Minnesota bans anti-bacterial chemical from soaps

Yahoo News

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — It's widely used nationwide as a germ-killing ingredient in soaps, deodorants and even toothpaste, but it's being banned in Minnesota.

Gov. Mark Dayton on Friday signed a bill to make Minnesota the first state to prohibit the use of triclosan in most retail consumer hygiene products. The Minnesota House and Senate passed it earlier last week because of health and environmental concerns about the chemical. The ban isn't due to take effect until Jan. 1, 2017, but one of its lead sponsors, state Sen. John Marty, predicted Monday that the odds are good that most manufacturers will phase out triclosan by then anyway.

"While this is an effort to ban triclosan from one of the 50 states, I think it will have a greater impact than that," Marty said.

The Roseville Democrat said other states and the federal government are likely to act, too. And he said come companies are already catching on that there's no marketing advantage to keeping triclosan in its products. He noted that Procter & Gamble's Crest toothpaste is now marketing itself as triclosan-free.

Triclosan is used in an estimated 75 percent of anti-bacterial liquid soaps and body washes sold across the United States, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The federal agency announced last year that it would revisit the safety of triclosan and other germ-killing ingredients used in personal cleaning products. While triclosan hasn't been shown to be hazardous to humans, studies have raised concerns that it can disrupt hormones critical for reproduction and development, at least in lab animals, and contribute to the development of resistant bacteria.

Critics including the FDA say there's no evidence that triclosan soaps are any more effective than washing with plain soap and water for preventing the spread of diseases. A University of Minnesota study published last year found increasing levels of triclosan in the sediments of several lakes, and that the chemical can break down in those waters into potentially harmful dioxins. Two months later, Dayton ordered all state agencies to stop buying hand soaps and dish and laundry cleaners containing triclosan.

The American Cleaning Institute had urged Dayton to veto the new bill, saying triclosan has been thoroughly researched and shown to provide important health benefits.

"Instead of letting federal regulators do their jobs, the legislation would take safe, effective and beneficial products off the shelves of Minnesota grocery, convenience and drug stores," Douglas Troutman, the trade group's vice president and counsel for governmental affairs, wrote in a letter to Dayton.

ACI spokesman Brian Sansoni said Minnesota is the only state to enact a ban so far. He said it remains to be seen whether any individual manufacturers would go to the expense of reformulating their products just for the Minnesota market or simply stop selling them in the state. He said triclosan is an issue best regulated at the federal level.

Under an FDA rule proposed in December, manufacturers of anti-bacterial hand soaps and body washes would have to demonstrate that their products are safe for daily use, and more effective than plain soap and water. Otherwise, they would need to reformulate these products or remove anti-bacterial claims from the labels. The agency is still taking public comments on the proposal.

Some manufacturers have announced plans over the last couple years to at least partially phase out triclosan. Procter & Gamble plans to finish dropping the chemical from its products this year. Johnson & Johnson plans to eliminate it from all its consumer products by 2015.

Oceanographer Warns That BP Oil Disaster Created a New Fault Which Could “Release Oil Indefinitely”

Intel Hub
by JG Vibes

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico hasn’t been in the news much over the past year, but the clean up is far from over and many have warned that the problem was never really resolved.

Just recently, an oceanographer appeared on multiple mainstream media outlets to warn of the possibility that the BP oil disaster opened up a new fault, and could be leaking oil into the ocean indefinitely.

NBC reported that:

“A persistent, mysterious “oil sheen” in the Gulf of Mexico near the site of BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster grew to more than seven-miles long and one-mile wide during a recent stretch of calm seas, based on aerial observations made by a former NASA physicist turned environmental activist.”

“We had maybe three or four days (of calm weather) and that’s all it took for the stuff to build up considerably,” Bonny Schumaker, the physicist who now runs the non-profit On Wings of Care, which makes regular flights over regions of the Gulf affected by the 2010 oil spill.

In a flight report from Jan. 27 posted on the group’s website, she described the oily expanse as “huge.”

Schumaker first noticed the sheen in September 2012, when it was also reported by BP to the National Response Center, the point of contact for all oil spills and other discharges into the environment.

Since then, BP has inspected the well site four times with underwater robots and found it secure.

However, since BP has been in charge of their own investigation it is very possible that they are taking measures to cover up the situation and make it appear to be less of a problem.

Later in the article the source of this oil sheen is discussed, and the possible implications are revealed:

“Schumaker first noticed the sheen in September 2012, when it was also reported by BP to the National Response Center, the point of contact for all oil spills and other discharges into the environment.

Since then, BP has inspected the well site four times with underwater robots and found it secure.

The concern, he noted, is trying to sort out its source. “The chemical data are a bit ambiguous.”

Some analyses he’s seen suggest the presence of drilling fluid, which is consistent with what Schumaker has heard. But other analyses, from other sources that he said he’s privy to, find no drilling fluid.

In that case, it’s possible that the wreckage in 2010 somehow opened up a new fault on the seafloor.

That possibility is inconsistent with BP’s findings, but would nevertheless indicate potential for an indefinite release of oil.”

It is no surprise that this possibility conflicts with BP’s findings, and it is important to mention that so far BP’s findings and predictions have been far from trustworthy. At this time though, there have been few other realistic explanations put forward as to why these new slicks are continuing to materialize.

GMO fail: Monsanto foiled by feds, Supreme Court, and science

Grist
by Tom Laskawy

It’s been a good week if you enjoy a little GMO schadenfreude. The FDA has reportedly bowed to public pressure to extend the comment period on its approval of genetically engineered salmon, and Illinois, Maryland, and Iowa are the latest states to buck GMOs by introducing labeling bills into state legislature.

Even the Supreme Court has an opportunity to take Monsanto down a peg. On Feb. 19, the court will hear arguments in a patent infringement case between an Indiana farmer and Monsanto (I covered it in detail here). If Monsanto prevails, it’ll move a few more paces towards agricultural monopoly; if it loses, the company will take a couple steps back. It’s encouraging that the Supreme Court chose to hear the case over the solicitor general’s urging to dismiss it, but Monsanto could have an inside man: As in other Monsanto-related cases, former Monsanto-lawyer-turned-Supreme-Court-Justice Clarence Thomas has no plans to recuse himself.

But GMOs took the biggest punch this week from academia: Tom Philpott highlights a USDA-funded study [PDF] by University of Wisconsin scientists who found that several types of GMO seeds (including Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready varieties) actually produce a lower yield than conventional seeds. Only one seed — a corn that produces its own pesticide to combat the corn borer — offers any significant yield benefit. In other words, planting most genetically modified seeds results in less harvest per acre than planting non-genetically modified seeds.

The researchers looked at 20 years of data from test plots in Wisconsin from 1990-2010, both on research plots and on plots in participating farmers’ fields. Philpott flags a key point from the study:

Then there’s the question of so-called “stacked-trait” crops — that is, say, corn engineered to contain multiple added genes — for example, Monsanto’s “Smart Stax” product, which contains both herbicide-tolerant and pesticide-expressing genes. The authors detected what they call “gene interaction” in these crops — genes inserted into them interact with each other in ways that affect yield, often negatively. If multiple genes added to a variety didn’t interact, “the [yield] effect of stacked genes would be equal to the sum of the corresponding single gene effects,” the authors write. Instead, the stacked-trait crops were all over the map. “We found strong evidence of gene interactions among transgenic traits when they are stacked,” they write. Most of those effects were negative — i.e., yield was reduced.

This matters because stacked-trait crops are a favored approach to combat the superweeds and bugs that are part and parcel of years of GMO crops. But the more you stack, the worse your yield. The scientists also found evidence of a “yield penalty” that comes simply from the act of manipulating plant genes.

In short, the more one meddles with plant genes, the worse yields get; when you change multiple genes at once, yields drop even further. This should give pause to those who see GMO seeds as the means to address more complex problems like drought tolerance, nutritional value, or plant productivity. These are traits involving dozens, if not hundreds, of genes. This study suggests genetic manipulation of food crops at such a scale is a losing game.

A few years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists published a report with a similar conclusion, but this is one of the first rigorous attempts to establish through controlled experiments the yield benefit (or penalty) of GM seeds. The UW scientists do note that they determined that GM seeds do provide farmers with lower “yield risk”; essentially, that farmers are less likely to face catastrophic crop losses when using GMO seeds. But there are other conventional techniques that researchers have concluded can support yield, reduce environmental harm, and increase farmer income without having to pay big bucks to biotech companies.

Not that we should expect biotech companies to just roll over: With five such companies controlling nearly 60 percent of the global seed business, it may be impossible for farmers to find sufficient conventional seed. (Learn how the seed business became so consolidated in the Center for Food Safety’s new report “Seed Giants vs. U.S. Farmers.”)

But we should take what we can get. Between Supreme Court justices who may be fed up with the company’s aggressive intellectual property tactics and farmers who could get fed up with its ineffective intellectual property, Monsanto’s stumbles could mean a few sure steps forward for food growers and eaters.

Argentinian Study Finds Roundup Ingredient Causes Birth Defects

Natural Society
by Elizabeth Renter

A study out of Buenos Aires has found that glyphosate, an herbicide created by Monsanto, and used on GMO soy in Argentina, could cause birth defects in unborn children. The most interesting thing about this revelation is that the herbicide known as glyphosate in Argentina, is also known to be connected with Roundup in the U.S.

Roundup Ingredient Shown to Cause Birth Defects According to the Latin American Herald Tribune, researchers with the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research conducted the study on amphibian embryos. The lead researcher says their results are “completely comparable to what would happen in the development of a human embryo.”

“The noteworthy thing is that there are no studies of embryos on the world level and none where glyphosate is injected into embryos,” said professor Andres Carrasco, one of the lead authors of the study.

The amounts shown to cause birth defects were said to be much lower than those levels used in fumigations. However, it’s important to note that the glyphosate was injected directly into the fetuses, not administered via food products, as it would be in humans.

Still, it’s possible, because our food feeds our cells, which in turn would feed an embryo, that digestion of foods containing the chemical would have similar, though perhaps not as dramatic effects. And of course this isn’t the only time glyphosate and Monsanto’s Roundup has been shown to cause birth defects.

GMO soy is Argentina’s leading crop. They are the world’s third largest exporter, and they use between 180 and 200 million liters of glyphosate annually. In agricultural regions, where the spraying of this Monsanto chemical is common, numerous cancers have shown up that are being associated with it.

A district called Ituzaingo, outside of Cordoba, has seen about 300 cancer cases in the last eight years. This district houses only about 5,000 people.

“In communities like Ituzaingo it’s already too late, but we have to have a preventative system, to demand that the companies give us security frameworks and, above all, to have very strict regulations for fumigation, which nobody is adhering to out of ignorance or greed,” said Carrasco.

Carrasco, and others, are calling on the government of Argentina to fund more in-depth research into the effects of glyphosate on humans. He says, “The companies say that drinking a glass of glysophate is healthier than drinking a glass of milk, but the fact is that they’ve used us as guinea pigs.”

N. America’s West Coast to be most contaminated by Fukushima cesium of all regions in Pacific in 10 years — “An order-of-magnitude higher” than waters off Japan

ENE News

In the following years, the tracer cloud continuously expands laterally, with maximum concentrations in its central part heading east. While the northern portion is gradually invading the Bering Sea, the main tracer patch reaches the coastal waters of North America after 5–6 years, with maximum relative concentrations ( > 1 × 10−4) covering a broad swath of the eastern North Pacific between Vancouver Island and Baja California. Simultaneously some fraction of the southern rim of the tracer cloud becomes entrained in the North Equatorial Current (NEC), resulting in a westward extending wedge around 20°N that skirts the northern shores of the Hawaiian Archipelago. After 10 years the concentrations become nearly homogeneous over the whole Pacific, with higher values in the east, extending along the North American coast with a maximum (~1 × 10−4) off Baja California. The southern portion of the tracer cloud is carried westward by the NEC across the subtropical Pacific, leading to increasing concentrations in the Kuroshio regime again...

IQ Ratings Suffer from Car Pollution, Tobacco Exposure

Natural Society

We are all subject to the dangers of air pollution. Even if you live in the country, you are exposed to some level of pollution, from your own vehicle or tobacco if you smoke. But a study from the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health finds that high levels of pollution can affect the eventual intelligence of children, making for lower IQ ratings. Other studies link the same pollutants to depression, asthma, and many other health concerns.

Pollution From Cars, Tobacco Linked with Lower IQ Ratings

The study looked at prenatal exposure to air pollution, specifically polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). What they found was pregnant mothers exposed to high levels of these pollutants gave birth to children who would eventually have significantly lower IQ ratings based on intelligence tests at age 5.

These pollutants (PAHs) come from the burning of fossil fuels, used in vehicles and industry. They are also emitted in smaller amounts from the burning of organic materials like tobacco, according to UPI.com.

The study looked at 214 children born to healthy, non-smoking white Polish mothers between 2001 and 2006. During pregnancy the women wore air monitors in small backpacks to measure their exposure to pollutants. They also provided blood and cord samples at the time of delivery.

The children were then tested and monitored through the age of five. They were tested on reasoning and intelligence and were found to have lower IQ ratings as exposure to pollution increased.

A similar study in New York in 2009 found similar results with low IQ ratings among children born to nonsmoking African American and Dominican American women.

Frederica Perera, author of the New York study says these findings are significant because they show air pollution exposure could be “educationally meaningful in terms of school performance.” She also points out, however, that air pollution, in general, has declined somewhat over the past decade or so.

PAH exposure in the womb has also been linked to things like asthma, low birth weight, premature delivery, and heart malformation.

A more recent study from Environmental Health Perspectives found that prenatal exposure to pollutants is associated with a 24% higher score of anxiety and depression in young children. Children as young as six and seven are experiencing depression and anxiety because of toxins in our air.

According to the Wisconsin Department of Health, we are exposed to PAHs in a number of ways:

Breathing: Most people are exposed to PAHs when they breathe in smoke, auto emissions or industrial exhausts. Most exhausts contain many different PAH compounds. People with the highest exposures are smokers, people who live or work with smokers, roofers, road builders and people who live near major highways or industrial sources.

Drinking/Eating: Charcoal-broiled foods, especially meats, are a source of some PAH exposure. Shellfish living in contaminated water may be another major source of exposure. PAHs may be in groundwater near disposal sites where construction wastes or ash are buried; people may be exposed by drinking this water. Vegetables do not absorb significant amounts of PAHs that are in soil.

Touching: PAHs can be absorbed through skin too. Exposure can come from handling contaminated soil or bathing in contaminated water. Low levels of these chemicals may be absorbed when a person uses medicated skin cream or shampoo containing PAHs.

Using skin care products containing PAHs, cooking with charcoal, and job choice can all impact our exposure.

Photographer: X-ray-like image shows how radioactivity has spread throughout bodies of Fukushima wildlife

ENENEWS

 This image was published on the photo blog of Takashi Morizumi. It appears Dr. Satoshi Mori was responsible for the x-ray-like view showing black dots spread throughout the body of a small bird from Iitate Village. The dots are said to be radioactive particles of Cs-137 internalized by eating contaminated insects.

“Takashi Morizumi is a photojournalist who covers topics in Japan and overseas such as the effects of US military bases and environmental problems. In particular, since the later half of the 90s, he has covered the damages caused by nuclear mining, testing, power plants, and the use of depleteted uranium and other nuclear weapons.” -Source

h/t Fukushima Diary

Related: 33% of prized bird species disappears after summer near Fukushima — Those making it back “were in a poor condition” says New Zealand gov’t researcher

BP's Corexit Oil Tar Sponged Up by Human Skin

Mother Jones

The Surfrider Foundation has released its preliminary "State of the Beach" study for the Gulf of Mexico from BP's ongoing Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Sadly, things aren't getting cleaner faster, according to their results. The Corexit that BP used to "disperse" the oil now appears to be making it tougher for microbes to digest the oil. I wrote about this problem in depth in "The BP Cover-Up."

The persistence of Corexit mixed with crude oil has now weathered to tar, yet is traceable to BP's Deepwater Horizon brew through its chemical fingerprint. The mix creates a fluorescent signature visible under UV light. From the report:

The program uses newly developed UV light equipment to detect tar product and reveal where it is buried in many beach areas and also where it still remains on the surface in the shoreline plunge step area. The tar product samples are then analyzed…to determine which toxins may be present and at what concentrations. By returning to locations several times over the past year and analyzing samples, we've been able to determine that PAH concentrations in most locations are not degrading as hoped for and expected.

Worse, the toxins in this unholy mix of Corexit and crude actually penetrate wet skin faster than dry skin (photos above)—the author describes it as the equivalent of a built-in accelerant—though you'd never know it unless you happened to look under fluorescent light in the 370nm spectrum. The stuff can't be wiped off. It's absorbed into the skin.

And it isn't going away. Other findings from monitoring sites between Waveland, Mississippi, and Cape San Blas, Florida over the past two years:

The use of Corexit is inhibiting the microbial degradation of hydrocarbons in the crude oil and has enabled concentrations of the organic pollutants known as PAH to stay above levels considered carcinogenic by the NIH and OSHA.

26 of 32 sampling sites in Florida and Alabama had PAH concentrations exceeding safe limits.
Only three locations were found free of PAH contamination.

Carcinogenic PAH compounds from the toxic tar are concentrating in surface layers of the beach and from there leaching into lower layers of beach sediment. This could potentially lead to contamination of groundwater sources.

The full Surfrider Foundation report by James H. "Rip" Kirby III, of the University of South Florida is open-access online here.

Study: Autism Linked to Industrial Food, Environment

Common Dreams

A new study by Clinical Epigenetics, a peer-reviewed journal that focuses largely on diseases, has found that the rise in autism in the United States could be linked to the industrial food system, specifically the prevalence of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in the American diet. The study, published yesterday online, explores how mineral deficiencies could impact how the human body rids itself of common toxic chemicals like mercury and pesticides. The report comes just after a different report, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, documented a startling rise in autism in the United States.

“To better address the explosion of autism, it’s critical we consider how unhealthy diets interfere with the body’s ability to eliminate toxic chemicals, and ultimately our risk for developing long-term health problems like autism.” said Dr. David Wallinga, a study co-author and physician at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

The report's key findings:

Autism and related disorders affect brain development. The current study sought to determine how environmental and dietary factors, like HFCS consumption, might combine to contribute to the disorder.

Consumption of HFCS, for example, is linked to the dietary loss of zinc, which interferes with the elimination of heavy metals from the body. Many heavy metals like mercury, arsenic and cadmium are potent toxins with adverse effects on brain development in the young.
HFCS consumption can also impact levels of other beneficial minerals, including calcium. Loss of calcium further exacerbates the detrimental effects of exposure to lead on brain development in fetuses and children.

Inadequate levels of calcium in the body can also impair its ability to expel organophosphates, a class of pesticides long recognized by the EPA and independent scientists as especially toxic to the young developing brain.

* * *
Clinical Epigenetics: Abstract

The number of children ages 6 to 21 in the United States receiving special education services under the autism disability category increased 91 % between 2005 to 2010 while the number of children receiving special education services overall declined by 5 %. The demand for special education services continues to rise in disability categories associated with pervasive developmental disorders. Neurodevelopment can be adversely impacted when gene expression is altered by dietary transcription factors, such as zinc insufficiency or deficiency, or by exposure to toxic substances found in our environment, such as mercury or organophosphate pesticides. Gene expression patterns differ geographically between populations and within populations. Gene variants of paraoxonase-1 are associated with autism in North America, but not in Italy, indicating regional specificity in gene-environment interactions. In the current review, we utilize a novel macroepigenetic approach to compare variations in diet and toxic substance exposure between these two geographical populations to determine the likely factors responsible for the autism epidemic in the United States.
* * *
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy: Study Links Autism with Industrial Food, Environment

The epidemic of autism in children in the United States may be linked to the typical American diet according to a new study published online in Clinical Epigenetics by Renee Dufault, et. al. The study explores how mineral deficiencies—affected by dietary factors like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—could impact how the human body rids itself of common toxic chemicals like mercury and pesticides.

The release comes on the heels of a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimates the average rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among eight year olds is now 1 in 88, representing a 78 percent increase between 2002 and 2008. Among boys, the rate is nearly five times the prevalence found in girls.

“To better address the explosion of autism, it’s critical we consider how unhealthy diets interfere with the body’s ability to eliminate toxic chemicals, and ultimately our risk for developing long-term health problems like autism.” said Dr. David Wallinga, a study co-author and physician at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).
# # #

Forget Asteroids and Volcanoes: Chemically Induced Infertility Threatens Human Race

Natural Society, Mar. 14, 2012

With the increase in solar flares and expert warnings over the threat of asteroids, volcanoes, and earthquakes, it’s understandable to be concerned about the future of the earth and mankind alike. What many experts and publications are forgetting, however, is that these disasters may actually be less threatening than the harm placing on our own bodies. Known by some as the ‘infertility timebomb’, men are increasingly becoming infertile at an astounding rate that worries many scientists. We can’t control the trajectory of asteroids, but we can control what we put into our bodies.

Scientific reports have been revealing that men are rapidly on the path to infertility at an alarming pace. One in five men between the ‘healthy’ ages of 18 and 25 were reported to produce abnormal sperm counts, with only 5 to 15% of their sperm healthy enough to be classified as ‘normal’ by the World Health Organization. What’s more, a male infertility problem is considered important by a shocking 40% of couples. Professor Niels Skakkebaek from the University of Copenhagen has been speaking out about the fertility issue, stating that it is as important as the severe environmental concerns that currently face the planet. Another scientist stated that if scientists from another planet were to study the male reproductive system, they would actually conclude that ‘man was destined for rapid extinction’.

One recent study found that Monsanto’s best-selling herbicide Roundup can also be contributing to the possible extinction of the human race. Researchers tested Roundup on mature male rats at a concentration range between 1 and 10,000 parts per million (ppm), and found that within 1 to 48 hours of exposure, testicular cells of the mature rats were either damaged or killed. The most disturbing part? In a study conducted by a German university, the active component of Roundup, Glyphosate, was found in
Full story

Monsanto is secretly poisoning the population with Roundup

DrLeonardColdwell.com, Oct. 4, 2011

Dr. Andreas Carrasco remained in the locked car and watched with fear as the crowd beat the vehicle and shouted at him — for two hours. His friends who didn’t make it into the vehicle were not so lucky. One ended up paralyzed. Another unconscious. The angry crowd of about 100 were likely organized by a local rice grower who was furious at Carrasco for what he was trying to do that day. Carrasco’s crime? Telling people that Roundup herbicide from Monsanto causes birth defects in animals, and probably humans.

Carrasco is a leading embryologist at the University of Buenos Aires Medical School and the Argentinean national research council. He had heard the horrific stories of peasant farmers working near the vast fields of Roundup Ready soybeans — plants genetically engineered to withstand generous doses of Monsanto’s poisonous weed killer. The short-term impact of getting sprayed was obvious: skin rashes, headaches, loss of appetite, and for one 11 year old Paraguayan boy named Silvino Talavera, who biked through a fog of herbicides in 2003, death. But Carrasco also heard about the rise of birth defects, cancer, and other disorders that now plagued the peasants who were sprayed by plane. He decided to conduct a study.

Full story

Clean Laundry Can Emit Hazardous Toxins

Laboratory Equipment, Aug. 25, 2011

The sweet smell of fresh laundry may contain a sour note. Widely used fragranced products—including those that claim to be “green”—give off many chemicals that are not listed on the label, including some that are classified as toxic.

A study led by the Univ. of Washington discovered that 25 commonly used scented products emit an average of 17 chemicals each. Of the 133 different chemicals detected, nearly a quarter are classified as toxic or hazardous under at least one federal law. Only one emitted compound was listed on a product label, and only two were publicly disclosed anywhere. The article is published online in the journal Environmental Impact Assessment Review.

Full story

Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World's Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say

Huffington Post, June 25, 2011

The chemical at the heart of the planet’s most widely used herbicide -- Roundup weedkiller, used in farms and gardens across the U.S. -- is coming under more intense scrutiny following the release of a new report calling for a heightened regulatory response around its use.

Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns.

A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals.

Full story

New Study Finds Major Toxins in Many Cosmetics

FoodConsumer, June 4, 2011

Lead and arsenic aren’t listed among the ingredients of lip gloss and eyeliner. However, Environmental Defence, a Canadian environmental group tested dozens of common cosmetics products and found that virtually all of them were contaminated with heavy metals.

Researchers purchased cosmetics in Toronto, and sent them to an accredited laboratory to have them tested for the presence of arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, beryllium, selenium, thallium and nickel. The items tested included foundations, concealers, powders, blushes, bronzers, mascaras, eyeliners, eyeshadows, lipsticks and glosses.

Full story

Should we drug the drinking water? Adding lithium to the taps 'could lower suicide rates'

Maybe we should ask ourselves why our government is desperate to dope us into submission? -Ed.

Daily Mail, May 25, 2011

Lithium has been heralded by some experts as the next potential flouride, after scientists found suicide rates were lower in areas where the drinking water had higher concentrations of the element.

Researchers from the Medical University of Vienna compared the suicide rates in different regions of Austria with the natural lithium concentrations in the drinking water. The study, published in the British Journal of Pyschiatry, analysed a sample of 6,460 lithium measurements and then compared suicide rates across 99 districts.

Dr Jacob Appel, from Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, said the latest studies provided 'compelling' evidence of the mood-stabilising benefits of lithium.

He said the U.S already supplemented the drinking water with flouride to prevent tooth decay and it would be relatively easy to add lithium, which is a naturally occurring element. He added: 'People who oppose adding lithium to the drinking water in trace amounts don't go around advocating to strain the lithium from the drinking water from areas where it does exist.

'Why not give everyone the same benefit?'

Full story
Related: Liquid Medicine, The Daily, May 25, 2011

Adapting to a New World of Invisible Toxins

Huffington Post Health, Apr. 24, 2011

It's a whole new ballgame, folks. Nearly every community in the modern world is facing an invisible enemy. Constant exposures to toxic loads in our environment carry far more serious consequences than ever before. Survival of the fittest, when the best-suited mutations become dominant, may mean carefully rethinking your place in the modern world.
...
The environmental challenges we now face are exponentially far greater than at any time in my life. More than fourteen thousand synthetic chemicals and preservatives are now a part of our daily food. We are only guessing at the impact of genetically modifying our food and irradiation much as we did with cigarettes. Cell phones are another great "modern" experiment, unconsciously placing them next to our skulls for hours at a time. Body scanning devices in more than 60 US airports are common now, x-raying far more than our feet when we bought those new shoes. Cesium-137 is in our drinking water now; radioactive iodine-131 is in fish. The new symbol on food packages may very well soon be the familiar yellow triangle for radiation with a line through it, bragging "This food has no radioactivity."

Full story

Methyl iodide's use in state challenged by suit

San Francisco Chronicle, Jan.4, 2010

Environmentalists and farmworkers challenged approval of a toxic fumigant and carcinogen for use on California crops Monday and urged Gov. Jerry Brown to reverse the decision.

The coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Thursday calling the decision to register methyl iodide as a pesticide "irresponsible and illegal."

The chemical, produced by Arysta Life- Science Corp. primarily for use on strawberry fields, was approved by the California Department of Pesticide Regulation last month despite concern from some scientists, toxicologists and environmentalists. The lawsuit claims methyl iodide is a poison that causes cancer and thyroid disease and can harm the lungs, liver, kidneys, brain and central nervous system.

Full story