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Measuring Pollution In Humans
CHaN_316 writes "Scientists have begun measuring pollutants in our body and the results sound like a chemical clean-up site. They've found things such as flame retardants, chemicals derived from DDTs, mercury, uranium, cotinine, and many more. The concern is a lot of this stuff is ending up in mother's milk. But hey, at least in the event of spontaneous combustion, I'll be partially protected."
It all comes from junkfood
Drink more Water.
And they told me I'd have to have a private lab do it for me - and pay dearly for it! Why the hell won't they test my drinking water without my having to pay for it? Isn't delivering water that's reasonably free of contaminants part of their responsibility?
Wow are we in the wrong business.
What kind of scam is that for blood and possibly urine workups?
You try to be healthy and eat "natural" foods, and this is what happens.
Few of the estimated 75,000 chemicals found in the United States have been tested for their health effects
Where did they get this number? A significant portion of those appear to be in my breakfast cereal, judging by the momumental ingredients list.
report that bodies are taking up to 10% longer to decompose than they used to from all the BHA and BHT added to preserve freshness.
Live fast, eat a lot of antioxidant ladden potato chips, leave a durable, good looking (if somewhat corpulent) corpse.
Gives you more time for a clean dehydration as well, so you can make that trip to Orion in all your leathery splendor.
KFG
Milloy noted that despite all the chemicals, the overall U.S. population is living longer and healthier.
I do not know about the U.S., but things are different in Germany.
[QUOTE]
Overweight & Diabetes in Germany Due to overweight, obesity and inactive lifestyles, the number of people with diabetes is set to double from five million to 10 million in Germany in the next 10 years, doctors warned at a meeting of the German Society for Internal Medicine in Wiesbaden this week. Most worrying is the number of young people who are developing type 2 diabetes because of obesity. Unlike type 1 diabetes - an autoimmune disease that usually develops in children or young adults - type 2 diabetes is linked to obesity and lifestyle, and has traditionally been seen in mainly middle-aged and older adults.
[UNQUOTE] ( c.f. here )
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Better make sure they do some dihydrogen monoxide scanning too... most places don't even think about checking for that stuff. Do you know how many people die as a result of that stuff each year? It's ridiculous.
I'm rather flammable and I burn quite well, you insensitive clod!
Why, only today did I learn that flammable and inflammable meant the same thing!
Edward@Tomato - /home/Edward/ man woman
man: no entry for woman in the manual.
"Qua!?"
A recent article in Science News (a journal) described how one class of flame retardants called PBDEs are more common in the US than in Europe and how blood levels in Americans are on average 10 times higher. It also says there may be a link to ADD, which is also more common in the US. Maybe your next futon should be an organic one?
Maybe Agent Smith was right after all...
Measuring pollution in humans? Bad idea. I mean, imagine the confusion, "so bob, how's the weather today?"
"Well, it's not good. Three, maybe four humans and there's no wind to blow them out to sea."
"You sick, sick man...."
Create a scandal, thats the only way to get action :D
Since we are all living longer than any generation before us why would I bother? I mean, I might be exposed to more chemicals than people during the middleages but they also died from a simple cold so whats the big issue? I COULD stop smoking though and go for a walk in the park from time to time. That would gain me another 10years...wouldnt it? Naah! Not now! Everquest is waiting... ;-)
cu,
Lispy
What your asking for is oversight, and audit... and frankly I agree with them. If you want to audit the quality of their work, you should pay for it. Also, I would think you'd want an independent 3rd party doing the work anyway. I do disagree with them about it costing dearly, I have a friend who works in a lab that does 'walk up' business on water, food and so forth and I wanna say, depending on the subject matter, its less then $100. If that is too steep (reasonable to me if trusting my water was important) I'm sure you could google your way to a reasonable home kit online.
Otherwise, I recommend buying bottled water in bulk or getting one of those 5 gallon dispensers.
Thank you, but I would rather enjoy my twinkie, than knowing what goes into it. Glass of Mad Cow Chocolate Milk.
Well you have to wonder if any preservatives have got into peoples bodies and make them live longer
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Make sure any program/treatment promising detoxification isn't just a come-on or quackery or worse like Scientology in drag peddling Elronics to firefighters. (Nothing wrong with a little bit of sauna, but all that Niacin can cause liver damage.)
Make sure that the wonderful treatment to rid your body of harmful dangerous chemicals isn't even more dangerous.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
To reduce pesticides in fruits that you eat the rind (like apples), wash them with water and *soap*. Just water won't work because pesticides are oily (not soluble in water), to avoid being washed by the rain.
After that, wash well just with water (and leave them for a while in water before that if you wan't) to remove all the soap. Soap can also harm your health.
They can say whatever they want, but is it really going to change anything? Is everyone going too stop illegal dumping, and cover used technology with cement, because it's harming us? For example, look at cars. They're pumping out tonnes of toxic fumes, but is anyone doing anything about it? No. Is anyone going to do anything about it? No.
It's all about the money.
But hey, at least in the event of spontaneous combustion, I'll be partially protected.
Ummm, which part exactly...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
Not that anything could be done, considering how 'precious' human life is.
Blar.
Soon, we will start mining each other.
Man, stepping off the porch and taking a deep breath in the morning will give you cancer in this country. Unless you live out in the boondocks somewhere, in which case, the mudslide will be along shortly.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
When you say 'county', I'm assuming you were refering to your county's health department, or equivalent. If so, then to answer your question, no it is not. The only way they will step in is if there is major contamination.
Concerns involving the purity of drinking water should be addressed to your water department. But even then, the standards they have to meet are not very strict, and they will probably tell you the same thing.
As for me, I am a firm believer that no tap water is safe for human consumption, so I've decided to purify drinking water at home. Food tastes much better when cooked in clean water.
If you wan't real antioxidants (that won't harm you otherway giving you cancer ;) you should try Vitamins C, E, and green tea.
Unfortunately, it is rather difficult to say what will happen in the long term.
With such chemicals like DDT, which continues to remain at high levels in the surrounding environment despite having been banned in 1970. I wrote a couple papers on the role of DDT in the decline of the Californian Condor, and it is really a scary chemical.
Some scientists are even beginning to look at a link between DDT levels and breast cancer, as DDT and several other pesticides, which are absorbed and stored long-term in fat, also are capable of causing hormonal changes by acting much like estrogen. The unnatural changes caused by the continuing presence and buildup of DDT in mammary tissue could understandably be a large factor in the rising occurence of breast cancer. It could also have some particularly negative affect in men as well, as it acts as a blocker to the normal male hormones.
And that is just one of the chemicals commonly found in the body, as described in the article...
original url (with photo and links). toxins.ap
p t&urlID=8625157&partnerID=2012
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/12/25/internal
easy to read/print version:
http://printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=c
We're worried that these things might end up in the mother's milk.
O, the humanity.
Pray tell, if it ends up in the mother's milk, then don't you think it'll get into the baby without going through the mother's breast first?
That's like saying: "Aha. Look. That woman is on fire. We need to figure out a way to keep her from burning her child."
Odds are, the child is going to catch fire, and it won't be from the mother. Maybe you should figure out why she's on fire. It ain't spontaneous combustion. Whatever caused her to combust is going to cause the baby to combust, too. Get her (and the baby) out of the burning house.
You know. Solve the problem, not the symptom.
fifth sigma, inc.
As far as a solution - how to clean yourself up?? It may be too late for that; water is contaminated, air is contaminated, food is contaminated --- time to set up that vacuum-pod in some sort of earth orbit....
...we are from the government - we are here to help...
I am a chemist, and I am certain that there is no content of value in this article. We have analytical techniques that can detect chemicals at parts per trillion or less. Pointing out that we can find traces of the breakdown products of nicotine, flame retardents, DDT, etc is meaningless unless you actually say:
1: How much
2: How toxic it is
The truth is, you are a thousand times more likely to die driving to the store to buy your fruits and veges than you are to die from the trace amounts of pesticides on the food. Everything you eat contains hundreds of toxic chemicals in some amount. Every drop of sea water contains 50 BILLION gold atoms, for perspective. Do people farm the ocean for gold?
Do not let chemical scare-stories alarm you. 99% of them are full of it.
Are you trying to karma whore off the text of the blurb? Let me know how that works out.
Hammer of Truth
There is a great temptation to see the uptake of chemicals into the body from the environment as a relatively new thing, and the article's mention of Rachel Carsons' 1962 book reinforces that perception. Isn't it safe to assume, though, that ever since Man mastered fire, we have been breathing in chemicals of one sort or another released by combustion? What did ancient man breathe in sitting around the yurt after a long day's mastadon hunting? There are also plants in our food chain that produce their own insecticides. In what quantity would those be found in the tissues of great-great-great-great-grandad? I think it would be more interesting if they funded a comparison of chemicals found in mummies, etc. with the chemicals found in humans now and then showed the change over time.
Bureaucracy loves company.
that taking in this shit from a young age produces anti-bodies which make you immune.
example:
smoke from about the age of 6, and then your body will produce anti-bodies which will make you immune to cancer!
atleast... this is what my mum told me...
How can I get into the "Charging 5 Grand to Collect Body Fluids" business?
Lifespan and quality of life has exploded in the past 100 years, and this dude is worried about some small concentrations of the stuff that has allowed this in his body?
Now what is he going to do?
Maybe I should get into the 50 Grand/pop "Home Environment Purification" business.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
Don't tell the terrorists that there might tbe uranium in their body...They might try to blow themselves up...ohh wait they do that anyways...
I am a firm believer that no tap water is safe for human consumption
I mostly believe the opposite. Remember that before the invention of tap water, people drank out of rivers and streams that ran over lead and mercury deposits and had animals (and people) shitting in them. We can tolerate a good deal of crud in the stuff we consume.
That's not to say that pure water isn't preferred, but I wouldn't go as far as to say that tap water is unfit for human consumption altogether.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
I didn't know there was a unit of measurment for pollution. Apparently it is the Human (Hm? Hu?)
Singapore's tap water is safe for consumption.
Be kind. There are too many mean people out there already.
Washing up liquid! Why do folk insist on leaving these chemicals on food utensils? Do we really have to beat sense into them or serve them food with large doses of added "lemon fresh -squeaky clean" before it penetrates their thick skulls?
a sh liqu.htm
http://www.nielsenchemicals.com/datashts/dshy_w
11. TOXICOLOGICAL INFORMATION:
MEDICAL SYMPTOMS:
EYES AND MUCOUS MEMBRANES. Irritation of eyes and mucous membranes. DIGESTIVE SYSTEM. Gastrointestinal symptoms, including upset stomach. MOUTH AND THROAT. Irritation of mouth and throat.
4. FIRST AID MEASURES:
INHALATION:
Not relevant.
INGESTION:
Rinse mouth thoroughly. DO NOT INDUCE VOMITING! Get medical attention.
SKIN:
Wash off with water.
EYES:
Promptly wash eyes with plenty of water while lifting the eye lids. Continue to rinse for at least 15 minutes. Get medical attention if any discomfort continues.
Besides, have you ever been given a mug of tea by someone who assumed that they need not rinse the mug of any detergent? It's undrinkable! Yuk!
Stay safe: Keep window lickers out of the kitchen!
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
So far it's not working out. ;-)
A blog like any other.
Don't know why they didn't mentioned that but the water you drink (except bottle water) contains chlorine. Chlorine is a chemmical that was even used as poison on WW I.
To avoid chlorine on your drinking (and cooking) water, use a chlorine filter like this
Just you wait, as these tests become cheaper and easier, a whole new round of law suits will ensue.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
"SOLYENT GREEN IS PEOPLE" - a green liquid (Reference: Charlton Heston who discovers in SOLYENT GREEN that the food supply for Earth is actually made from corpses).
Reference found thanks to http://www.ixquick.com from http://www.freeent.com/glossary.html
My hyperlinks aren't worth the paper they're printed on.
Michigan counties specifically state they are not responsible for homeowners water quality *at all*.
They provide lab services at a reasonable ($15, now $60 going up fast) expense.
I am convinced that local governments are forcing the adoption of public water (and sewer) sources. Their cut is getting paid to "manage" and build them. I define *force* as waiting until there is a serious contamination issue before reacting, but by then too late for the aquifer.
Public water systems simply stick a pipe into, say, lake michigan, sucking up old debris and all, and dump chlorine in. In Chicagoland, a 24" pipe was installed into the suburbs directly from lake michigan.
In my rural area, there a couple of farmers, but over 11k acres of wetland feeding the lakes and aquifers, but I still worry about contamination. I worry about the uninformed local governments even more.
I get your point, but maybe you aren't remembering how the whole nursing scene works? During the first, oh, six months of life, babies that are breastfed basically get all their nourishment from mom. They're not eating fish themselves, no. And their nervous system isn't a fully-developed adult one at that time, it's developing -- so mercury, say, can do more damage to them.
(And I don't know -- in the world of US politics today, isn't this a way to keep the house from burning? A few years ago, when environmentalists brought a fish from a badly polluted, mercury-heavy river to one of our esteemed governors, the guy ate the fish at a press conference -- that'll show those environuts, right? Boy, we really scored a symbolic victory there.... In a climate like that, where you gonna start? With the population that's immediately vulnerable, maybe. Babies are vulnerable to the short-sighted decisions we make. People can't sniff and dismiss babies in quite the same offhand way they do every other attempt to wake them up -- "Spotted Owl hugger" doesn't quite do the trick.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Mercury is the 2nd most toxic element. It is in 70% of American's teeth. If you want to understand why America is so messed up, this may have alot to do with it. The first thing mercury does is affect a person's neuropsychology. Sky high levels of mercury in the brain is a common demnominator of serial killers. There is a direct demographic link between levels of heavy metals in a county and its crime rate.
I've had mercury poisoning from fillings, so I should know. If they don't remove those things properly, it causes massive mercury release into your body. Often they don't.
this may be true *BUT* some of there stuff is very tasty.
For example, while its certainly much more healthy to eat an apple and drink some water, or just drink real apple juice, once a month or so when I'm at the store I'll grab a snapple apple. I know its mostly sugar, however they've mixed it soooo perfectly that it actually tastes like a liquid version of biting into a perfect apple, like a nice red delicious just picked off my gramma's tree, or something...
if people would cut back from drinking juices like this all day long, and pops with high sugar etc like they are nothing, our nation's dentists would prolly go outta business, and I bet anything we'd all be a helluva lot skinnier.
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
It strikes me that perhaps the combination of chemicals to beware is that of the most common "harmful" chemicals people have absorbed, etc. with common prescription medicines. Both contain chemicals, which if in direct contact, might do a lot of harm, compared with what the prescription or absorbed chemical does in it's otherwise intended or dormant state.
stuff |
Don't you hate it when people writing articles make up their own units? Whoever heard of measuring pollution in "humans"? This is pure bunk. Most useful units are standardized and published by ISO, and "humans" sure aren't listed anywhere I can see. And anyway, what's the symbol going to be, "hm"?
Standardized units are essential when doing studies which claim repeatability. Anything less is simply not science. I shudder to think what useless arguments this will produce, when a swedish team checks their pollution readings in scandinavian humans, while an italian teams does the same in latin humans. At sufficiently high readings, the difference could be several percent! Then there are issues of hair colour and hair style, which could even change the results of the experiment years after the fact! And don't get me started on the problems every time bell bottoms get back into fashion.
If you ask me, shoddy science begins with the wrong units. And humans are definitely the wrong unit to use in this case.
IAAAC (I am an analytical chemist) who worked directly with testing water samples from municipal water treatment facilities, schools, and private clients. The Clean Water Drinking Act of 1976 mandates standards for community water suppliers, including standards for lead, iron, biologicals, copper, manganese, aluminum, nitrates, organics, chlorine, turbidity, etc. Your public water company has to have its water tested at a certified lab monthly, and if any of the parameters are out of whack, the EPA will hear about it faster than you can say "boo".
/. analytical chemist, I *highly* reccomend you get at least the lead, aluminum, and E coli numbers on your well water.
Saying your county won't pay for your water to be analyzed is a little untrue/misleading. Ask your water comany to send you results of the tests they have done. On the other hand, if you get your water from a private well, then the onus of testing IS on you. And as your
pax,
fred
on a recent business trip to Manhatten, I asked the hotel front desk about getting drinking water.
they told me that's why the glass is in my room and that the water that supplies Manhatten is potable!
my family has used water filters in Southern California since the early seventies, so drinking out of the tap has always seemed strange to me..
here in Russia, the cold water is extremely cloudy, and while taking a hot shower, the water will sometimes go brown, yuck. i either boil or purchase all my water here...
So was Marry Magdoline, but Jesus didn't go around throwing stones. Teen4Christ, but to hell with the rest???
Alar on apples. Bogus
Silicon Breast Implants Bogus
DDT Mostly Bogus
Somewhere along the way we lost our ability to actually use science and facts to evaluate things and have fallen back on a faith based consensus pseudo-science.
Remember, None of us are getting out of here alive. Life - A sexually transmitted terminal disease. Always fatal.
"Everyone's exposed to substances and there's no evidence that the low levels people are exposed to are harming anybody," said Steven Milloy, author of "Junk Science Judo: Self Defense Against Health Scares and Scams." "It's a waste of time and money that only serves to scare people."
Why do I get the feeling similar quotes were heard just before the Roman Empire fell?
Most likely it was something like, 'The lead in our drinking cups don't have any harmful side effects that we can see.'
Some health food store sell the additive BHT as an anti-oxidant. There are herbal verisons according to google.
Milloy noted that despite all the chemicals, the overall U.S. population is living longer and healthier.
Must be the preservatives in the shite we call food and formaldehyde in the cigarettes.
...who, after looking at the title, thought that they came up with a new unit for measuring pollution called "human"?
"Everything is in everything else".
The sensitivity of today's measurement techniques is stunning. But even decades ago, it was common knowledge among chemists that if you started looking at trace contaminants the results were like cleaning out your garage -- "what's THAT doing there?!".
What's interesting is whether the odds and ends are in significant quantities. When you define "significant", remember that your body is a huge detoxification machine designed to survive consuming carrion, plants full of natural insecticides, and even unchlorinated water.
It happens in marathons: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A9158-200 3Oct23?language=printer.
Fatigue or some pain-killers like ibrofprofen can distort the sense of thirst.
I suppose I could play Shakespeare with a Geiger counter.. "By the ticking of my thumbs / Something wicked this way comes"
Futhermore if you receive your water from a public water supply, every year you are supplied a summary of all the testing done. It's called a Consumer Confidence Report.
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
This is the graph for 20-54 year olds. It shows an increase as well.
In Soviet Russia, WATER pollutes YOU!
"the standards they have to meet are not very strict"
Care to elaborate?
In my duties as a grade III Alabama water operator, I find that the standards are quite strict. Is there something paticular you have in mind?
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
Uh, I don't know where to start with this....
/., let's use a software metaphor. Take a huge, complicated, C program that does something mathematical. Let's say factoring numbers (I know that doesn't need to be huge, but this is a metaphor). Now take a couple of giant functions used for pushing pixels around in a different program, give them names that the math program is using and stick them in there. What do you think the odds are that the math program is going to function more efficiently? I'd guess pretty damn low.
Okay, this is
Your body is more complicated than that by a factor that would involve some serious scientific notation. Synthetic chemicals are also extrememly complicated, and have nothing to do with the way your body works.
Most people are missing the point about this. Yeah, it probably won't seriously affect a grown person, although long-term cancer rates are never discussed in these studies. However, we know that a developing infant is much more seriously affected by the introduction of these chemicals. It's not that we don't care that the mother has these chemicals in her body, it's that the infant is going to be much more affected by them, and for the rest of it's life.
In case you lost track, that's bad.
Disclaimer: MINAA (Mummy! I'm Not An Animal!)
Blood and urine tests are often not reliable indicators of total body burden of a substance. Blood or urine levels can be low while significant (possibly toxic) amounts may be stored in various organs and visa versa.
Also, due to health and genes, different people can tolerate vastly different amounts of a toxic substance before showing symptoms or being disadvantaged.
Remember that the risks of cigarette smoking and factors contributing to heart disease have been researched for decades and are still not fully understood. To just as accurately assess the risks of all of these chemicals, or even just the chemicals that should be assessed is a massive undertaking that our society is not willing to take on. Pronouncements of levels of safety and risk are just guesses.
The bottom line is, we are all guinea pigs. Some of us will get sick and die early from some pollutants, and the rest of us won't notice.
Just from basic physics and chemistry, we know that if a chemical is anywhere around, it will be present in the environment and the human body at some concentration, so all this means is that modern analytical techniques have finally developed enough sensitivity to demonstrate what everybody with any sense knew already. The hard part is figuring out what the biological consequences of these tiny concentrations are--in most cases, the answer is likely to be somewhere between negligible and none.
It's called being a high-class Pimp.
From excellent karma to terible karma with a single +5 funny post...
The flame retardants are PCBs; but "flame retardants" has a nicer sound about it. :/
So when President Bush was saying that Iraq had WMD what he meant was the uranium in Sadam's body ... :)
man
No manual entry for
But it's OK, says the skeptical environmentalists: after all, we do not have definitive proof that all those substances are bad for you.
Never mind that cancer is on the rise (could just be demographics, right?) and that dozens of species other than humans show hormonal abnormalities correlated with the presence of manufacured chemicals (could just be parasitic infections). Why be prudent and conservative if we can increase the GNP by 0.1%?
In fact, it's probably impossible to prove at all that they are bad for you because no single substance may harm you--they may only harm you synergistically. And since you are exposed to all of them constantly, it is impossible to assign responsibility to individual chemicals. But without definitive proof that an individual chemical is harmful by itself, we wouldn't want to limit the freedom of corporations to pollute, would we?
The book "Detoxify or Die" by Sherry A. Rogers, M.D. details the tests necessary to do some of this. btw, not new, been done for at least 10 years. The people who know about this are really sick people that were lucky enough to find out about this new technology.
Sure, let's let toddlers die in flammable pajamas, the 3rd world die of malaria, because you think cancer is on the rise.
Except, the only reason cancer is on the rise is because (a) we can diagnose it better and (b) we've gotten so good at stopping the infectious diseases that used to kill everyone before they got old enough to come down with it.
But, who needs proof or rational thought when there are scary things running loose!
It's this kind of thinking that exterminated wild cats and wolves. After all - they're dangerous, right? We have to get rid of them!
Clear, Dark Skies
Glad to see there's some one around here who knows the basic principle of toxicology: poison is in the dose, not the substance.
Clear, Dark Skies
Mercury: Overplayed or Overstated?
DDT: Controls Malaria which kills over a million people per year. and is a major killer of children under 5.
Dioxin: A baddie, But was it truly necessary to evacuate people?
Asbestos: Only things I saw was people complaining about others getting money for 'exposure' while showing no detrimental health effects.
I don't read AC A human right
As for me, I am a firm believer that no tap water is safe for human consumption
in reply to all the people that follow this line of thought: tap water tends to be better drinking water than a lot of bottled waters out there, considering that city/county water boards have to deal with FDA regulations regarding water quality that a lot of bottled water companies don't.
"everything you 'know' is wrong" :-)
Please see: Snopes.com
given up using every technology they had on the odd chance that *one* of them was harmful.
And there never would have been a roman empire. Not to mention the lead poisoning thing is a theory not fact.
Clear, Dark Skies
I think you've found yourself an untapped market! ;-)
The Environmental Working Group
These are some seriously dedicated guys who do environmental research and advocacy. They also maintain several interesting projects, including:
Bill Moyers - Trade Secrets
Bill Moyers did a great film about the problem.
A Google Search For Philip Landrigan
Dr. Philip Landrigan has done extensive work on body burdens in children and has written a number of books.
Generally, it is safer to drink tap water than filtered water water in the US.
A lot of the coin op filtering stations have turned up to be very lousy on health inspections. Even some bottled water has failed inspections.
If your water goes brown, it is likely to be your plumbing, though in select cases it can be the street pipes.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Sure, people did at one time drink water from natural sources (springs, rivers, etc.) But that was then, this is now.
In recent history, we have seen an unprecedented chemical change in the Earth's environment. This is probably due to our increased dependance on chemicals. Over the last 50 years, we have added over 50,000 chemicals to every use from household cleaning to manufactoring. It should be no big surprise that these chemicals have made their way to our drinking water.
And these chemicals contribute to the pollution in humans.
As a chemist you have alreadly brainwashed yourself to ignore a lot of the problems with chemicals, just as most people who work in the nuclear industry can't see the problems even though they stare everyone in the face. An increased probability of my demise due to other people's pollution is a bad thing. Saying that we are more likely to die of something else is a poor attempt to pass the buck.
Well at least I am well lubricated.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Actually, drinking water is regulated by the EPA, not the FDA as you stated. And indeed, bottled water companies are required to submit to FDA regulations.
:)
Of course, what do you expect from an Anonymous Coward?
FYI: Bottled Water Regulation and the FDA
If your water does not appear to match what the water department says it's sending out, then there are three possibilities: it actually does, just doesn't seem to; the water company messed up; or the pipes in your house are contaminating it.
Check with a neighbor and a chemical test kit. Photocopy the relevant pages from the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics at your local college library. In the end, you may need to check with a plumber (mnow *that's* expensive!).
Good luck!
Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right
Concerns involving the purity of drinking water should be addressed to your water department. But even then, the standards they have to meet are not very strict, and they will probably tell you the same thing.
Guess it just depends ... my city brags about their water quality, sends out a detailed analysis report annually, and their literature pratically chortles over the astronomical price difference between the city water and bottled water that is no better.
It's a university town too, so I suspect that they are being reasonably accurate, or someone would call them on it ;)
Well, water you use to flush your toilet doesn't have to be sterile, does it?
When I say "are not very strict", I was meaning "are not as strict as they should be".
Perhaps Alabama has a better system than where I live.
The last time I checked, my kids weren't doing the food shopping for themselves during their habit forming years (0-5 years old).
If cute little Jimmy sits in the cart and screams for more Twinkies, here's a novel idea... Say no!
>Remember that before the invention of tap water, people drank out of rivers and streams that ran over lead and mercury deposits and had animals (and people) shitting in them
And their average life expectancy was...?
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
You've got to take into account that we've been adding stuff to the water like chlorine and flouride, which are pretty toxic substances even in small quantities and which cause thousands of cases of cancer each year. Fluoride has been rejected by the majority of europe yet us americans still drink it. It's been known to screw around with enzymes in the brain even in low quantities, not to mention how it gets concentrated in other products like sodapop and other products at the store or in fruit that's been farmed with tap water (which some places do). Chlorine is worse imo as it's linked to a lot of different diseases.
I don't drink unfiltered tap water unless I have to. I usually drink distilled, and I shower and wash with tap. Some people have bad reactions to the stuff that's in water and that's them, personally I think everyone should drink distilled ideally but some people can't afford it, plus it takes a lot of energy to make distilled water. At least filter your water for the chemicals in it to reduce the amount that's in the water.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
What contaminents would you like to see monitored more closely/have a lower MCL (maximum contaminent level). You do realize that a large percentage of our (USA) water supplies are filtered (not all ground water needs filtration). ALL public water supplies are disinfected and monitored closely. I monitor no less than 15 key parameters daily (holidays included). We perform routine bacteriological sampling monthly (analyzed by a third party lab and reported to the STATE BY THEM - to keep me honest). Every public water supply must also perform a slew of addition testing - SOC's, VOC's, radionuclides, TTHM's, lead and copper sampling, etc, etc.
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
>Remember that before the invention of tap water, people drank out of rivers and streams that ran over lead and mercury deposits and had animals (and people) shitting in them
And their life expectancy was...?
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
"These chemicals prevent thousands of deaths each year, because they might be causing tens of deaths each year."
And, no, "my kind" are the people who say that you must compare the benefits with the risks before making a decision. "My kind" are the kind of people who actually know chemistry, for example.
Clear, Dark Skies
In the US that is pure and unadulterated bullshit. There are strict federal water standards that have to be met by all municipal water departments (Safe Drinking Water Act). In fact I get a report every year from the local water department of the water quality and testing results.
I also "purify" my water via a water filter but its a taste matter. I prefer filtered tap water for cooking and coffee but I'm not concerned about the quality of the tap water.
My blog: http://jkratz.dyndns.org/~jason/blog/
"These chemicals prevent thousands of deaths each year, but we must ban them because they might be causing tens of deaths each year."
And, no, "my kind" are the people who say that you must compare the benefits with the risks before making a decision. "My kind" are the kind of people who actually know chemistry, for example.
Oh, and some cites that cancer rates are really increasing (as opposed to the cancer detection rate) might be nice.
Clear, Dark Skies
This just in! The dirt used to grow food is made from corpses! Gack!
Duh, that's why they say "Dust to Dust."
As a woman of child-bearing years, I've thought about the danger of passing on concentrated toxins to any future children through nursing. That gave me an idea: why not induce lactation in women without children to rid their bodies of toxins, both for the health of the women and for any future children? Since nursing is calorie-intensive, that could also be a way for women to lose weight. In other words, why not open a line of fat/detox farms with milking machines?
I would like to be able to test myself or the water I drink food I eat etc. Do I need a mass spectometer? It seems that chemical analysis is out of reach of most of us. Anyone heard of doityourself home chemical analysis?
I used to work in a water board lab. They would sample every watercourse they looked after over the period of a week. You had to pay to get access to the results but they were publicly available.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Unfortunately, that one is a non-starter. Asthma is an autoimmune disorder and, yeah, you would think there would be a connection between it and dirt and chemicals in the air. But the asthma rates aren't correlated with pollution. For example, the US has higher asthma rates than Mexico, but Mexico city is one of the most polluted places on earth.
Instead, asthma rates appear to be correlated with high levels of pediatric care. In other words, there is some evidence that asthma is caused by not getting enough real infections as a kid - the immune system doesn't get properly trained and starts overreacting to benign substances.
Please note I'm not saying this is a definite fact; the matter is still under considerable study.
Clear, Dark Skies
Fluoride has been rejected by the majority of europe yet us americans still drink it
So that explains the whole British Teeth Thing.
Even some bottled water has failed inspections.
A lot of bottled water is tap water.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
The sky is falling!
The sky is falling!
And now on to something else...
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
That graph shows a 10% change over a 30 year period, with an absolute change from 180/100000 to 200/100000.
Wow! It's an epidemic!
Clear, Dark Skies
"Well, water you use to flush your toilet doesn't have to be sterile, does it?"
No public water supply sterilizes their water due to the expense/impracticality of doing so but the water used to flush your toilet does have to be potable for obvious reasons.
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
I just read a few days ago (sorry, no link) about a study released this month. Some researchers studied milk teeth from toddlers in the vicinity of the Sellafield reactor in Britain. They found traces of plutonium in all 3000 teeth they tested.
But I've heard (so obviously it must be true) that we make just as much DDT as we used to, but we ship it overseas.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
It also affects quite adversely birds of various feathers; thinner shells and lower birthrate are the biggest side effects.
This also explains that DDT is very poorly absorbed through the gut, so if the kind doctor really wants an effective test, he needs to emulsify it into a fatty liquid and smear it on his arm. That will see just how toxic DDT is ^^
GPL Deconstructed
You need to come to Greensboro. One glass of our bleach infested tap water will send you running to get a truck load of bottled water.
On the plus side, my whites are way fkn white.
Manhattan (there's no e, btw) has some of the best drinking water of any major city in the US, coming from relatively pristine sources in the Catskills.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
I think I should just point out that Milloy is not a scientist himself. He is a lawyer, and he is also a member of the Cato Institute, a conservative think-tank known for spinning the "liberal media is out to scare you" line. Here is an excerpt from the Cato Institute's website:
It looks to me like junkscience.com is simply a portal for selling his anti-science books. The typical argument by these junk-science "activists" is that public health studies exaggerate the dangers, thus serving only to scare the general public. But they (the junk-science "activists") rarely talk about the checks that are built-in to the publication of scientific literature, mainly peer review. Sure, flawed studies are occasionally published, but the safeguards attempt to make sure that the obviously flawed studies aren't.
For excellent further reading on this subject, I refer you to John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's Trust Us We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future. And since I pointed out that Milloy is not a trained scientist, I'll also point out that neither are Stauber or Rampton.
Interesting that the article focuses on pollutants being found in humans' bodies, but alot of medicines people take pass straight through our systems as well (Addreal, birth control, antibiotics) and accumulate in local watersheds. it has been the topic of at least one study, things like decreased fish population from too much BC in the water (esp. near college campuses) as before , i know this is OT, but it's important to realize this kind of thing goes in a circular pattern.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
One interesting addendum to this article is a study performed on two groups of four year old mexican chiildren: one from a valley where crops were grown(high pesticide exposure) and one from an adjacent mountain (low pesticide exposure). the children were asked to perform simple tasks, such as drawing a stick figure person, or trees, etc. the mountain children(low pesticide exposure) exhibited normal developement, and illustrated basic creativity whereas the valley children(high pesticide exposure) could barely draw at all, only producing meaningless lines and squiggles, nothing resembling a pattern. of additional interest is that many of the reseachers noted that many of the valley children were zombie-like, not really able to pay attention to anything.
Cogito Eggo Sum, I think therefore I'm a waffle
bottled water? THere is no regulation in the U.S. on the quality of bottled water. Check out the Environmental Working Group for more information.
-shpoffo
Didn't we already run a story about how a little pollution was good for us? "What doesn't kill us blahblahblah"
[o]_O
Seriously.
Chlorine is a major problem for fishtank owners. The methods of getting it out are well known and time honoured:
1: Leave it to stand for a couple of days
2: Boil it.
#2 has the advantage that it also causes most dissolved lime to precipitate out thanks to the chemical changes brought on by heat.
Filters are useful (and faster), but if chlorine is all you need to get rid of, there are cheaper alternatives.
The Bush Administration today has reclassified DDT as a vegetable.
It's simple: I demand prosecution for torture.
The Purification program which consists of a regime of heavy vitamins, niacin and long sauna sweatouts can actually purge the body of toxins. Anyone who has ever been poisoned (heavy drug users), exposed to radiation or has lived in a toxic environment (LA) could greatly benefit.
I did it five years ago and the results were amazing. Incredibly, my eyesight improved.
read more here .
And this is the book, Clear Body, Clear Mind.
Test /.! It would be interesting to see how many flaming retards they turn up.
Oh, you said "flame retardants". *sigh*
Despite the scare caused by Silent Spring I don't think it was ever proved that DDT caused the thinning of bird's eggs.
Clear, Dark Skies
Well back then, they didn't have corporations dumping toxic waste into our tap water either.
No way that's right. Everytime I try to post about the GNAA, I get modded Flamebait. Maybe I haven't been sprinkling enough Nomex on my cereal...
You know what?
The important point is that the trend of toxin accumulation is observed. It should be monitored so that correlations become better known. In this industrialized world, it ain't goin' away!
Yes. Exactly.
Clear, Dark Skies
Zephyr Hill's water is basically filtered tap water from (drumroll...) Zephyr Hill's, FL. Of course it still comes from a spring / aquifer at one point.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
'Fatty Foods' are the ANSWER to diabetes. The overwhelming cause is overconsumption of carbohydrates causing your body to become immune to insulin. I live with diabetics, of both varietys and they're all on low-carb diets now, it saves some of them $200/month, others only have to take their (much reduced) dose of insulin once a day, when prescribed for three.
Meanwhile we've got four pounds of bacon, steaks, some tilapia, and greens in the fridge. Everyone's losing weight quickly too, insulin is the chemical that turns carbs into fat in your body, so without all the injections everyone can burn off their fat.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
First, the roman thing is a myth. The romans were aware that lead is poisonous and preferred terra cotta pipes.
Second, no causal relationship between ingested DDT and egg thinning was ever found. The collapse of the eagle population was caused by hunting and loss of habitat.
Clear, Dark Skies
The purification rundown is dangerous nonsense. Please mod the parent down.
I'm moving out into the woods and learning to Photosynthesize.
If you get severely dehydrated, for example, mowing the lawn at noon in August for 2 hours, and you come in and chug a bunch of distilled water you can actually pass into a coma and--rarely--die.
You see, our bodies need the electrolytes in water, but in distilled water as you know, nothing is present but good ol' H2O. So you need to make sure you are drinking juices and things as well.
IANAD..F3MY (I am not a doctor...for 3 more years)
James
My brother has autism. Once we found out about it, we started researching and there has been a huge increase in children born with autism in recent years. Wired magazine even published an article trying to suggest that autism was on the rise in California relating autism to being smart. All hubris asside, there is something happening and we need to find out what it is.
... well himself now, but trapped by autism. Hard to explain, but scary as hell now that I'm having kids of my own.
One theory suggests that Thirmosal used in childhood inoculations may trigger autism in some children because it contains Mercury which is a known toxin being injected into most children. There is even a provision in the Homeland Security bill which prevents companies such as Eli Lilly from being sued by parents if thirmosal is found to be the cause of autism.
Even if it is not mercury in innoculations, autism is on the rise and for those of us with kids or planning on having them, this is a scary thing. I watched my brother revert from a normal 3 year old to
The study mentioned in the article only included 9 people. Obviously not statistically relavant, but the findings found enough chemicals in the body that more studies analysis must be done to determine the effects on the body, and especially the developing young ones.
Hrm... what aboot us Canucks? No fluoride in our water... oh wait... how many fillings have I had? Never mind.
Troll. Do you have any idea how expensive it is and long it takes just test for a few chemicals?
The *cause* of asthma is unknown and under intense study. The *fact* that it is a disease of the immune system is not disputed. We know that all allergies are autoimmune disorders - we just don't know why some people get them and others don't.
As for air pollution sensitivity - again, if pollution triggered asthma you would expect places like Mexico City and urban China to be suffering from asthma epidemics. This is not the case - instead, asthma seems to be a first world disease.
Now, this could be caused by some air pollutant that occurs widely in the USA but never used in China or Mexico, but that's hard to believe - if pollution was the cause, you'd expect that the wholesale export of manufacturing from the USA to places like China and Mexico would have exported the asthma, too. Instead, asthma has risen as both US air quality has improved and US industrialization has diminished.
Finally, I wish I could find a cite, but I was listening to a doctor on NPR the other week who actually apologized to his asthma patients. For years he had been telling them to make their houses as dust free as possible, seal the bedding, etcetera - only to read a study that said none of these things reduced the number of asthma attacks a person was likely to have.
Clear, Dark Skies
I couldn't believe I read this, so I did a Google on DDT and eggshell and came up with the research group that did a study on DDT and eggshells!
They fed DDT to a control group of ducks and compared to an untreated group of ducks otherwise fed and raised identically, and found eggshell thinning on DDT fed ducks. They were thus armed with a biological model of the DDT-eggshell relationship and went out to look at Peregrine falcon eggs and saw the same relationship: And that the more DDT were found in the egg, the thinner the eggshell.
And it's well known, if you do more research/search that DDT is an artificial environmental estrogen, in that it mimics and interferes with estrogen in humans; and very likely as an estrogen like compound in most animals. Why is this important?
Estrogen and estrogen replacement therapy is used in humans to treat osteoperosis, or bone loss. It's not difficult to understand why then DDT would thin eggshells.
Article on Patuxent, and article on the DDT research at Patuxent.
The amusing thing is that you reference Silent Spring, which is a book that references Patuxent's relevant research into DDT, eggshells, and Peregrine falcons.
GPL Deconstructed
Yeah, but look on the bright side. Thanks to Ms. Carson, we've had an additional three decades to prove that malaria thins out third-world populations pretty damn well.
As responsible stewards of Gaia's gift, we must abide by the precautionary principle, you know. But if another 30 million human corpses is what it takes to be absolutely sure that the next generation of pesticides won't harm the indigenous population of amopheles gambiae and plasmodium falciparum, then so be it!
I'm assuming the obvious reasons you elude to are: 1. Dogs 2. Toddlers
Yeah, where else would my dog drink from when I forget to fill his water bowl.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
Just because mercury poisoning has superficially similar symptoms to autism does *not* mean the minute amount of mercury used to sterlize vaccines causes autism.
Quick question: How many "silver" fillings do you have? I bet you have enough mercury in your mouth right now to sterilize a thousand doses MMR vaccine.
Did they ban suing the vaccine companies? Yes. Why? Because companies have stopped making vaccines for fear of being turned into another Corning - run into bankruptcy by lawyers using junk science and scare tactics.
Clear, Dark Skies
If a recreation site and a random AOL user say it's true, it must be true!
Clear, Dark Skies
Yes and the fact that the water supplied to the toilet is the same water in the kitchen sink.
Indecision is the key to flexibility.
Yeah, no kidding. All those chemicals are probably present in your average soda. *sings* Wherever there is fun there's always flame retardant. (tm)
Sounds like we have a gay parrot in here.
Repeat
http://www.crha-health.ab.ca/pophlth/hp/fluoride/h pcityca.htm
Hands in my pocket
"I hate to break the news to ya, son, but you are full of cheese pizza and Ding Dongs."
Table-ized A.I.
Especially when you consider that there are companies that bottle their water straight from the tap.
Like this one
So, a couple of modern people claiming the romans only used lead pipes weigh more than a roman architect himself saying "terra cotta is preferred because lead is said to be hurtful." I also like how you apparently didn't read your own cites: Eventually, as a host of mysterious maladies became more common, some Romans began to suspect a connection between the metal and these illnesses.. I will admit that later in the page it says that the Romans continued to use lead for wine and water even after figuring this out. I also have to say I didn't know about the adding of lead to wine to "sweeten" it, though. But if that cite is right, wouldn't that imply that all of Europe suffered from lead poisoning right down through the middle ages?
I like the personal attack, too. Ran out of facts, did we? I have to say your rebuttal to my link hardly bears scrutiny. First, your one cite is an undergrad's homework. Second, neither is "Molecule of the Day" a canonical scientific reference. In addition, Risebough is wrong, right from the start. Eagle populations were already recovering *before* DDT was banned - thus the frequently made argument that DDT pushed the eagle to near-extinction is false on its face.
Interestingly, though, he states that DDT/DDE does not affect all bird species. That's an interesting argument, I'll have to read some of the papers he cites.
Clear, Dark Skies
So that explains the whole British Teeth Thing.
Erm, what teeth?
And who are these "British" you speak of?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Why don't you look up Petuxent then?
You can believe who you want, but you have to use your *analytic* ability, if you have any, short of actually conducting an experiment yourself; but we are posting on Slashdot after all!
What do you require to believe?
PDF directly from Patuxent itself? This is a gov sponsored site, but it shows the same (it is the same!) data the other two reference.
GPL Deconstructed
First you tell me I'm wrong to say that asthma is an immune disorder because one web site says we don't what causes asthma. When I bring you to task for that, you give me another page of assertions that asthma is caused by air pollution.
You must have searched a while for that one, because while there's a ton of evidence that air pollution can trigger asthma attacks, that's a far cry from saying that pollution causes the disease.
In fact, if you're worried about my "assertion" that there is no correlation between between pollution and asthma. Well, doctors specializing in asthma research agree with me.
Clear, Dark Skies
personal attack
;)
:)
You can choose to take it that way -Seriously, as you are preferring to quote an opinion-based source, Fox News, a "fair and balanced" news organization whose objectivity on industry vs. environment is clearly nonexistent, I have to say I enjoyed it.
Personally, I think that the conservative-liberal dichotomy in American discourse is just a form of therapy -people sorting thru their feelings. But don't let that keep you from taking another shot!
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
The change in cancer rate corresponds to an extra 2500 cancer cases across the entire united states, maybe 5-6 times that across the world. Even if you're right and those cases (not deaths) were caused by pollution, they have to be balanced against the hundreds of thousands of lives saved by the green revolution, stopping malaria, preventing food poisoning and everything else industrialization has brought us - including your ability to post on this forum.
Clear, Dark Skies
And, yeah, the Patuxent group did the research that Silent Spring cites.
Basically, you've got one guy doing one study. It's a good direction for further research, but it's not conclusive proof - he never explained the mechanism by which DDT might be causing the problem.
Clear, Dark Skies
Anything in high doses is damageable.
And since we don't know the effects of everything on the planet there is no need to panic. Water, which extinguishes fire, is made of 2 gases that are both highly flameable (if not the most flammable). Who would have rationally figured that?
What about the quantities of Nitrous we breathe every day? Oh thats right, the air is 78% Azote (N). Is it damageable to our health?
Please continue to live as normal. We were made to stand some form of pollution, just like cockroaches were made to survive a nuclear holocaust. Hehe. And on the bright side, any aliens trying to invade earth will die from toxins!
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
Scientologists will waste few opportunities to pimp their dangerous rituals and dodgy theologies (probably because many of them are in on the take from this multi-level marketing theological scam). More info at Clambake or FactNet.
Da Blog
If tap water is all that then why do tap water filters become so discolored and foul-smelling over time?
Mine doesn't... but it does carbonate.
hello, I hope you read this.
Do you realise your brother can be treated? Parents are having success at fully or partially (depending on the age) recovering function in their autistic children with diet changes and mercury chelation therapy. There's plenty on the internet about it for you to read, such as the group on Yahoo Groups. Good luck, & beware the scornful ramblings of ignorant doctors.
Ultimately we're just little walking air and water filters. Imagine what a filthy place cities would be if we weren't breathing all the car exhaust and storing that crap inside our bodies... The same can be said of water, food, et al...
Unfortuately, those getting the benefits (e.g. chemical company stockholders & management etc.?) and those facing the risks (e.g. tap water drinkers living by a factory etc.?) are often not the same people.
Example: http://www.ewg.org/policymemo/20021113/20021213.ph p
"DuPont Hid Teflon Pollution For Decades ...
Company Kept 1984 Tap Water Tests Secret After Finding C8 Contamination in Ohio Town"
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
In other related news, the cost of cremation has sky rocketed in relation to other countries as well.
That refers to the well established claim that pollutants irritate existing cases of ozone, not that ozone causes the disease.
Thank you for playing.
Clear, Dark Skies
As opposed to the millions of people benefiting from flame retardants and DDT, which was the subject under discussion.
Clear, Dark Skies
That refers to the well established claim that pollutants irritate existing cases of *asthma*, not that ozone causes the disease.
Thank you for playing.
Clear, Dark Skies
While I agree that more care should be taken in the environment and regulations, I would consider this ...
... mostly. Injuries too, I presume, but those happen today as well, and are less relevant.
... with gloves on, of course.)
Back then people died from a huge number of infectious diseases
Now a lot people die from conditions that arise within the body tissues - heart disease, cancer, etc.
It's something of a tradeoff. You use pesticides to kill off mosquitoes that transmit various diseases, but the pesticides come and get you. Or you do nothing and die of some mosquito-borne disease. You can't get it perfect.
Also, especially with respect to cancer: remember that (most) people (in the more developed countries) live longer now. The longer you live, the more likely it is that you'll gather up mutations, your organs accumulate problems, your body breaks down, you pick up chemicals. If most people died earlier, you wouldn't see so many of those. And remember - in the past, I imagine that misdiagnoses were more common than today.
(All this is being written by a biologist who uses ethidium bromide, UV light, phenol, and acrylamide
The floggings will stop when morale improves.
Here's a link about Scientologists trying to cash in on 9/11 victims by offering a detox service to people. The treatment starts at $5,200 a pop. Nice. So far, the NYFD doctors have found no evidence that this method works.
But hey... if our Hollywood overlord Tom Cruise endorses it...then hey, he's gotta be right. He's a doctor right? What? No? Uhh... then he's acted as one before too right? Huh? No... oh.
"There is no spoon." - The Matrix
As for me, I am a firm believer that no tap water is safe for human consumption, so I've decided to purify drinking water at home.
People in the Midwest get very few cavities, and their teeth and bones are strong and heal quickly. This is because of the minerals in the tap water. Your body uses what it can from the water.
i'd hit it so hard, if you pulled me out you'd be the king of britain [bash.org]
Mine doesn't... but it does carbonate.
Umm... that would actually be nitrogenate.
another reason to be concerned is that biological effects often manifest at *very* low doses.
take for example endocrine disruptors (substances that mimic hormones in your body). read this excerpt from the Chemical Messengers [That Work in Parts per Trillion] chapter in the book Our Stolen Future:
"What is astonishing about vom Saal's wombmate studies is how little it takes to dramatically change the tune. Hormones are exceptionally potent chemicals that operate at concentrations so low that they can be measured only by the most sensitive analytical methods. When considering hormones such as estradiol, the most potent estrogen, forget parts per million or parts per billion. The concentrations are typically parts per trillion, one thousand times lower than parts per billion. One can begin to imagine a quantity so infinitesimally small by thinking of a drop of gin in a train of tank cars full of tonic. One drop in 660 tank cars would be one part in a trillion; such a train would be six miles long.
The striking lifelong differences between a pretty sister and ugly sister stem from no more than a thirty-five parts per trillion difference in their exposure to estradiol and a one part per billion difference in testosterone. Using the gin and tonic analogy, the pretty sister's cocktail had 135 drops of gin in one thousand tank cars of tonic and the ugly sister's 100 drops-a difference that might not be detectable in a glass much less in a tank car flotilla.
This is a degree of sensitivity that approaches the unfathomable, a sensitivity, vom Saal says, "beyond people's wildest imagination." If such exquisite sensitivity provides rich opportunities for varied offspring from the same genetic stock, this same characteristic also makes the system vulnerable to serious disruption if something interferes with normal hormone levels-a frightening possibility that first dawned on vom Saal when Theo Colborn called him to talk about synthetic chemicals that could act like hormones."
some studies have even shown that as the dose is lowered toxicity increases and as the dose is increased toxicity approaches zero! this turns our traditional understanding of toxicity on it's head.
read these two issues of Rachel's Environment & Health News for an intro to toxicity:
#754 - Paracelsus Revisited, October 17, 2002
#755 - Paracelsus Revisited -- Part 2, October 31, 2002
low dose endocrine disruptors are only beginning to be investigated but compelling evidence already exists that indicates they may have significant health impacts.
makes me also wonder about the myriad undiscovered toxic effects of chemicals that we brush off today as nothing to be concerned about.
First - the scientific method wasn't invented till, say the 15th or 16th century. By what standard are you holding the Romans?
Second - yeah, they did eat it. And suffered no ill effects. DDT hasn't been shown to have any serious effect on humans, although I did see one report claiming liver damage after prolonged exposure (which makes sense since the liver is the organ that would be cleaning the DDT break down products from the body).
All harm vanished when exposure to DDT ceased. No cancer. No long therm effects.
Clear, Dark Skies
that didn't have all the *germs* (not chemicals) washed off them and which ended up in the salsa at a mexican restaurant.
Clear, Dark Skies
On a couple occassions I've read that the human body absorbs significantly more chlorine from showers (through the skin and through inhalation of the chlorine vapors) than it does from drinking the same water... i.e. regarding chlorine, it is actually more important to filter the water you shower in.
I'm sorry I don't remember my source for this information, but here's a quick google link to some pages which mention it.
I believe another poster mentioned the negative side of drinking only distilled water... though I see you mention that you supplement your intake.
According to La Leche League International, which conducts and disseminates research on the subject, breastfeeding still remains the best choice even in a poisoned worlds. See their Media Release on the topic. Their conclusion, based on reviews of studies on the subject, is that at this point benefits of breastfeeding and dangers of artificial feeding outweight the risks from pollutants.
It is understandable that babies' health can be used as a strong argument in politics. However, one should be careful not to harm the babies in the process. If families switch to artificial feeding as a result of such an environmental compain, babies will be hurt, and some will even die as a result (it's documented that artificial feeding leads to such dire consequences in a small percent of babies). So I suggest a balancing act between discussing danger to children, and yet not encouraging artificial feeding.
Problems with nursing are entirely possible, as well as with any other bodily function. There are a lot of people who use artificial kidneys because their own do not work. These people would die if they tried to use their own kidneys.
Usually, the same organizations that support breastfeeding, such as La Leche League, can also advise parents in case there are problems. Statistically, that is, for large numbers of people, breastfeeding is safer than artificial feeding.
Speaking of being lucky or unlucky - that's where statistics comes in. One's chances of being lucky in Situation A can be statistically compared to one's chances of being lucky in Situation B. You can still get lucky (or not) in both situations, and then take necessary steps, such as supplements or formula adjustments or ped change, in this particular case. However, the initial chances should be weighed too. Well, the initial chances of getting lucky with breastfeeding are higher, statistically, than the initial chances of getting lucky with artificial feeding. I am talking about digestive problems, specifically. These are still chances, not guarantees :-)
You may want to read Media Releases on the subject from La Leche League International. The organization claims that the dangers of artificial feeding and the benefits of breastfeeding still outweight the danger of pollutants in mother's milk. On the page, there is also a list of (rather obvious) ten steps you can take to reduce the level of dangerous chemicals in your body, such as stopping smoking, or avoiding eating contaminated fish.
And they told me I'd have to have a private lab do it for me - and pay dearly for it! Why the hell won't they test my drinking water without my having to pay for it? Isn't delivering water that's reasonably free of contaminants part of their responsibility?
There are a number of places that will test your water for you. Some universities might do it for free. I know there are a number of places that you can send away for kits to test your water. I found this one in the first five minutes of furtive googling. These guys also seem like a good avenue to check out.
Yes, your county is supposed to provide clean water. They do generally test water periodically at various points, depending on how diligently they check (I have known of some water utilities who go so far as to make random checks at the customer's access point).
One thing to consider is that there are many things which can get into the water and it is difficult to test for everything. You generally have to know what you are looking for to find anything. Also you aren't just worried about chemicals here. Parasites can be a problem even in modern water supplies. The purification process usually deals with them, but there have been cases of contamination down the line which caused trouble.
The process of producing good clean water is a very important scientific advancement and we are getting better at it every day. It is one of the many things which makes our modern society possible and distinguishes it from the third world; probably one of the most important by virtue of its many benefits.
Either way, it tastes good... :)
DDT - you're right, broad spectrum pesticides are a problem.
My main complaint about the modern world-wide ban of DDT is complete - it bans exterior and interior use. But DDT *is* quite safe compared to other interior insecticides. Banning its use condemns many 3rd world countries to annual epidemics of malaria.
Condemning people to suffer and die because you fear they might cheat and use DDT on their crops instead of their homes is incredibly inhumane.
Clear, Dark Skies
Though, you may not like it... it does actually work.
Since you're up on the research, I've got a question I've been wondering about:
Some folks say the only reason the number of cases is on the rise is that the diagnosis rate is increasing, as the disorder is now better understood/accepted.
Has there been any study to find if this is true? I'm not really sure how to design such a study, but it's worth knowing.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)