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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."
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)
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...
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.
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...
Except for the fact that our water is one of the main reasons that expected lifespan has exploded over the past 100 years. I mean, when was the last time 50% of the population in a U.S. community under 10 died from cholera?
When you're expected to live to 75 and you're worried about the quality of the stuff that allows you to live that long, perhaps the problem is that you *ARE* living that long.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
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!
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
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.
This might be an opportune time to mention the campaign to Do Something about the growing danger posed by dihydrogen monoxide in the environment and in our very bodies.
/. reader, you should be familiar with this story.
One of my favorite bits is the reference to "award-winning U.S. scientist Nathan Zohner" who showed that "scientist Nathan Zohner concluded that roughly 86 percent of the population supports a ban on dihydrogen monoxide." This is true.
If you're a
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.