Detox Planet Earth

[Guest guest]

http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/04-22/detox-human-body-earth-article.htm

 

DETOX—NOT JUST FOR HOLLYWOOD NIMRODS

 

Parallel Detoxification Systems for Planet Earth and the Human Body

 

The human body has a fairly efficient and resilient system for eliminating the

toxins it encounters on a daily basis. The substances the body must detoxify

include chunks of pork rinds and other byproducts of digestion; toxins you

breathed in or ingested, such as air pollutants, pesticide residues on food, or

toxic elements in water; and excess human hormones that the body no longer

needs.

 

As the list suggests, some of the toxins are unavoidable side effects of the

body's day-to-day operations; others come from external, undesirable sources.

 

Planet earth exhibits a certain parallel to this. It has processes that (over

time) can eliminate, denature, or bind both natural and manmade toxins in a way

that reduces the exposure that living organisms have to them.

 

OK, back to us hoo-mans. In the case of acute or chronic (long-term) chemical

exposure in the human body, the body's detoxification system may ultimately get

overwhelmed and be unable to keep up with the incoming load of toxins. Disease

is usually the result.

 

Similarly, the earth's filtration system can get overwhelmed. This can occur

locally—for instance, near a toxic-waste site—so that the area becomes dangerous

for living organisms to inhabit. The contamination can also be at a lower level

but spread out over a much wider area, resulting in slow but chronic degradation

of organisms' health.

 

System capacity can also be considered globally: What total level of pollutants

can the earth's detoxification system handle? The planet's environment is, for

the most part, a closed system. Whereas the human body can usually completely

rid itself of wastes by excreting them, the earth cannot do the same.

 

It must either convert them into non-toxic nutrients that can be reused by the

global ecosystem, or it must store them somewhere within its system (at least

until the government's " Big Rocket Ships Full of Toxic Waste " program gets

underway.)

 

We're dumping billions of tons of hazardous waste each year into System Earth.

When will we reach the point where earth's detoxification systems can't keep up

anymore? That's a big scary unknown. Since long-term overload of the human

body's detoxification system usually results in disease or a visit from that

Skeletal Hooded Guy You'd Rather Avoid, a more cautious approach on how we

produce, use, and dispose of chemicals and other toxics on earth might not be a

bad idea. Except for those pork rinds—we will keep eating those no matter what!

(Yeah, right.)

 

 

THE BIG BALL OF CHEMICALS

 

The World Watch Institute (WWI) points out that, according to the US EPA, there

are more than 850,000 industrial facilities that use hazardous or extremely

hazardous chemicals in the US. In 1999, the last year for which complete figures

are available, these plants were responsible for the release of 7.7 BILLION

pounds of toxic chemicals into the nation's air and water. While this figure is

sufficiently worrisome, WWI points out that it does not include toxic

contributions by small- and medium-sized facilities, which are not required to

report on their activities; nor does the figure include some unmonitored

industrial chemicals.

 

 

 

Let's make every day Earth Day.

 

Publish date:

22-APR-2004 (EARTH DAY