Cancer-related deaths in the United States increased from 331,000 in 1970 to 521,000 in 1992, with as estimated 30,000 deaths attributed to chemical exposure….
Exposure to pesticides, whether in laboratory experiments, animal studies, or epidemiologic studies in humans, clearly shows a significant effect on the immune system, such as T- and B-cell function, macrophage phagoeytosis, and host resistance (Arch Environ Health. 1993;48:81,88 and 1991;46:249-253). Pesticide use “could be a hidden killer”-especially in developing countries, where infections are a leading cause of death. ref. Robert Repetto, vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based World Resources Institute (WRI)…
Inuit children in the northern Hudson Bay area of Canada. Nursed on human milk laced with organochlorines, these children not only face a highly elevated risk of infection, but in some cases are so immunocompromised that they can’t be vaccinated, because they don’t produce any antibodies. https://www2.mcdaniel.edu/Biology/eh01/pesticides/pestiscide_health_effects.html
For the past 25 years, tens of millions of Americans in hundreds of cities and towns have been drinking tap water that is contaminated with low levels of insecticides, weed killers, and artificial fertilizer. They not only drink it, they also bathe and shower in it, thus inhaling small quantities of farm chemicals and absorbing them through the skin. Naturally, the problem is at its worst in agricultural areas of the country.
The most common contaminants are carbamate insecticides (aldicarb and others), the triazine herbicides (atrazine and others) and nitrate nitrogen.[1] For years government scientists have tested each of these chemicals individually at low levels in laboratory animals — searching mainly for signs of cancer — and have declared each of them an “acceptable risk” at the levels typically found in groundwater.
Now a group of biologists and medical researchers at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, led by Warren P. Porter, has completed a 5-year experiment putting mixtures of low levels of these chemicals into the drinking water of male mice and carefully measuring the results. They reported recently that combinations of these chemicals — at levels similar to those found in the groundwater of agricultural areas of the U.S. — have measurable detrimental effects on the nervous, immune and endocrine (hormone) systems.[2] Furthermore, they say their research has direct implications for humans.
Dr. Porter and his colleagues point out that the nervous system, the immune system, and the endocrine (hormone) system are all closely related and in constant communication with each other. If any one of the three systems is damaged or degraded the other two may be adversely affected. The Wisconsin researchers therefore designed their experiments to examine the effects of agricultural chemicals on each of the three systems simultaneously. To assess immune system function, they measured the ability of mice to make antibodies in response to foreign proteins. To assess endocrine system function, they measured thyroid hormone levels in the blood. And to assess nervous system function they measured aggressive behavior in the presence of intruder mice introduced into the cages. They also looked for effects on growth by measuring total body weight and the weight of each animal’s spleen.
The experiments were replicated many times, to make sure the results were reproducible. They found effects on the endocrine system (thyroid hormone levels) and the immune system, and reduced body weight, from mixtures of low levels of aldicarb & nitrate, atrazine & nitrate, and atrazine, aldicarb & nitrate together. They observed increased aggression from exposure to atrazine & nitrate, and from atrazine, aldicarb & nitrate together.
The Wisconsin research team wrote, “Of particular significance in the collective work of Boyd and others,[3] Porter and others,[4] and our current study[2] is that THYROID HORMONE CONCENTRATION CHANGE was consistently a response due to mixtures, but NOT usually to individual chemicals.”
In the five-year experiment, thyroid hormone levels rose or fell depending upon the mixture of farm chemicals put into the drinking water. Dr. Porter and his colleagues present evidence from other studies showing that numerous farm chemicals can affect the thyroid hormone levels of wildlife and humans. PCBs and dioxins can have similar effects, they note. Proper levels of thyroid hormone are essential for brain development of humans prior to birth. Some, though not all, studies have shown that attention deficit and/or hyperactivity disorders in children are linked to changes in the levels of thyroid hormone in the blood. Children with multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) have abnormal thyroid levels. Furthermore, irritability and aggressive behavior are linked to thyroid hormone levels. -RACHEL’S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH WEEKLY #648 .April 29, 1999
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certainly this could very well explain Brazil being hard-hit by Zika -r
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In animals, or at least in laboratory rats and mice, it’s clear that if the fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat. This apparently induces a condition known as insulin resistance, which is now considered the fundamental problem in obesity, and the underlying defect in heart disease and in the type of diabetes, type 2, that is common to obese and overweight individuals. It might also be the underlying defect in many cancers. If what happens in laboratory rodents also happens in humans, and if we are eating enough sugar to make it happen, then we are in trouble….
By the end of the 1970s, any scientist who studied the potentially deleterious effects of sugar in the diet, according to Sheldon Reiser, who did just that at the U.S.D.A.’s Carbohydrate Nutrition Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and talked about it publicly, was endangering his reputation. …
In simpler language, how much of this stuff do we have to eat or drink, and for how long, before it does to us what it does to laboratory rats? And is that amount more than we’re already consuming? http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/magazine/mag-17Sugar-t.html
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12-11-14 Sweet poison: why sugar is ruining our health The average Briton consumes 238 teaspoons of sugar each week – often without knowing it.
Thousands of miles away, nodding in agreement, is David Gillespie, a Brisbane-based lawyer turned researcher whose Sweet Poison books chart his own decision to stop eating sugar, resulting in him losing six stone without dieting in a year. He explains: “You are breaking an addiction, so you need to stop consuming all sources of the addictive substance. They are all hard to give up because they are addictive – but they are all easy to give up once you understand what you are doing and why.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/healthyeating/9987825/Sweet-poison-why-sugar-is-ruining-our-health.html
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3-12-14 A teaspoon of sugar in your coffee or a half cup of ice cream won’t kill you — all things in moderation — but the average sugar intake in the U.S. is 22 teaspoons per person per day. That’s almost four times as much as the WHO’s new guidelines suggest is healthy. http://www.businessinsider.com/effects-of-eating-too-much-sugar-2014-3
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