Sperm counts falling, babies changing gender, cancers proliferating..

[Guest guest]

" Zeus " <info

A MUST READ: Sperm counts falling, babies changing gender,

cancers proliferating....

Tue, 13 Sep 2005 11:43:23 +0100

 

 

 

 

Sperm counts falling, babies changing gender, cancers proliferating -

the scandal of the secret Blair-Bush pact to limit controls on toxic

chemicals.

 

by Geoffrey Lean

Daily Mail 9/9/05

 

There can be few greater betrayals than for a Government to sacrifice

the health of babies and small children to boost the profits of

foreign firms. But that is exactly what Tony Blair and his ministers

seem determined to do.

 

Confidential documents show that Britain is brokering a dirty deal in

Brussels to exempt some of the most dangerous chemicals in widespread

use from new European safety controls.

 

And what is worse, it is acting at the behest of the Bush

administration, which wants to limit restrictions on America's exports

of highly toxic substances because of the potential threat to the

profits of big chemical companies.

 

Among the chemicals are many of those which - as the Daily Mail

reported yesterday (see article below) - have been found to poison

babies in the womb, passing from mother to child through the umbilical

cord.

 

Research at Groningen University in the Netherlands, commissioned by

Greenpeace and WWF (formerly the World Wildlife Fund), found that

every one of the newborn babies the research team monitored had a

cocktail of at least 5 poisonous chemicals in their blood. Some had

as many as 14.

 

Harmful

The chemicals - found in such everyday objects as soap, cosmetics,

clingfilm, tin cans, toothpaste, baby bottles, furniture, cleaning

products and non-stick pans - have been linked to cancers, birth

defects and genital abnormalities.

 

Many of them are the so-called 'gender-bending' chemicals which are

increasingly being linked with a precipitous drop in sperm counts

around the world. According to new research, at least one of these

chemicals, phthalates, is already 'feminising' baby boys.

 

Yet the secret documents demonstrate that Britain, which holds the

presidency of the EU, is secretly putting together a deal that will

exempt phthalates and other chemicals from controls outlined in a new

directive.

 

The REACH directive - standing for Registration, Evaluation and

Authorisation of Chemicals - is designed to monitor the mind-boggling

number of untested substances that both enrich and endanger our daily

lives.

 

At the last count - some 20 years ago - more than 100,000 chemicals

were in use in Europe; there will be many more now.

 

Many of them have brought us great benefits. Some are medicines which

have been used to beat back deadly and disabling diseases. Others, in

plastics, have brought us many useful consumer products. Others still

have helped us to increase harvests and preserve food.

 

Yet we are staggeringly ignorant of the damage they may be doing to

us. In fact, we have little or no safety data on over 85% of all the

substances on the market.

 

Tests by WWF found that the blood of every adult and child in Britain

contains a host of hazardous substances.

 

Children are usually more contaminated than adults. Babies and small

children are most vulnerable.

 

As the new study reported by the Mail shows, mothers can pass as much

as a third of the chemicals that have long built up in their bodies to

their unborn children.

 

'Worrying trends are believed to be partially linked to chemicals,'

says Margot Wallstrom, an EU vice-president.

 

She cites a 63% increase in cancers in France in 20 years and the fact

that one in every seven European couples has infertility problems.

 

Gender-bending chemicals are causing the most concern.

 

In May, alarming research showed that baby boys born to mothers

exposed to phthalates had smaller penises and displayed other signs of

feminisation of the genitals.

 

Phthalates, which are in widespread use to make plastic more pliable,

were found in nearly 90% of babies tested for the study published this

week.

 

Chemicals used as flame retardants, found in half the blood samples in

the study, are believed to have similar properties as a banned group

of chemicals known as PCBs (polychlorobiphenyls).

 

Research at Rotterdams's Erasmus University suggested that boys born

to mothers who'd been exposed to PCBs grew up wanting to play with

dolls and tea-sets rather than with traditionally male children's toys.

 

Disturbing

More generally, the gender benders are increasingly blamed for sperm

counts dropping by half in the last half century, causing men now to

produce proportionately only about a third as much sperm as hamsters.

 

Just three months ago, 125 of the leading scientists in the field

called for urgent action on these chemicals, to establish the size of

the risk and to protect us, if necessary, from it.

 

Yet it is these very chemicals that Britain is planning to exclude

from the European laws.

 

It is the culmination of a disheartening story in which ministers seem

to have succumbed to an unscrupulous campaign by the American government.

 

You might think that the United States has no business setting out to

emasculate laws designed to protect British and European children -

but that has not deterred President Bush, who is living up to his

nickname 'The Toxic Texan'.

 

For the past three years, the Bush administration has been mounting an

intensive campaign to weaken the REACH directive (which aims to get

companies to carry out, and report on, safety tests on their chemicals

and impose controls on the most dangerous ones).

 

According to documents I have seen, two years ago, Colin Powell, the

then Secretary of State, circulated around US embassies instructions

to lobby against the directive because 'US exports in most industrial

sectors - totalling tens of billions of dollars - could be impacted'.

 

Damage

Britain's reaction to this was shameful - and unsurprising. After

initially backing the directive, it switched to denouncing it as

'disastrously wrong'.

Worse, Tony Blair succeeded in greatly weakening its provisions by

writing a joint letter to the EU with President Jacques Chirac of

France and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of Germany, expressing

'concern' and calling for 'substantial changes'.

 

Now, Britain has drawn up a new version of the REACH directive - to be

put before the other EU governments this autumn - which exempts

gender-bending chemicals from the controls unless there is 'scientific

evidence of serious effects to humans or the environment'.

 

Scientists say that if this provision is approved, it means that these

chemicals could only be controlled after they had done grave damage to

people and wildlife, making a mockery of the directive.

 

Dr. Andreas Kortenkamp, of London University's Centre for Toxicology,

says that 'very few, if any' gender-bending chemicals would be

regulated under the British plan.

 

While Professor John Sumpter of Brunel University says: 'I would want

action to be taken if there was good evidence that serious effects

were likely, even if they had not been unequivocally proved.'

 

Britain says it is trying to protect jobs - and indeed chemical

companies employ more than 1.7 million people across Europe.

 

But studies show that the directive's provisions would cost these

companies less than 0.06% of their turnover and save over £30 billion

in healthcare costs by reducing disease over the next 30 years.

 

It is long past time that Tony Blair started prioritising the health

of the people of this country over the interests of George W. Bush's

fat-cat friends.

 

He should make a start by putting control of gender-bending chemicals

back into the directive.

 

(No link on website)

______________

 

 

Babies being poisoned in the womb

09:59am 8th September 2005

 

Babies in the womb are being exposed to a shocking cocktail of

chemicals that can cause cancer in later life and have gender-bending

qualities, research has revealed.

 

Tests on blood taken from the umbilical cords of nearly 30 new born

babies and from more than 40 new mothers were analysed for chemicals

ranging from artificial musks used in cosmetics and cleaning products

to flame retardants and chemicals used to make plastics and coatings.

 

Most of the chemicals are found in everyday products such as cleaning

fluids and sprays, tin can linings, perfumes and cosmetics and even

baby bottles. Others include banned pesticides such as DDT that have

lingered in the environment for decades.

 

Every single sample of mother or baby blood tested positive for an

array of chemicals, many of which are suspected of being linked to

health problems ranging from birth defects and genital abnormalities

to certain types of cancer.

 

The report, A Present for Life: hazardous chemicals in cord blood,

from WWF-UK and Greenpeace, says babies are being exposed to these

chemicals at the most vulnerable point in their development.

 

It also calls for urgent action to be taken to control the production

and sale of those chemicals that may damage the health of babies and

adults alike.

 

All umbilical cords contained a minimum of five of the 35 chemicals

tested for, some contained as many as 14. Two of the mothers tested

had 17 of the 35 chemicals in their blood.

 

The report also highlights the possible effects of chemicals on

children's brain development and intelligence.

 

It says proposed new EU legislation on chemicals called " REACH " gives

Europe a crucial opportunity to take the necessary action to protect

humans and the environment from the effects of harmful chemicals and

to make producers responsible for the impacts of their products.

 

Helen Perivier, toxics campaigner for Greenpeace International said:

" Babies feeding through the umbilical cord are exposed to toxic

chemicals from products like vinyl plastics, cleaning products,

electronics and perfumes.

 

" It is shocking that such chemicals are in the human body at any stage

of our life, let alone at the very start, when the child is most

vulnerable. Governments need to act and require industries to

substitute these contaminating chemicals with safer alternatives. "

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/womenfamily.html?in_articl\

e_id=361722 & in_page_id=1799

 

forwarded by

Zeus Information Service

Alternative Views on Health

www.zeusinfoservice.com