Nexus - 0702 - New Times Magazine-pages

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POISONOUS PRODUCTS, DECEPTIVE LABELS POISONOUS PRODUCTS, DECEPTIVE LABELS Most chemicals found in everyday household products are inadequately labelled as to their chemistry and their toxic side-effects on health and the environment. Part 1 of 2 e live surrounded by caustic waste, and the situation is getting worse. The "Better Living Through Chemistry" slogan was created to acclimatise us to synthetic, poisonous chemicals, but it is debatable whether our living is indeed better. According to the Chemical Abstracts Service (the comput- erised registry of the American Chemical Society), more than four million different chem- icals are in our environment, and the number of chemicals increases by a quarter of a mil - lion each year. Since the 1980s, over 400 billion pounds of toxins per year have been produced. Most of the chemicals surrounding us are toxic. We hear the word "toxic" so often that it has lost its meaning. But "toxic" means "poisonous". Anything labelled "Poison" is legally defined as "capable of destroying life".' Many different types of poisons surround us daily: pesticides, preservatives, plastics, dyes, solvents and more. Even well-informed consumers don't realise how dangerous chemicals actually are. For instance, we may know enough to avoid pesticides, but how many people are aware that pesticides are in common household soaps? And that products from the health food store labelled "envi- ronmentally safe" and "biodegradable" can be lethal to humans? This is the story of how chemicals affect us, how they are mislabelled, what we can do to avoid them, and what we can use instead. It is only recently that chemicals have occupied such a significant role in our lives. During World War II, thousands of chemicals were synthesised and manufactured for use in combat, many of them intended as ingredients of nerve gas. After the war ended, industry—stuck with a surplus of waste (euphemistically referred to as "product")—had to find peacetime uses for these chemicals. By creating a mass market use for them, industry was able to eliminate the expense and danger of discarding the toxic waste, and at the same time make a profit. Cleaning products, laundry and dishwashing detergents, person- al hygiene products, disinfectants, foods and medicines, things we use every day were all "improved" by the addition of poisonous chemicals. Neurotoxins became pesticides, sol- vents were now food flavouring, and so on. Our government and industry are unrelenting in their efforts to convince the public that chemicals are both desirable and necessary. One example is the insidious way in which fluoride was introduced into the marketplace—which unfortunately is typical for many chemicals. Touted as a great preventer of dental cavities, fluoride was created as an ingre- dient essential for manufacturing atomic bombs during World War II. It is also a byprod- uct of the aluminium and pesticide industries. Farms near the fluoride manufacturing plants suffered from blighted, burned crops and the animals became sick. Dangerously high concentrations of fluoride were measured in the bloodstreams of the workers, who were also plagued by vomiting and diarrhoea when they ate the produce they picked from the farms. Secret tests carried out by the United States Government showed that fluoride was extremely harmful. Among other damage, it caused birth defects and injury to the central nervous system, and it mottled and destroyed teeth rather than preserved them. Reporters Joel Griffiths and Chris Bryson write: "Much of the original proof that fluo- ride is safe for humans in low doses was generated by A-bomb program scientists who had been secretly ordered [by the US Government] to provide ‘evidence useful in litiga- tion’ against defence contractors for fluoride injury to citizens."* In Fluoride, the Aging Factor,’ biochemist John Yiamouyiannis describes the devastat- ing effects of fluoride on people all over the world. In cities all across the United States, by Nina Silver, PhD © 1999 190 Kripplebush Road Stone Ridge, NY 12484, USA Tel: +1 (914) 687 0963 E-mail: nina@bestweb.net 190 Kripplebush Road Stone Ridge, NY 12484, USA Tel: +1 (914) 687 0963 E-mail: nina@bestweb.net NEXUS 43 IMMENSE INCREASE IN ILLNESS DUE TO TOXIC CHEMICALS by Nina Silver, PhD © 1999 FEBRUARY — MARCH 2000