Food for Preventive Thought
Polio – At an October 2000 meeting in Kyoto Japan, the World Health Organisation (WHO) announced that their massive public health campaign to eliminate the polio virus is working. The latest triumph is to eradicate the disease from the heavily populated Western Pacific, an area where about 33% of the world’s residents live. This is a region made up of 37 countries ranging from China to the French Polynesia.
The Geneva based WHO is now projecting that by the end of year 2000 only 20 counties in the world will remain with having the virus that causes Polio. Countries still experiencing transmissions of polio are mainly in Africa, with a few in Asia.
DDT -- In Southern California, (off the Palos Verdes peninsula southwest of Los Angeles) there is an estimated 110 tons of DDT-containing material spread out under the sea. DDT has been banned from being
USED in the U.S. for over 30 years because of links to cancer in humans and reproductive problems in marine animals and birds. Two forms of DDT are listed on the California list of human reproductive toxins.
The federal EPA (and their Superfund for cleaning up toxins) declared this 17 square-mile ocean-covered area to be the nation’s largest deposit of DDT less than 6 years ago. The EPA has to-date spent a few million dollars to spread sand over the site, but much of their money and energy has focused on getting various companies and municipalities to pay the Superfund for any future effort to eliminate the source of this reproductive toxin.
LEAD Poisoning -- It has been pretty firmly demonstrated that the mineral LEAD has the potential for being a major reproductive toxin. It also is known to cause many different ailments within animals and humans that have been exposed to this toxic mineral. Recently, scientists reported on the results of the tests they conducted on the hair of Ludwig von Beethoven, a composer who died of an explained chronic illness in 1827.
It had been long suggested by “many speculators” that Beethoven died as a result of poisoning by the mineral Mercury. Mercury was the normal treatment of that era for the disease of syphilis. However, the scientists testing the hair of Beethoven reported that they where unable to measure any Mercury in the hair sample, but they did find very large concentrations of the mineral LEAD which were more than 100 times what you would normally find in the human hair of a healthy person.
future effort by the Superfund to eliminate the source of this reproductive toxin.
LEAD Poisoning -- It has been pretty firmly demonstrated that the mineral LEAD has the potential for being a major reproductive toxin. It also is known to cause many different ailments within animals and humans that have been exposed to this toxic mineral. Recently, scientists reported on the results of the tests they conducted on the hair of Ludwig von Beethoven, a composer who died of an unexplained chronic illness in 1827.
It had been long suggested by “many speculators” that Beethoven died as a result of poisoning by the mineral Mercury. Mercury was the normal treatment of that era for the disease of syphilis.
However, the scientists testing the hair of Beethoven reported that they were unable to measure any Mercury in the hair sample, but they did find very large concentrations of the mineral LEAD which were more than 100 times what you would normally find in the human hair of a healthy person.
Mercury — The headline read “Mercury Found in Bass From Sierra Watershed”. The LA Times’ story reported that samples taken during 1999 showed that the mercury concentrations reached 0.74 parts per million in channel catfish, 0.41 in sunfish, 0.43 in brown trout, and 0.38 in rainbow trout — all above the 0.3 level that the state of California considers indicative of the need for further study.
PURSUE PREVENTION!
WHAT YOU PERSONALLY DO, CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
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