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Chemicals in Our Food, and Bodies
Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It's a synthetic estrogen that United States factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies - to the tune of six pounds per American per year. That's a lot of estrogen.
More than 92 percent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it - though not conclusively - to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.
Now it turns out it's in our food.
Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup, and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.
The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula (but not in the powdered version) and in canned Nestlé Juicy Juice (but not in the juice boxes). The BPA in the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans.
Should we be alarmed?
The chemical industry doesn't think so. Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council dismissed the testing, noting that Americans absorb quantities of BPA at levels that government regulators have found to be safe. Mr. Hentges also pointed to a new study indicating that BPA exposure did not cause abnormalities in the reproductive health of rats.
But more than 200 other studies have shown links between low doses of BPA and adverse health effects, according to the Breast Cancer Fund, which is trying to ban the chemical from food and beverage containers.
"The vast majority of independent scientists - those not working for industry - are concerned about early-life low-dose exposures to BPA," said Janet Gray, a Vassar College professor who is science adviser to the Breast Cancer Fund.
Published journal articles have found that BPA given to pregnant rats or mice can cause malformed genitals in their offspring, as well as reduced sperm count among males. For example, a European journal found that male mice exposed to BPA were less likely to make females pregnant, and the Journal of Occupational Health found that male rats administered BPA had less sperm production and lower testicular weight.
This year, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that pregnant mice exposed to BPA had babies with abnormalities in the cervix, uterus and vagina. Reproductive Toxicology found that even low-level exposure to BPA led to the mouse equivalent of early puberty for females. And an array of animal studies link prenatal BPA exposure to breast cancer and prostate cancer.
While most of the studies are on animals, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported last year that humans with higher levels of BPA in their blood have "an increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities." Another published study found that women with higher levels of BPA in their blood had more miscarriages.
Scholars have noted some increasing reports of boys born with malformed genitals, girls who begin puberty at age 6 or 8 or even earlier, breast cancer in women and men alike, and declining sperm counts among men. The Endocrine Society, an association of endocrinologists, warned this year that these kinds of abnormalities may be a consequence of the rise of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and it specifically called on regulators to re-evaluate BPA.
Last year, Canada became the first country to conclude that BPA can be hazardous to humans, and Massachusetts issued a public health advisory in August warning against any exposure to BPA by pregnant or breast-feeding women or by children under the age of 2.
The Food and Drug Administration, which in the past has relied largely on industry studies - and has generally been asleep at the wheel - is studying the issue again. Bills are also pending in Congress to ban BPA from food and beverage containers.
"When you have 92 percent of the American population exposed to a chemical, this is not one where you want to be wrong," said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. "Are we going to quibble over individual rodent studies, or are we going to act?"
While the evidence isn't conclusive, it justifies precautions. In my family, we're cutting down on the use of those plastic containers that contain BPA to store or microwave food, and I'm drinking water out of a metal bottle now. In my reporting around the world, I've come to terms with the threats from warlords, bandits and tarantulas. But endocrine disrupting chemicals - they give me the willies.Comments
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17 Comments so far
Show AllC'mon people now smile on your brister everybody get together time to bend all our genders right now!!
Have a gender non-specific day!!
the author writes: "While the evidence isn't conclusive, it justifies precautions"
hey buddy - haven't you even read your article
control of the world is the ultimate goal of the american imperial fascists - many of whom are transplanted nazis allowed in the us by secret decree after ww2
the military calls it full spectrum domination
but you can't argue with the facts in america because the population has been so dumbed down, as the rockefellers like to term it, they can no longer reason or think
"If Jonathan Swift traveled to the United States today, he would surely ditch the little guys, the big guys and the horses and just feature Gulliver being squashed flat by enormously fat people.
I drive across the US every year and I can report that there’s been a significant upswing in the blubbergraph. In early October (in a 1990 Dodge 250 with five-speed and a Cummins engine) I drove east to west across America along Interstate 40 – much of the western portion is the old Route 66, famed in song and story -- which runs from Asheville, NC, to Nashville, Little Rock, Oklahoma City, Amarillo, Albuquerque and on through Arizona into California.
Every truck stop, every diner, every mall offered its tumid diorama of human hippos. We’re talking every age group here – starting with humpty-dumpty adolescents and ascending through the decades to 50-year olds, gigantic, stertorous and grey of countenance. My friend Wilbur who runs a trailer park in South Carolina told me there’s a woman in one of his double-wides who’s up around 400 pounds and can’t get through the door even if she wanted to. She sits and watches tv all day and when she passes, Wilbur will have to get a giant can opener to rip open the side of the trailer to winch out her remains.
In Eureka, my local town here in northern California, a couple of years ago they had to get new scales in the clinics and bigger MRI tubes. The Pentagon could probably make a buck or two for the taxpayer, selling torpedo launchers from decommissioned submarines for MRI conversion. It’s not quite what the swords-into-plowshares movement had in mind, but that’s America for you."
http://www.counterpunch.org/
same article: "I was just in Paris and in the course of a week Alya and I saw precisely one person – a young woman – who could be classed by a European as very plump. In America she’d be still dreaming of going to ballet school."
for anyone who is interested enough to get off their fat asses long enough to actually read a book - actually you can do that while remaining on your fat asses - f william engdahl has written the book to explain the whole thing
here's a review:
Engdahl's newest book is just out from the Centre for Research on Globalization. It's a sequel to his first one called "Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation" and subject of this review. It's the diabolical story of how Washington and four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and why that prospect is chilling. The book's compelling contents are reviewed below in-depth so readers will know the type future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970 when he said: "Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people."
Remember also, this cabal is one of many interconnected ones with fearsome power and ruthless intent to use it - Big Banks controlling the Federal Reserve and our money, Big Oil our world energy resources, Big Media our information, Big Pharma our health, Big Technology our state-of-the-art everything and watching us, Big Defense our wars, Big Pentagon waging them, and other corporate predators exploiting our lives for profit. Engdahl's book focuses brilliantly on one of them. To fully cover its vital contents, this review will be in three parts for more detail and to make it easily digestible."
from: http://www.rense.com/general80/seedsofdestruction.htm
buy a copy here: http://globalresearch.ca/books/SoD.html
we now a-have a situation in america where for the first time in hundreds of years our children have a shorter life expectancy than we do
all that shit food, lousy water and copious medications we shove down their throats is killing them and doing so quickly
so if you are too defeated to stand up for either yourself or your country - then stand up for your children
mr rockefeller is killing them far more effectively than any bullshit made up phantom of a terrorist
do it for your kids before they are all dead america
remember when you used to care about them...
moms everywhere in america: look into the fat bloated and chemcicalized faces of your children, recall the moment you gave them life, and then for christ sake take some action to protect them
they depend on you for that
Buff, I just wanted to say that your comment moved me. I like your passion and fire.
I just don't know if people are willing to stand up and fight anymore. Maybe they have been made passive and submissive by the chemicals in the food, water, and the air. I look up at the sky and I see the chem trails and I wonder what they are spraying in the air that we breath. I know it is something that isn't good for us.
I hate to even think this but I just don't see Americans standing up.
Sioux Rose
BUFF: Your post cracked me up. Two years ago venturing into a Wallmart in North Florida and seeing people larger than their cattle, I began writing a satirical movie script, "Fat Chance" that used the overweight American physique as a metaphor of the nation's general patterns of over-consumption in a great many things. Predictably, Hollywood saw no reason to validate or produce this script. It begins with a husband frustrated by his wife's going from diet to diet and never managing to lose any weight. Of course the box of donuts surreptitiously forced under the couch cushions, a strategic maneuver taken when hubby heads home from work early one day, doesn't help. Said husband enters the big department store where he's confronted by the images of so many obese/deformed bodies as to constitute the feedback from a fun house mirror... and this encounter catalyzes his wish, and later entrepreneurial venture that features GUARANTEED weight loss tours (or adventures). They are guaranteed because those signed up ONLY get to eat what they can hunt, fish or forage.
I am in New York at the moment and I walk a great deal. The present style in this very fashionable city are leggings with very short skirts, or long sweaters. Therefore LOTS of women are showing LOTS of leg(s), and I have to say, I have mostly seen VERY fit women. There was a marathon here last week, and maybe that's why so many look to be in great shape here... but it is NOT the national "average." A friend of mine who lived north of LA told me that it had the most beautiful people in the Western world as anyone with the hope of becoming a Hollywood star waited tables until their big break or audition came.
Anyway, your post was profound for its honesty. The obesity thing is real, and while modern additives MUST be playing their part, so, too, is a lack of exercise, a generation that does not work in the fields, walk two miles to school, and in many instances opts instead for a sedentary lifestyle, one situated for long hours before a computer/game board or TV. Just as the nation has opted for standardized education, thus narrowing minds, its children are expressly not coached toward becoming the leaders and inventors of tomorrow. How much is conspiracy, how much the short sighted destination that a for-profit national agenda leads to, is hard to distinguish. I just wanted to say that a cosmopolitan city like NY seems to be bypassing the national fatness trend.
Your post brought something else to mind, Rose. One time I was talking to my doctor (my wife was there worrying that she might be too skinny), and the doctor told us a story of a Hispanic couple who brought their boy in thinking that he was too thin. They were both portly themselves. He says that our image of what is healthy and unhealthy now is all confused. He told the couple that it would be better if they trimmed down closer to their boy's size.
There's one thing to be careful about measuring health in terms of size. Skinny doesn't necessarily mean healthy. One can be average to not too fat and yet be healthy too. Pay close attention to what is actually being fed. That doctor was careless to tell the couple to do that.
Sioux Rose brought up an eye-catching description of seeing fit people but forgot to include one important detail. In Medieval Europe, men used to be dressed in skin-tight leggings and no woman could laugh at him back then. Today, some people would call him "gay" even if he dressed up for athletic purposes. Tight-fit unisex clothing for both men and women reduces blood pressure and reminds us that we need to keep fit more often than not. It's a good thing that legwear for both men and women are becoming the norm in Europe. The US might take some time to play catch up thanks to political stupidity from both sides but I'm getting surprising approval from both feminists and doctors who recommend compressed legwear to go along with exercise. No wonder the conservatives are jealous of NYC.
I worry about the safety of women dressed up nice and tight. If men could dress likewise without getting called "gay", women would be safer. I apologize if anyone was "offended" by this by any small chance.
There is nothing offensive about men wearing leggings whatsoever. Usually, the only women who "mind" are the ones who didn't like wearing any of it themselves. They have no authority to tell men what's offensive to wear and what isn't just like men have no authority to tell women what's offensive to wear and what isn't. Out here in South Carolina, it's not easy for men to dress in leggings. It should be ok in NYC though. Most women don't mind men dressed in leggings and some of them actually find them just as attractive as men getting attracted to women in tight leggings. It's the 21st century anyway. Feel free to be yourself dude !
Don't be so sure. Some women find men offensive for wearing legwear even they wear it themselves to cover their own poor looking legs. Women can be just as hypocritical and controlling as men.
They hate speedos, even as they wear similarly tight-fitting and skimpy stretchy suits made of the same material - no matter how lousy their figure. And a famous poll some years ago showed women would date a murderer over a "cross-dresser" by a factor of three or four to one.
Men are supposed to be ugly, not pretty. The opposite goes for women. If you're a pretty man or an ugly woman you're just SOL.
I haven't come across such women even in Virginia Beach. Surprisingly, the suburbanites are far more tolerant of a guy wearing leggings under his shorts than the poor neighborhoods probably due to lack of education and manners. I haven't had any problems though.
I would say one thing about women and their opposition to guys wearing tights as openly as women. There is no law forbidding it. If they have a problem seeing a guy wearing tights, all I can suggest is try to reason with them but if nothing else, just turn the other cheek. Seriously though, the intolerance is dying down anyway.
There is no rule that I know of, legally or socially, where a man is supposed to look ugly whereas a woman is supposed to look pretty. In research where neutral observers rated people on scales of 1-10 for overall physical attractiveness, there is a common finding that most people date and marry people who are within 1 or 2 points of their partner. So take a good look at yourself in the mirror. The bad news is that people who are much more physically attractive than you (that you have always dreamed of dating) may not want to date or marry you. However, the good news is that there are many people who are about your level of physical attractiveness who would love to date or marry you.
Of course there are many exceptions to this rule. However, one theory states that if someone marries someone who is much more physically attractive, then they need to have some compensating characteristics in which they may be much more attractive than their partner. The classic example is the rich, not-so-attractive man marrying the beautiful woman. Of course there can be problems with this type of inequality. He may always wonder if she married him for his money (maybe she did); and she may have to put up with being married to someone she's not very attracted to.
"The present style in this very fashionable city are leggings with very short skirts, or long sweaters. Therefore LOTS of women are showing LOTS of leg(s), and I have to say, I have mostly seen VERY fit women. There was a marathon here last week, and maybe that's why so many look to be in great shape here."
- What a pile of shit. No fit men? Really? You ain't been to New York. Liar !
FOOLPROOF BULLETPROOF
"all that shit food, lousy water and copious medications we shove down their throats is killing them and doing so quickly"
right and let's not forget some of the bigger elephants on the grocery store or megalomart shelves...the endless bright bottles of chemicalized products for cleaning homes and bodies, washing clothes and dishes, scenting air or providing "antibacterial"
protection...why, visiting such establishments is a veritable trip to the chem warfare lab! I ask my friends and family to read the labels before buying, yet their homes are filled with these products regardless. Not only do they lather the bodies of themselves and their children with this poison, they happily wash it all down the drain, and thus downstream to pollute their own watersheds...then wonder at the suffering of their little ones plagued with asthma and itchy horrid skin afflictions, or worse yet, immune system disorders, cancers.
If you are buying this stuff, toothpastes, deoderants, hair products, lotions, cleaners, detergents, synthetic perfumes, scented candles, air fresheners, even scented kleenex or toiletpapers, you are ingesting unknown chemicals through your skin and lungs.
BPA, if the issue manages to break mainstream, could provide the opening necessary for a larger awakening to the dangers of unregulated chemicals in our world, though in my opinion, BPA is the tip of the iceberg.
Doesn't seem to stop millions from crossing the border over to the US side.
Those same "pro life" creeps don't show up when it comes to the damaging effects of BPA on women's reproductive system ! So it's ok for BPA to cause abortions and defective babies but women are somehow "wrong" to take control of their own bodies ! This is one of the results of what a for-profit system can do to us. BPA is for profit but women somehow aren't so it's all a matter of persecuting those who are deemed a "threat" to the for-profit system !
Devoish,
EWG has been working and reorting on BPA for quite some time now. This is as interesting a place to start as any.
http://www.ewg.org/reports/bpatimeline
Obviously, BPA poisoning is a 'pre-existing' condition for Big Insurence considerations...you can pay more but you can't get less!
I just don't know if people are willing to stand up and fight anymore. Maybe they have been made passive and submissive by the chemicals in the food, water, and the air...
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