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YVYS © oF VEN? MASSIVE PESTICIDE TOXICITY INCREASE WITH TWO CHEMICALS PRESENT IN BODY NO COTS, NO DEATHS a A study from Birmingham, England, comparing white and Asian communities, has found that 30 per cent of white babies slept with their mothers, whilst in Asian families most (95 per cent) slept with their mothers. Cot death is vir- tually unheard of in Asia and other less-industrialised societies. Jim McKenna, Professor of Anthropology at Pomona College, Claremont, California, points out that humans in westernised societies are the only mammals whose off- spring sleep away from the mother. This is despite the fact that humans produce the most helpless and underdeveloped babies. Prof. McKenna says that babies are meant to sleep next to their mothers so that they can breastfeed at will throughout the night. Being fre- quently woken by their mother's move- ments, he suggests, may be a part of their development that helps them wake auto- matically if their breathing stops. Similar research in Hong Kong, where the incidence of cot death is 23 times lower than in the UK, echoes research which has found reduced cot-death rates in Chinese families. In both cases, mothers and babies nearly always slept together. Researchers agree that parents who smoke in bed or drink heavily should not have their children sleep in bed with them. (Source: Environment & Health News [UK], . Volume I, Issue 4, February 1996) The June 1996 edition of Science magazine has published a new study showing that some combinations of hormone-dis- rupting chemicals are much more powerful than any of the individ- ual chemicals on their own. The study shows that combina- tions of two or three common pesticides, at low levels that might be found in the environ- ment, are up to 1,600 times as powerful as any one individual pesticide by itself. One chemical, chlordane, has no ability in itself to disrupt hormones, but never- theless greatly magnifies the abil- ity of other chemicals to disrupt hormones. A combination of such chemicals and vaccines is thought by many to be the cause of Gulf War Syndrome, which has now killed several thousand people since the end of the Gulf War. The results of hormone-related imbal- ances in the body are discussed in more detail in the "Hormone Heresy” article in this latest issue of NEXUS. (Source: Green Left Weekly, 3 July 1996) by 10 per cent in industrialised countries, in less-industrialised countries it has risen 67 per cent! Professor Peto of Oxford University pre- dicts that, if current trends continue, smok- ing will cause 10 million deaths per year in 30 years’ time. According to the trends, deaths in the industrialised world would tise from two million to three million deaths per year, whilst deaths in less-indus- trialised countries would rise from one mil- lion to seven million. A BAT spokesperson dismissed as “fan- ciful” the suggestion that their company played any role in increasing tobacco usage. (Sources: British Medical Journal { 1995] 311:7016:1321; Environment & Health News [UK], Volume I, Issue 4, February 1996) GLOBAL TOBACCO SALES JUMP Rising tobacco sales in less-industri- alised countries have boosted the profits of tobacco giant BAT Industries which sold nearly 500 billion cigarettes worldwide during the first nine months of 1995. Whilst cigarette consumption has fallen LUNAR POWER RIPPLES EARTH The Moon generates more power inside the Earth than the output of all Britain's power stations put together, according to researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, USA. Using satellite mea- surements, they have calculated the effects of the constant stretching of the Earth by forces that also produce the ocean tides. The effects of the gravitational pull of the Moon, and, less so, the Sun, are obvious in daily ocean tides. But the forces are also strong enough to dis- tort the Earth itself. The Moon creates a pair of bulges—typically about 30 centime- tres high—on opposite sides of the Earth, and these ripple round the Earth each day as it rotates. (Source: New Scientist, 15 June 1996) 6 « NEXUS Oo Sle AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1996