Doctor's Handwriting: deciphering the medical truth

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http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=156 & category=76

 

 

Doctor's Handwriting: deciphering the medical truth

 

 

Date Published: 22/6/01

Author: Lynne McTaggart

 

Twentieth Century Plague

If anything has changed the complexion of our health over the last 30 years, it

is the virtual plague of strange new chemicals that surround us, in our homes,

our air, our water, our food – indeed, in virtually every product we use in our

modern lives. Toxic chemicals have now become what viruses were a century ago –

the hidden source of most illnesses. In our everyday life, we are now so

immersed in chemicals – at the last count there were 70,000 of them out there –

that some of the latest medical conditions – sick building syndrome, multiple

chemical sensitivity – are even being named after them.

 

The latest estimate is that the farming industry worldwide produces some 50,000

different pesticides derived from some 600 different active ingredients.

Researcher Tuula Tuormaa, in a study on behalf of Foresight, the Association of

Preconceptual Care, worked out that every year nearly half a kilogram of

chemicals are released for every man, woman and child in Britain. Something like

350 different man-made chemicals have been detected in British tap water.

 

Pesticides aren’t simply used in our crops and lawns. Local authorities spray

recreation areas of all varieties – parks, golf courses, commons – to keep a

pretty lawn. Railway workers spray kilos of the stuff on railways and

embankments.

 

Staying indoors provides even less of a safe haven from chemical overload. In

the last 30 years, many strange new man-made materials and chemicals have made

their ways into our homes. In one study conducted by America’s Environmental

Protection Agency, comparing indoor and outdoor pollution, the population

studied breathed two to five times more hazardous chemicals when indoors than if

they had sat in their gardens – even those living in highly polluted cities

(Environmental Res, 1987; 43: 290-307).

 

Heading the list of chemicals that make up a virtual chemical soup of our indoor

air are volatile organic compounds (VOCs), derived from petrochemicals, which

are invidious in virtually every aspect of building and home furnishing –

paints, carpets, particle board, wood panelling, many fabrics, even adhesives.

These chemicals slowly leach out toxic vapours at room temperature – a process

called outgassing. Carpets alone can contain some 120 chemicals by the time you

add up the pesticides, rodenticides, fire retardants, stain-resistors,

anti-static elements, backing glues, dyes and other features which make them

last longer and easier to clean.

 

And then there are the toxic chemicals which go towards making up our arsenal of

personal hygiene. A single bottle of shampoo, for example, can contain a

cocktail of 10 or more toxic chemicals, such as sodium laurel sulphate, used in

toothpastes and most soaps as well as shampoos, which is also a detergent used

to clean industrial engines.

 

Despite increasing evidence that chemicals are making many people ill, the

medical establishment stubbornly hangs onto microbes as the one and only source

of illness, considering any other problem the stuff of the sufferer's fevered

imagination. This was the conclusion of the 1996 Royal College’s report on

chronic fatigue syndrome and multiple chemical sensitivity.

 

Understanding all the most puzzling 20th century degenerative diseases like

multiple sclerosis or ME, or even cancer and AIDS, requires that modern medicine

dispose of the notion of all illness having a single cause and begin thinking in

terms of toxic overload.

 

Although good scientific studies abound that prove these chemicals can damage

human health, the crux of the problem is discovering exactly how. There is no

way to determine, for instance, if a single chemical disrupts hormones simply by

examining its molecular makeup.

 

A bigger problem concerns the effect of these substances in tandem. We now know

that the combined effect of two or three pesticides at the low levels that might

be found in most ordinary modern environments magnifies by up to 1,600 times the

effect of any of the chemicals on its own (Science, 1996; 272: 1489-92). That

would argue for the sense of testing these chemicals in combination. But as

Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly pointed out (13 June 1996): ‘To test just

the commonest 1000 toxic chemicals in unique combinations of three would require

at least 166 million different experiments.

 

‘Even if each experiment took just one hour to complete and 100 laboratories

worked round the clock seven days a week, testing all possible unique three-way

combinations of 1000 chemicals would still take over 180 years to complete.’

 

That staggering notion requires all of us to shout a little louder at industry

to avoid the use of all but well-studied chemicals and to insist that

manufacturers have the burden of proof, to prove that a chemical is safe before

it can be circulated. At the moment, most chemicals are innocent until proven

guilty.

 

Perhaps most important, we must no longer allow the deadly triad of the medical,

pharmaceutical and chemical conglomerates to pretend that the beginnings of a

full-blown environmental plague are all in our heads – a pretence that allows

them to get away with murder.

 

Lynne McTaggart is editor of 'What Doctors Don’t Tell You,' a monthly newsletter

which exposes dangers and unproven practices in medicine. Annual subscriptions

cost £34.95. For details: WDDTY, Tower House, Sovereign Park, Market Harborough,

Leics LE16 9EF

Tel: 01858 438894.

 

 

 

 

 

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