can be cured.

A $4.2 billion annual industry incessantly reinforces this medicalization of complaints through direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising.

In 1998, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided to allow pharmaceutical companies to hawk prescription drugs to the public, with limited oversight and minimal explanation of safety and side effects. A 2006 Government Accountability Office investigation found some of these marketing efforts "false and misleading" and faulted the FDA -- which is responsible for oversight -- for failing to maintain standards of accuracy and to protect the public. The United States and New Zealand are the only countries that allow DTC marketing.

Big Pharma says that the goal of DTC ads is to educate the public about what treatments are available. But there is no denying that the images of people caressed by soporific green moths, charmed by Latino bees and enticed by sexually fulfilled couples can create expectations and perceived needs that lead to unnecessary and expensive drug consumption. Some of the products are only minimally effective. Many can cause liver or kidney damage, high blood pressure or other adverse effects that would have to be countered with still more drugs -- each with its own side effects and risky interactions.

One undeniable side effect of DTCs is increased sales and profits for drug manufacturers. "Every $1 the pharmaceutical industry spent on DTC advertising in 2000 yielded an additional $4.20 in drug sales," the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported. Indeed, direct-to-consumer advertising "was responsible for 12 percent of the increase in prescription drugs sales, or an additional $2.6 billion."

Many doctors act as enablers. A majority of them reported that DTC ads caused patients to "confuse relative risks and benefits" or to believe the drugs "worked better than they do," according to the FDA. Almost three out of four docs said patients were spurred by the ads to ask for unnecessary prescriptions and to expect a prescription for every condition. Nonetheless, despite feeling pressured and sometimes ambivalent about efficacy, safety and appropriateness, doctors turned down requests for a brand-name prescription only 2 percent of the time, the FDA found.

Americans are swallowing a lot of pills. Spending on prescription drugs is America's most rapidly increasing healthcare cost and, in 2004, outpatient prescription medications -- 3 billion scripts worth $200 billion a year -- constituted nearly 20 percent of healthcare spending, according to a government survey. Almost half of us take at least one prescription medicine, and one in six downs three or more medications, according to a 2004 Department of Health and Human Services report.

There is something in the American character that loves a quick technological fix, and DTC advertising convinces us that drugs can cure our physical and psychological aches and pains -- even our existential crises and obnoxious personality traits. While many people with debilitating depression do find better living through chemistry, there may be something wrong with a definition of normality that classifies one in 10 women, 18 years of age and older, as so clinically depressed that she requires powerful antidepressants. Or a definition of normality that diagnoses 15 percent of 16-year-old boys with attention deficit hyper-activity disorder (ADHD). ADHD drugs make up three of the top five drugs for children age 17 and younger (sales totaling $1.3 billion in 2004). And of the 4.4 million 4- to 17-year-olds with an ADHD diagnosis, more than half were medicated despite what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called "substantial health risks."

The old joke used to be this: A doctor who finds a patient healthy hasn't looked hard enough. DTC advertising cuts out the middleman and allows the consumer to over-diagnose. It directly exploits the public's fears and hopes by planting the illusion -- and then preying on it -- that health, youth and happiness are commodities, and anything less is a disease.

Terry J. Allen is a senior editor of In These Times. Her work has appeared in Harper's, The Nation, New Scientist and other publications.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/72357/

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Concerns resurface over chemical in hard-plastic water bottles

2007-12-24T19:43:48Z

http://www.wcax.com/Global/story.asp?S=7537657&nav=menu183_2
"ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) - Hard plastic Nalgene bottles have been a staple among backpackers and fitness enthusiasts for years.

But now, worries about a hormone-mimicking chemical are leading some stores to remove Nalgene and other polycarbonate plastic containers from their shelves.

The concern centers on the chemical bisphenol A, or BPA."

See also:

Retailers concerned over water bottles' possible link to cancer
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=83312

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies

Hazards of Hand Sanitizers and Soaps

2007-11-29T19:38:02Z

Hazards of Hand Sanitizers and Soaps
http://www.pesticidesafety.uiuc.edu/newsletter/html/200704a.html

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol7no2/larson.htm

Daycare and Preschool Hand Washing
Are Alcohol Based Hand Sanitizers Dangerous to Children?
http://daycare.suite101.com/article.cfm/daycare_and_preschool_hand_washing

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 3 replies

The world's worst products

2007-10-30T14:53:04Z

The world's worst products

"SYDNEY (AFP) - Sleeping pills advertised for children, dangerous toys and bottled water taken from local reservoirs are among the world's
worst products, a global consumer group said Monday.

- snip -

"Another award went to drinks giant Coca-Cola for pushing marketing "into the realms of the ridiculous" in the United States and South
America with its Dasani bottled water which is sourced from the same reservoirs as local tap water."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20071030/ts_afp/consumerhealthfoodchildren

;

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I'll Have My Cosmetics With a Side of Infertility, Please

2007-10-25T23:30:14Z

This is not surprising, but creepy. The links at the bottom of the article are very useful....
By Heather Gehlert, AlterNet
Posted on October 25, 2007, Printed on October 25, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/66074/

Carcinogens in cosmetics? Petrochemicals in perfume? If only this were an urban legend. Unfortunately, it's a toxic reality, and it's showing up in our bodies.

In 2004, scientists found pesticides in the blood of newborn babies. A year later, researchers discovered perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel, in human breast milk. Today, people are testing positive for a litany of hazardous substances from flame retardants to phthalates to lead.

In her new book, Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry, Stacy Malkan exposes the toxic chemicals that lurk, often unlabeled, in the personal care products that millions of American women, men and children use every day.

AlterNet spoke with Malkan about these toxins and her five-year effort with the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to get the beauty industry to remove them from its products.

Heather Gehlert: There are so many environmental issues you could've written a book about. Why cosmetics?

Stacy Malkan: I think cosmetics is something that we're all intimately connected to. They're products that we use every day, and so I think it's a good first place to start asking questions. What kinds of products are we bringing into our homes? What kinds of companies are we giving our money to?

It has something pretty interesting in common with global warming too.

It does. I think of it as global poisoning. I think that the ubiquitous contamination of the human species with toxic chemicals is a symptom of the same problem (as global warming), which is an economy that's based on outdated technologies of petrochemicals -- petroleum. So many of the products we're applying to our faces and putting in our hair come from oil. They're byproducts of oil.

Many cosmetic products on the market right now claim they are pure, gentle, clean and healthy. But, as you reveal in this book, they're far from it. Toxic chemicals in these products are showing up in people. What were some of the most surprising toxins you discovered in cosmetics?

Lead in lipstick was pretty surprising. We (the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics) just released that report last week. Many personal care products have phthalates, which is a plasticizer and hormone disruptor. That's why we started the cosmetics campaign -- because we know that women have higher levels of phthalates in their bodies, and we thought that cosmetics might be a reason. But, I think overall, the most surprising thing was to know that there's so much that we don't know about these products. Many, many chemicals are hiding in fragrance. Companies aren't required to list the components of fragrance. Products also are contaminated with carcinogens like 1,4 dioxane and neurotoxins like lead that aren't listed on the label. So it's difficult for consumers to know what we're using.

As a consumer I just want to know what ingredients to avoid, but you say in the book, protecting myself is not as simple as that. Why not?

There are no standards or regulations like there are in, for example, the food industry, where if you buy organic food or food labeled "natural," there's a set of standards and legal definitions that go behind those words. We might like to see those be stronger, but nevertheless, there are meaningful legal definitions. That's not the case in the personal care product industry, where companies often use words like "organic" and "natural" to market products that are anything but. And some of the most toxic products we've found actually had the word "natural" in their name, like natural nail strengtheners that are made with formaldehyde.

Generally speaking, risk assessment involves two factors: a hazard and people's exposure to that hazard. Could you explain some of the unique challenges to assessing risks with cosmetics?

That's a good question. Risk assessment is an extremely oversimplified way of pretending we have enough information to know how much chemicals we can tolerate in our bodies. A risk assessment equation will say, "How hazardous is a chemical, how much are we exposed to it from this one product, and is that harmful?" There's a lot of information left out of that picture: studies that haven't been done to determine impacts on fetuses, the fact that we're exposed to so many of these chemicals in so many places every day, and the fact there have been no -- or very few -- studies about chemical mixtures.

In chapter 2, you say that toxic cosmetics should raise concern for men too, regardless of whether they use any themselves. How so?

Well, men do, first of all, use personal care products. When I ask a group of people what products they've used today, the men will be keeping their hands down and eventually, reluctantly, raising their hands because they're using shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, cologne, lotion.

So it's not just a makeup problem.

No, it's not just a makeup problem. It's all products. And we know that some chemicals in these products are particularly problematic for men. We're all exposed to phthalates, and phthalates interfere with the production of testosterone, and they're linked to health effects like lower sperm counts, birth defects of the penis, testicular tumors.

You've had to struggle with some scary health problems. Tell us about that.

Like many of us, I've had bizarre health problems that nobody can explain: benign lumps in my breasts and thyroid, which is quite common among young women to have thyroid problems. And then also infertility, which is something that's becoming an increasingly common experience for people. And so many of us have heard from our doctors, "Well, we don't know why; we can't tell you why." But I think that's an interesting disconnect that we're looking at how to treat disease, but we're not looking at how to prevent disease.

You admit in the book that you used to be addicted to makeup and so-called personal care products. Do you think that could be related to the health issues you've had?

Well, who knows, and we can never say what caused what and so that's why risk assessment is not a useful tool to -- how do I want to say this -- that's why, in my opinion, we need to get rid of toxins wherever we possibly can in makeup, shampoo and lipstick is obviously a place where they don't need to be. But, yes, I did use a lot of cosmetic products -- 200 chemicals a day just in those products. And I also grew up in a very industrialized neighborhood near one of the largest incinerators in Massachusetts, near oil refineries. And we really didn't talk about these issues at all.

Do you think part of the problem with creating awareness around this issue is that the effects from toxins are often not that immediate? People don't say, Oh, I've been to this toxic site and now I have a rash all over my body.

Right, and that's what we hear from the cosmetics companies when they say, "Well, my product is safe if used as directed, and you can't prove otherwise." Which is true. We can't say that use of X product led to X disease because we're talking about long-term diseases with contributing factors. Doctors usually can't tell us why we got cancer, because it could be due to multiple factors in our pasts. We also know that exposures during critical windows of development -- babies in the womb, even teenagers -- can lead to later-life diseases.

Can you give me an idea of how many chemicals one product can contain? Earlier you said you were exposed to 200 chemicals a day during your youth, but that's not all from one product.

No, I used about 20 products a day. The average woman in the U.S. according to our survey uses 12 products a day with about 180 chemicals. And men use about six products with 80 chemicals combined. But it depends on the product. Some products have dozens of chemicals -- fragrances can have dozens or even hundreds of chemicals that aren't listed on the label. And even fragrance-free products can have a masking fragrance.

Talk a little about the history of the cosmetics industry. When did it come about and why is it so unregulated?

The cosmetics industry has fought really hard to keep itself unregulated for the last 30 years. It was first regulated under the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act of 1938. That is a 350-page law with about 1.5 pages that address cosmetics. But it didn't give the FDA the power to require testing (cosmetic) products before they go on the market. The FDA can't require follow-up health monitoring; they can't even recall products. Basically, the FDA has to prove in court that a product is harmful before it can take action. There were several attempts to regulate the industry over the years, and the most well-known was in the 1970s with Thomas Eagleton, a senator from Missouri. He proposed that cosmetics should be regulated more like drugs, where there's a rigorous testing protocol that has to happen before products go on the market, but that was shot down and co-opted. What the industry has done is propose voluntary regulations every time a regulatory threat arises. And so the system that we have now is an industry-sponsored and run panel called the Cosmetics Ingredients Review Board, which is in charge of determining the safety of ingredients in cosmetics. We found lots of problems with that panel. They rushed through ingredients quickly, they hadn't looked at most of the ingredients or actually used these products and, most of the time, they find things to be safe. Even when they do make recommendations to restrict or eliminate ingredients, the industry is free to ignore them and sometimes does.

You say in the book that some companies have different formulations of the same products. Some, with harmful toxins removed, go to Europe, and others, with toxins, go to the U.S. Why is that?

Well, it's outrageous, but Europe has much better health protection laws, and they really take a precautionary approach. The European Union has banned 1,100 chemicals from cosmetics that are thought to cause cancer or reproductive harm, and so they take a precautionary approach by saying, "We know these chemicals are hazardous." Nobody argues about that. Instead of arguing about at what level are they safe in products, we need to take them out of the products and figure out how to make products without them. The United States, on the other hand, says, "We need to be able to prove that an ingredient in this product causes harm before we're going to do anything about it. Consequently, there are lots of known toxins in consumer products. It's not just cosmetics. Another example is formaldehyde in kitchen cabinets -- perfectly legal in the United States. You can buy kitchen cabinets, and they're wafting the carcinogen formaldehyde into your kitchen. You can't sell those cabinets in Europe, in Japan, even in China.

Is it really expensive for companies to reformulate their products to remove toxic chemicals?

It's not expensive to reformulate; many companies have already done it because they had to do it if they want to sell in the European market.

When did you begin working on cosmetic issues? How has the industry changed since then? What's the future outlook?

Well, we started the cosmetics campaign in 2002, when we were concerned about phthalates and found out they were in the majority of cosmetic products. At that time, we started to contact companies to try to have a dialogue with them about the chemicals they were using. ... Overall, I would say the mainstream companies have been incredibly resistant to any kind of change, but we have seen a big change in some products in the last few years. Because Europe banned phthalates, we were able to use that to pressure companies to remove phthalates from some U.S. products, particularly nail products. So we've seen a major shift in the formulation of nail products in the last few years because of the campaign (formaldehyde, toluene, and dibutyl phthalates have been removed from most nail products). So, it's possible that companies can change. They are changing, but not enough and not fast enough.

One thing that struck me about this book is that it's not just a story about cosmetic hazards. It's a story about activism. What was the thinking behind that?

Well, activism is fun, first of all. I think it's the best job in the world. And the inspiring stories from so many people from moms to former models who are speaking out, to the teenagers who have lobbied in Sacramento to get bills passed and now realize they have a political voice that they want to keep using, to nurses who have come together to pressure companies to pass protective policies. I think that's all so positive, and I think that people are coming together in ways that we haven't before.

What practical advice can you give to people wanting to clean up their cosmetics bags?

My best advice is that simpler is better. Really, fewer ingredients, fewer products. For instance, hair color and bubble bath are two things that I've given up. But there are a lot good (nontoxic) products out there on the market, and I would say start by switching out the ones that you use the most frequently like shampoo and deodorant that we're putting by our breast tissue, experiment with different kinds of natural products and just make changes as you can. You can also use the skin deep database to research your products. ... The onus at this point is on consumers to do our own research.

Anything else you'd like to add?

I think it's really important, especially for women in this culture, to recognize that the beauty industry is all about profit and bottom-line thinking. It's not concerned about our health issues. It is not concerned with telling the truth about its products.

To learn more and take action, visit safecosmetics.org. To find out what toxins are in your personal care products, go to www.cosmeticdatabase.org. And to buy the book, check out notjustaprettyface.org.

Heather Gehlert is a managing editor at AlterNet.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/66074/

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Cell phones and World Famine

2007-08-11T14:15:16Z

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

Are mobile phones wiping out our bees?

Scientists claim radiation from handsets are to blame for mysterious 'colony collapse' of bees
By Geoffrey Lean and Harriet Shawcross
Published: 15 April 2007

It seems like the plot of a particularly far-fetched horror film. But some scientists suggest that our love of the mobile phone could cause massive food shortages, as the world's harvests fail.

They are putting forward the theory that radiation given off by mobile phones and other hi-tech gadgets is a possible answer to one of the more bizarre mysteries ever to happen in the natural world - the abrupt disappearance of the bees that pollinate crops. Late last week, some bee-keepers claimed that the phenomenon - which started in the US, then spread to continental Europe - was beginning to hit Britain as well.

The theory is that radiation from mobile phones interferes with bees' navigation systems, preventing the famously homeloving species from finding their way back to their hives. Improbable as it may seem, there is now evidence to back this up.

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) occurs when a hive's inhabitants suddenly disappear, leaving only queens, eggs and a few immature workers, like so many apian Mary Celestes. The vanished bees are never found, but thought to die singly far from home. The parasites, wildlife and other bees that normally raid the honey and pollen left behind when a colony dies, refuse to go anywhere near the abandoned hives.

The alarm was first sounded last autumn, but has now hit half of all American states. The West Coast is thought to have lost 60 per cent of its commercial bee population, with 70 per cent missing on the East Coast.

CCD has since spread to Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece. And last week John Chapple, one of London's biggest bee-keepers, announced that 23 of his 40 hives have been abruptly abandoned.

Other apiarists have recorded losses in Scotland, Wales and north-west England, but the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs insisted: "There is absolutely no evidence of CCD in the UK."

The implications of the spread are alarming. Most of the world's crops depend on pollination by bees. Albert Einstein once said that if the bees disappeared, "man would have only four years of life left".

No one knows why it is happening. Theories involving mites, pesticides, global warming and GM crops have been proposed, but all have drawbacks.

German research has long shown that bees' behaviour changes near power lines.

Now a limited study at Landau University has found that bees refuse to return to their hives when mobile phones are placed nearby. Dr Jochen Kuhn, who carried it out, said this could provide a "hint" to a possible cause.

Dr George Carlo, who headed a massive study by the US government and mobile phone industry of hazards from mobiles in the Nineties, said: "I am convinced the possibility is real."

The case against handsets

Evidence of dangers to people from mobile phones is increasing. But proof is still lacking, largely because many of the biggest perils, such as cancer, take decades to show up.

Most research on cancer has so far proved inconclusive. But an official Finnish study found that people who used the phones for more than 10 years were 40 per cent more likely to get a brain tumour on the same side as they held the handset.

Equally alarming, blue-chip Swedish research revealed that radiation from mobile phones killed off brain cells, suggesting that today's teenagers could go senile in the prime of their lives.

Studies in India and the US have raised the possibility that men who use mobile phones heavily have reduced sperm counts. And, more prosaically, doctors have identified the condition of "text thumb", a form of RSI from constant texting.

Professor Sir William Stewart, who has headed two official inquiries, warned that children under eight should not use mobiles and made a series of safety recommendations, largely ignored by ministers.

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/wildlife/article2449968.ece

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Dismal Scorecard For FDA

2007-06-30T22:36:22Z

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/news/2007/06/30/dismal_scorecard/

Excerpt: "Whether you’re a consumer, a pet owner, a hospital patient or an inmate, you have a right to believe that the products you use and food that you eat, that you feed your children and pets, is free from contamination and safe to use. You have a right to expect that the FDA will do its job and so far, it appears that the government doesn’t have a very good scorecard".

"There have been many questions raised if consumers can trust Chinese products. Perhaps the most significant and imperative question is can consumers trust the U.S. Food and Drug Administration."

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"SiCKO" a critical look at the U.S. health care system

2007-06-25T11:00:10Z

"SiCKO" a critical look at the U.S. health care system

May 9th, 2007 2:06 am
Weinsteins set 'SiCKO' release date

Moore film to rollout June 29

By Ian Mohr / Variety

The Weinstein Co. has pegged a June 29 rollout for Michael Moore's Cannes-bound docu "SiCKO" and brought in Lionsgate to partner on releasing the documaker's first pic since "Fahrenheit 9/11."

Division of labor will see Lionsgate booking theaters on "SiCKO" in the U.S. while TWC handles all marketing and publicity duties and puts up all P&A costs.

TWC is also handling international rights and is offering the doc -- a critical look at the U.S. health care system -- in Cannes after its world preem.

People close to the pic's domestic partnership said that TWC was attracted to Lionsgate because of Lionsgate's exclusive pay TV pact with Showtime for docus.

Pact reteams Bob and Harvey Weinstein with Lionsgate three years after the movie-mogul sibs picked the indie studio to help roll out "Fahrenheit 9/11."

"Lionsgate was very helpful the last time, and this time we're happy to have them involved again," Harvey Weinstein said. He added that he sees "SiCKO" as a less controversial film than "Fahrenheit."

"I've seen this movie with Republicans and Democrats, and this is one time Michael has sort of unified everyone," he said. "The health care industry might not have a very good July Fourth."

Lionsgate's Tom Ortenberg added that he sees the June 29 date as a prime pick for the docu.

"That will be six weeks from the film's Cannes presentation for us to open," he said. "With July 4 coming on a Wednesday, we see that entire week as virtually seven straight Saturdays."

"Fahrenheit" brought in $222.4 million in worldwide B.O. and won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

June release date pits "SiCKO" against Disney's computer-animated "Ratatouille" and Fox actioner "Live Free or Die Hard," as well as specialty fare including Focus drama "Evening" and MGM's "Death at a Funeral."

http://www.michaelmoore.com

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CSPI's Guide to Food Additives - Read the Label

2007-06-16T21:49:28Z

Thought this might be of interest to all.

From the Center for Science in the Public Interest

http://www.cspinet.org/reports/chemcuisine.htm

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 1 reply

Nestle is at it again....

2007-05-31T13:33:48Z

this time trying to steal the water and otherwise create havov in Northern Cal.
See Rural Communities Exploited by Nestlé for Your Bottled Water
http://www.alternet.org/environment/52526/

Brands of bottled water that Nestle owns; Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Perrier,Poland Spring and Ice Mountain.

I searched to see if there are any watchdog sites for Nestle and only found this.

http://www.earlham.edu/~pols/17Fall97/infantformula/

Does anyone know of others?

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies

Investigators: Tainted pet food fed to hogs

2007-05-02T15:07:49Z

As reported in "The Boston Globe", April 20, 2007 -

http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2007/04/20/investigators_tainted_pet_food_fed_to_hogs/

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 2 replies

On Cancer and a Vegetarian Diet

2007-04-24T18:25:38Z

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/on-cancer-and-a-vegetaria_b_46661.html

Thought provoking. Kathy Freston's article is worth reading. The "China Project" she mentions presents data that the carcinogenic nutrient in meat is protein, rather than fat, and animal products both cause and fuel cancer and other deadly diseases. And, here's another interesting point - "About 70 percent of chickens in the U.S. are fed arsenic (to promote growth, stave off disease, etc.), a practice banned in the EU; that's right--arsenic!?" See the link above for the full story and links to further information

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies

INSIGHTFUL workshops

2007-04-19T03:03:24Z

hey all,
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You can IM chat, post images, share resources, build communities ...
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posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies

Distilled water or NO ?

2007-04-04T05:26:03Z

My friend is debating against distilled water due to their own experience with bad teeth while drinking it. I, in no way, doubt their experience but simply disagree that the distilled water alone was the cause. If this can be proven then, of course, folks should be made aware of it. Has any new scientific evidence come out against distilled water that I'm not aware of?

One reason folks drink distilled water is to stay away from fluoridated water. Darlene Sherrell tells her story of being sick due to water fluoridation http://www.rvi.net/~fluoride/s23.htm

Question # 23: "Does fluoride inhibit the activity of enzymes in humans?"

"...Yes, Fluoride poisons enzymes. All the chemical reactions necessary to the life and function of the body depend on enzymes. Continuous depression of enzyme activity by fluorides produces alterations of function and symptoms of disease. Professor Hugo Theorell, Nobel Prize winner, (Medical Nobel Inst. Biochemist, Dept. of Communication to Royal Medical Board, Sweden, Mar. 1, 1958) based his opposition to fluoridation on the fact that fluoride is an established enzyme poison and potent inhibitor of many enzyme systems. His research, together with that of others in the Nobel Institute, had much to do with the unanimous ruling of Sweden's Supreme Administrative Court, Dec. 1961, that fluoridation of water supplies was not permissible under the "Swedish Health Act." (See 23-1: "Fluoride Poisons Enzymes," by Harvey Petraborg, M.D., 9/6/64). http://www.fluoridedebate.com/question23.html

Anyway, folks keep quoting Mercola.com to prove their case against distilled water -

I sent mercola.com an e-mail a few years ago with no response. Here it is...

"I am very concerned about the information on these three web pages on your site

http://www.mercola.com/article/water/distilled_water.htm
http://www.mercola.com/2002/may/8/distilled_water.htm#
http://www.mercola.com/article/water/distilled_water_2.htm

I have just spoken to a water expert at awwa.org I asked about this quote from mercola "Fasting using distilled water can be dangerous because of the rapid loss of electrolytes (sodium, potassium, chloride) and trace minerals like magnesium, deficiencies of which can cause heart beat irregularities and high blood pressure. Cooking foods in distilled water pulls the minerals out of them and lowers their nutrient value."

- He explained to me that it is only a theory & has never been proven. He went on to say that this does not make sense because the human body works in reverse of this theory. We absorb what we eat or drink not the reverse as is suggested here. He said that it did come up as a theory from a doctor that fasting & drinking distilled water could deplete the body of minerals but, still no proof of this ever happening to date... only a theory.

I spoke with the EPA to find out the truth one way or the other & they sent me to the FDA & they have no record of distilled water being dangerous documented. I've spoken with water experts from around the country & they ALL tell me that this is only a theory. One does not need to be a health fanatic to want to know the truth on this issue. Many of my friends drink distilled water to steer away from the over dosage of water fluoridation. Distilled water is one of the best and cheapest of only a few ways to avoid fluoride poisoning at this time. Please provide me with a peer-reviewed study proving these theories or please take these pages down before more people get poisoned by fluoridation for fear of drinking distilled water. Note that I have no affiliation with any distiller company or water service whatsoever.

Here are some of my findings on this so far -

"Your question as to whether distilled water leaches minerals out of the body reflects another persistent myth. While pure water helps to remove minerals from the body that cells have eliminated or not used, it does not "leach" out minerals that have become part of your body's cell structure. Neither does distilled water cause your teeth to deteriorate, a false claim made by a filter manufacturer looking to boost sales. As far as acidity goes, distilled water is close to a neutral pH and has no effect on the body’s acid/base balance.

I hope I've set your mind at ease. Distilled water not only isn't dangerous, it’s the purest form of water. It’s also the kind of water I drink." ~ Dr. Andrew Weil
http://www.drweil.com/app/cda/drw_cda.html-command=TodayQA-pt=Question-questionId=21181

* "Does distilled water leach minerals from our body?

- "No, in fact, just the opposite has been found to occur in cellular research studies. It is a mistaken belief that drinking pure distilled water reduces valuable minerals from living human tissues. If inorganic minerals (and other substances like chlorine, heavy metals, bacteria, etc.) are removed from tapwater, by converting it into pure distilled water, the result is improved absorption of all nutrients, including minerals, and improved elimination of wastes at the cellular level." http://www.nutriteam.com/distil.htm

There is no documented peer-reviewed science that supports the claim that distilled water is to blame for any mineral depletion in the human body."

"Distilled Water Myths" -
http://www.durastill.com/myths.html

http://www.myodynamics.com/articles/distilledwater.html

;

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 12 replies

This is BIG

2007-03-22T02:46:02Z

Our rights to make choices about food, our health , everything is at stake and not just in the US, the World.

Please watch Aaron Russo's film " America Freedom to Fascism" which he has uploaded to google so everyone can watch for free.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4312730277175242198&q=

And visit the website at http://www.freedomtofascism.com

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies

New studies in England on drug use and laws have interesting implications......

2007-03-16T22:53:39Z

Will a New Study Force Changes in Drug Law?
By Bruce Mirken, AlterNet
Posted on March 15, 2007, Printed on March 16, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/49159/

On March 8, a high-powered British commission recommended tossing that country's law on illegal drugs onto the scrap heap and starting over again. Given that the U.S. Controlled Substances Act parallels the British Misuse of Drugs Act in important ways, the suggestion deserves attention in America as well.

Indeed, it would be a fine start if Americans could simply begin the sort of rational, thoughtful debate on drug policy that the British seem to be having. If we could manage such a thing, we might start changing illogical and unscientific laws that now lead to more U.S. arrests for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined.

The RSA Commission on Illegal Drugs, Communities and Public Policy, was convened by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, a respected think tank with a 250-year history. After two years of research, this panel of experts and laypeople came to a number of conclusions so sensible and so obvious that it's astonishing how consistently our elected leaders have avoided confronting them. In particular:

* The notion of a drug-free society is "almost certainly a chimera. ... People have always used substances to change the way they see the world and how they feel, and there is every reason to think they always will." Therefore, "[t]he main aim of public policy should be to reduce the amount of harms that drugs cause." A policy based on total prohibition "is bound to fail."

* The concept of "drugs" should include tobacco and alcohol. "Indeed, in their different ways, alcohol and tobacco cause far more harm than illegal drugs." These substances should be brought into a unified regulatory framework "capable of treating substances according to the harm they cause."

* The heart of this new regulatory framework must be an index of substance-related harms. "The index should be based on the best available evidence and should be able to be modified in light of new evidence."

* We need a new way of evaluating the efficacy of drug policies. "In our view, the success of drugs policy should be measured not in terms of the amounts of drugs seized or in the number of dealers imprisoned, but in terms of the amount of harms reduced."

As an example of the sort of harms index they envision, the RSA Commission points to an index developed by a pair of British scientists, David Nutt and Colin Blakemore, and published in a House of Commons report last year.

Based on scientific evaluations of physical harms (e.g., acute and chronic toxicity), likelihood of dependence, and social harms (including damage done to others, health care costs, etc.), Nutt and Blakemore ranked 20 different classes of drugs, both legal and illegal. Not surprisingly, heroin was at the top of the harm scale, followed by cocaine and barbiturates. Alcohol and tobacco were rated as significantly more harmful than marijuana and several other illegal substances.

While not specifically endorsing the Nutt/Blakemore index, the RSA Commission clearly considered these rankings a good example of what they have in mind, using them as a starting point for illustrations of how such an index might translate into law. Marijuana, they wrote, "should continue to be controlled. But its position on the harms index suggests that the form this control takes might have to correspond far more closely with the way in which alcohol and tobacco are regulated."

Both the United States and Britain now have drug laws that rank drugs into a series of classifications. The problem -- well, at least one problem -- is that these classifications have little connection to what the science actually tells us about the dangers (or lack thereof) of different substances. Britain's version, the commission noted, "is driven more by 'moral panic' than a practical desire to reduce harm. ... It sends people to prison who should not be there. It forces people into treatment who do not need it (while, in effect, denying treatment to people who do need it)."

And Britain's law is, on at least one key point, far more rational than the U.S. Controlled Substances Act. The British classify marijuana in the lowest of three classes of illicit drugs -- still illegal, but treated as less dangerous than cocaine, heroin or methamphetamine. Simple possession, without aggravating circumstances, is generally a "nonarrestable" offense.

Our CSA ranks marijuana in Schedule I, the worst class of drugs -- considered not only to be at high risk of abuse but also to be unsafe for use even under medical supervision -- along with heroin and LSD. Amazingly, cocaine and meth are in Schedule II -- considered acceptable for use under medical supervision. That such a ranking is insane should not need to be stated.

There are plenty of specifics in the RSA report about which reasonable people can disagree. But the important thing is not what they say about any specific drug -- and indeed, the report is careful not to advocate specific legal changes for particular drugs. What's important is that it suggests a framework that's far more rational than what now exists in the United States, Britain and most other countries: A reality-based approach rooted in sound science, focusing on how to reduce harm.

Even more encouraging is the generally level-headed reaction thus far. Some commentators are arguing with parts of the report and disagreeing with some suggestions, but even critics seem to be acknowledging that the RSA has raised important issues that need serious discussion.

As a commentary in the March 9 edition of the London paper the Mirror put it, "Hasn't the time now come to hold a public debate on whether our current drug prohibition is working any better than the alcohol prohibition of Al Capone's day? Aren't we now adult enough to discuss whether a legally regulated drug trade would work better than our gangster-run market? We think we are."

Sadly, it's hard to imagine such a rational discussion taking place on the national stage in the United States. Meanwhile, in the time it took you to read this, 12 Americans were arrested on marijuana charges.

Bruce Mirken is communications director for the Marijuana Policy Project.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/49159/

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies

Lead-laden lunchboxes OK'd by government

2007-02-20T00:55:50Z

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/02/18/lunchbox.lead.ap/

Government scientists didn't tell the public that one in five of the 60 vinyl lunch boxes they tested contained lead. Thanks to the Associated Press for obtaining this information through the Freedom of Information Act and making it public.

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 1 reply

Slow Poisoning of US and Canada with MSG

2007-02-01T23:06:46Z

This was taken from a post I read on the Elders of the 7 New Tribes tribe.......

Slow Poisoning of US and Canada with MSG
By Rebeca Davis

I wondered if there could be an actual chemical causing the massive obesity epidemic, so did a friend of mine, John Erb.

He was a research assistant at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada and spent years working for the government.

He made an amazing discovery while going through scientific journals for a book he was writing called The Slow Poisoning of America. In hundreds of studies around the world, scientists were creating obese mice and rats to use in diet or diabetes test studies.

No strain of rat or mice is naturally obese, so the scientists have to create them. They make these morbidly obese creatures by injecting them with MSG when they are first born. The MSG triples the amount of insulin the pancreas creates, causing rats (and humans?) to become obese they even have a title for the race of fat rodents they create: "MSG- Treated Rats" MSG?

I was shocked too. I went to my kitchen, checking the cupboards and the fridge. MSG was in everything! The Campbell's soups, the Hostess Doritos, the Lays flavored potato chips, Top Ramen, Betty Crocker Hamburger Helper, Heinz canned gravy, Swanson frozen prepared meals, Kraft salad dressings, especially the 'healthy low fat' ones. The items that didn't have MSG had something called Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein, which is just another name for Monosodium Glutamate. It was shocking to see just how many of the foods we feed our children everyday are filled with this stuff. They hide MSG under many different names in order to fool those who catch on.
But it didn't stop there....
READ MORE...
When our family went out to eat, we started asking at the restaurants what menu items had MSG. Many employees, even the managers, swore they didn't use MSG. But when we ask for the ingredient list which they grudgingly provided, sure enough MSG and Hydrolyzed Vegetable Protein were everywhere. Burger King, McDonalds, Wendy's, Taco Bell, every restaurant, even the sit down ones like TGIF, Chilis', Applebees and Denny's use MSG in abundance. Kentucky Fried Chicken seemed to be the WORST offender: MSG as in every chicken dish, salad dressing and gravy. No wonder I loved to eat that coating on the skin, their secret spice was MSG!
So why is MSG in so may of the foods we eat? Is it a preservative or a vitamin? Not according to my friend John. In the book he wrote, an expose of the food additive industry called The Slow Poisoning of America, www.spofamerica.com/ , he said that MSG is added to food for the addictive effect it has on the human body. Even the propaganda website sponsored by the food manufacturers lobby group supporting MSG at: www.msgfacts.com/facts/msgfact12.html explains that the reason they add it to food is to make people eat more.
A study of elderly people showed that people eat more of the foods that it is added to. The Glutamate Association lobby group says eating more benefits the elderly, but what does it do to the rest of us?

'Betcha can't eat just one', takes on a whole new meaning where MSG is concerned! And we wonder why the nation is overweight?

The MSG manufacturers themselves admit that it addicts people to their products. It makes people choose their product over others, and makes people eat more of it than they would if MSG wasn't added. Not only is MSG scientifically proven to cause obesity, it is an addictive substance!
Since its introduction into the American food supply fifty years ago, MSG has been added in larger and larger doses to the prepackaged meals, soups, snacks and fast foods we are tempted to eat everyday.

The FDA has set no limits on how much of it can be added to food. They claim it's safe to eat in any amount. How can they claim it is safe when there are hundreds of scientific studies with titles like these?

The monosodium glutamate (MSG) obese rat as a model for the study of exercise in obesity. Gobatto CA, Mello MA, Souza CT, Ribeiro IA. Res Commun Mol Pathol Pharmacol. 2002 Adrenalectomy abolishes the food-induced hypothalamic serotonin release in both normal and monosodium glutamate-obese rats. Guimaraes RB, Telles MM, Coelho VB, Mori RC, Nascimento CM, Ribeiro Brain Res Bull. 2002 Aug

Obesity induced monosodium glutamate treatment in spontaneously hypertensive rats: an animal model of multiple risk factors. Yamamoto M, Iino K, Ichikawa K, Shinohara N, Yoshinari Fujishima Hypertens Res. 1998 Mar Hypothalamic lesion induced by injection of monosodium glutamate in suckling period and subsequent development of obesity. Tanaka K, Shimada M, Nakao K, Kusunoki Exp Neurol. 1978 Oct.

Yes, that last study was not a typo, it WAS written in 1978.
Both the medical research community and food "manufacturers" have known MSG's side effects for decades! Many more studies mentioned in John Erb's book link MSG to Diabetes, Migraines and headaches, Autism, ADHD and even Alzheimer's. But what can we do to stop the food manufactures from dumping fattening and addictive MSG into our food supply and causing the obesity epidemic we now see? Even as you read this, George W. Bush and his corporate supporters are pushing a Bill through Congress. Called the "Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act" also known as the "Cheeseburger Bill "this sweeping law bans anyone from suing food manufacturers, sellers and distributors. Even if it comes out that they purposely added an addictive chemical to their foods." Read about it for yourself at:
www.realcities.com/mld/krwa...58081.htm
"Last month the House of Representatives passed the "Personal Responsibility in Food Consumption Act" to protect the food and beverage industry from civil lawsuits. Under the measure, known as the "Cheeseburger Bill," people who buy food or drinks couldn't sue the companies that made them, the stores that sold them or the restaurants that served them if they got fat from the products, so long as the products met existing laws. The Senate is expected to take up a similar bill later this year."

The Bill has already been rushed through the House of Representatives, and is due for the same rubber stamp at Senate level. It is important that Bush and his corporate supporters get it through before the media lets everyone know about MSG, the intentional Nicotine for food.

Several months ago, John Erb took his book and his concerns to one of the highest government health officials in Canada. While sitting in the Government office, the official told him "Sure I know how bad MSG is, I wouldn't touch the stuff!" But this top-level government official refused to tell the public what he knew. The big media doesn't want to tell the public either, fearing legal issues with their advertisers. It seems that the fallout on the fast food industry may hurt their profit margin.

So what do we do? The food producers and restaurants have been addicting us to their products for years, and now we are paying the price for it. Our children should not be cursed with obesity caused by an addictive food additive. But what can I do about it? I'm just one voice, what can I do to stop the poisoning of our children, while guys like Bush are insuring financial protection for the industry that is poisoning us.
I for one am doing something about it. I am sending this email out to everyone I know in an attempt to show you the truth that the corporate owned politicians and media won't tell you. The best way you can help save yourself and your children from this drug-induced epidemic, is to forward this email to everyone. With any luck, it will circle the globe before Bush can pass the Bill protecting those who poisoned us. The food industry learned a lot from the tobacco industry. Imagine if big tobacco had a bill like this in place before someone blew the whistle on Nicotine? Blow the whistle on MSG. If you are one of the few who can still believe that MSG is good for us, and you don't believe what John Erb has to say, see for yourself. Go to the National Library of Medicine, at www.pubmed.com/. Type in the words "MSG Obese", and read a few of the 115 medical studies that appear.
We do not want to be rats in one giant experiment, and we do not approve of food that makes us into a nation of obese, lethargic, addicted sheep, waiting for the slaughter. With your help we can put an end to this, and stop the Slow Poisoning of America.
Let's save our children says (John Erb) ...

Have a Balanced Day!
Related article:
Free Documentary Reveals Government and Industry Collusion to Hide Dangers in Our Food
www.WantToKnow.info/healthvi...ureoffood
The food you eat may not be what you think it is. The Future of Food is an excellent documentary which shows large-scale collusion between government regulatory agencies and corporations producing genetically modified foods. The result is that the majority of the corn and soy supply in the United States is genetically modified (GM), yet the public is not even aware of this, much less of the dangers of GM food. Engaging interviews with farmers, scientists, and industry insiders reveal the great extent to which the manufacture of the food on your plate is being patented and controlled by corporations with little regard to the health implications for us or for future generations. To view this excellent health documentary on Google Video (90 minutes): video.google.com/videoplay - If the above link fails, click here. For an abundance of reliable, verifiable information suggesting a major cover-up by government health agencies and powerful business interests and what you can do about it, visit our Health Information Center. For an eye-opening summary with detailed footnotes from reliable sources on the dangers of genetically modified foods, click here. By each of us choosing to educate ourselves and to spread the word to our friends and colleagues, we can play a key role in building a brighter future for ourselves and for future generations. Recommended by Fred Burks (fredburks@earthlink.net)

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies

i gotta coupla questions

2006-11-30T16:14:16Z

the whole spinach thing..i've been reading and listening to everything i can on the subject. i am no expert on crop raising.
its terrible that people died and became ill.....

but my question is:

does the entire spinach industry have to crumble?

would cooking it kill the E-coli bacteria?

should't the federal government advise people to cook the spinach, the way you should cook raw chicken to avoid salmonella?

these are questions i dont find the media answering.

any thoughts?

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 5 replies

"The Pollution Within"

2006-10-09T19:09:48Z

"The Pollution Within"
by David E. Duncan

Modern chemistry keeps insects from ravaging crops, lifts stains from carpets, and saves lives. But the ubiquity of chemicals is taking a toll. Many of the compounds absorbed by the body stay there for years—and fears about their health effects are growing.

http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0610/feature4/index.html

posted in World Food & Health Watch - 0 replies