bearing the burden

I do not have the answer for how to fix this.  And, that is the sad, unfortunate truth of much of what I write.

We have created a society where it is valued to smear products on our face, put chemicals in our food and homes, and where we walk through god knows what being emitted from business and cars.  As a result, our bodies get beaten up by this stuff.

Over the last few years, a group of women gave blood samples to determine the amounts of chemicals the body stores from exposure.  The thing that is important to know about these women is that they all work for various environmental agencies.  The significance is that these women, we can assume, are aware of toxic exposure in face products, make-up, non-organic foods, etc., and probably try very hard to stay away from those ingredients.  However, each of these women had anywhere from 25-45 foreign chemicals in their bloodstream.

Can you imagine what is in the blood stream of someone who is unaware?  Imagine the person who is heavily marketed to by various corporations.  Or, imagine the low income worker who is trying to scrape by a living and doesn’t have the priveledge of trying to stay away from this stuff.  And, then imagine a society that then will not give them healthcare when they get disease after disease from exposure.

It really is a shame.  The only thing we can do is stop using certain products ourselves and try to educate and advocate for as many people as possible so these chemcials are illeminated from the mainstream consumer goods.

here is some good news, for a change

In a first, environmental health scientists and chemists are joining forces to find safe chemicals, as reported by Environmental Health News.

The goal of the collaboration is to merge the knowledge and ideas of toxicologists and others who specialize in the dangers posed by chemicals with experts in green chemistry, who design nontoxic, environmentally benign materials.

After reading the article, and the proposals put forth at this conference, I believe they are heading in the right direction. There is an understanding of the current limitations, and a concise plan to move forward. For example:

“The current regulatory strategy of testing chemicals one by one cannot possibly identify all of the substances that threaten health,” said Joe Thornton, an associate professor in the Center for Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Oregon.

Thornton recommended three changes:

* Reform the nation’s chemical-by-chemical regulatory process.
* Put precautionary policies in place when the science about a compound is uncertain.
* End the use of chemicals with properties that are likely to disrupt hormones.

Goldman said one major barrier is that chemicals are regulated one at a time, while in human bodies, they always occur in mixtures.

I was sad to read that because of lack of regulation, lack of funding, and lack of training, there are only 300 of the 83,000 chemists that embrace “green” chemistry. I think the hope of this conference is to move the entire community into the right direction.