🚀 go-pugleaf

CHEMICAL WARFARE

  �No matter where you live today - whether in New York City or on a
remote island in the arctic ocean, anyone willing to put up the $ 2000
for testing, will find more than 250 synthetic industrial chemicals in
their body�.

     Rachel Environmental Health News

 http://www.midnight-fire.net/theweeklyreport/cocktail.html

OUR STOLEN FUTURE

  Classic Science Fiction, particularly in the second half of the
twentieth century, has with increasing subtlety becoming science fact.
More than 30 years ago english writer Bryan Aldiss, presented us with
�Greybeard�, a novel about a world without fertile humans. Then, almost
ten years ago another Oxford based novelist, P. D. James, took time off
from writing her popular crime stories, to warn us about the folly of
ignoring the consequences of technological progress, in a scary novel
titled �The Children of Men�. Set in 2021 James� narrator wonders why no
one in the late twentieth century suggested that human fertility was
dramatically changing. �When Omega came, it came with dramatic
suddenness and was received with incredulity. Overnight, it seemed, the
human race had lost its power to breed.�
  Now a non - fiction book is re - telling the story, this time for
real. Theo Colborn, a 72 year zoologist with the World Wide Fund for
Nature (WWF), has presented evidence in the book Our Stolen Future, that
man made chemicals are threatening the fertility, intelligence and
survival of the Human species. Human males, Colborn insists, will
probably become infertile by the middle of this century, if a ban on the
chemicals known to disrupt the endocrine (hormone producing) system, is
not implemented as soon as soon as possible. She estimates that as much
as 500 measurable chemicals are now present in our bodies. As she puts
in her book they�re here, there and everywhere, even in the bodies of
Eskimos in arctic regions where there is no polluting industry. Despite
the book�s potential prophecy of doom, Colborn believes that everything
will be OK. �I don�t think we�re facing such a scenario because there
are industrialists out there with a conscience and they will make the
right decisions.�
  She may be an eminent scientist and one very knowledgeable in her
field, but politically she is hopelessly naive.

THREATS TO HEALTH

  The human body is more than a mere collection of 50 million individual
cells because our cells work together. Working together required
coordination, which requires communication. Nerves are just one avenue
of communication - the one employed for rapid, discrete messages, such
as a quick instruction to a hand, to move away from a hot stove. Dioxin
interferes with the body�s natural signaling hormones. This results in
many general health effects including �wasting� diseases and suppressed
immune defenses against infectious diseases. Dioxin also disrupts the
activity of the Thyroid gland. Interference with Thyroid hormone
function during development leads to abnormalities in brain and
behavioral development. The eventual results in a moderate to severe
alterations of Thyroid hormone concentrations, particularly during
foetal life, are motor dysfunction of varying severity including
cerebral palsy, mental retardation and reduced IQ, learning
disabilities, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, hydrocephalus
seizures and other permanent neurological abnormalities.
  However, the specific effects on man, woman and children are best
examined by looking at each in turn. There are many male reproductive
health problems associated with dioxin. The reduction in sperm counts
and semen quality is one example. Many studies in recent years have
suggested that sperm counts have declined dramatically, roughly 50 % in
the last 50 years. Exposure to Dioxin also causes testicular cancer,
which is the commonest among men aged 15-34 in Scotland, accounting for
29.8 % of cancers in this age group. Dioxin also causes reproductive
abnormalities such as cryptorchidism (undescended testes) and
hypospadias (urethra opening on the underside of the penis). Basically
we are talking about feminization of male offspring. The average man
only produces two to four times the sperm needed for fertility. The US
magazine Nation recently reported:
�If the decline continues at its present rate, humans in industrialized
countries will have difficulty reproducing by the year 2020�.
  That will surely solve any population problems, but take us from a
position of sublime to the ridiculous. One can imagine a desperate
search through the remote areas of  Africa and Latin-America to find
males still capable of fertilize a female ovum. Maybe the �white race�
will commit chemical suicide. After 500 years of arrogant, conquest of
non-whites and of nature, it would be poetic justice. It could well be
Mother Nature�s way of restoring the balance.
  Women exposed to Dioxin (i.e. all women) face a much higher risk of
developing endometriosis, a painful growth outside the uterus of cells
that normally forms the uterus - which was formerly a rare condition,
now afflicts 5 million American women. In 1960 a woman�s change of
developing breast cancer during her lifetime was one in 20. Today
changes are one in eight.
  However, perhaps the most worrying possible consequences of human
exposure to Dioxin is in the earliest stages in life. The fetus lives in
the womb enclosed inside a fluid-filled sac called the placenta, which
provides a barrier to many poisons that the mother might ingest. Unlike
many other poisons, Dioxin crosses the placenta and begins affecting the
fetus. The human body retains Dioxin, so a �body burden� begins
accumulating in each of us during our early months in the womb.
According to Ralph Ryder, the coordinator of Communities Against Toxics
(CATS),
   �It�s like putting a hand grenade into the center of human biology.�
  Studies of populations of wildlife have shown for decades that animals
were being affected by this invisible, tasteless, odorless, deadly
threat, but the evidence went unheeded by those doing the damage and
those allowing the damage to be done: industry and government.
  In 1950, Syracuse University researchers exposed young roosters to DDT
and showed that their testicles only grew to 18 - eighteen - percent of
normal size. The researchers concluded: �These findings suggest that DDT
may exert an oestrogen-like action�� A 1963 study showed that cysts and
and cancers developed in mice treated with oestrogen as newborns. Author
Thelma Dunn warned that her work showed �the vulnerability of the
immature animal to the harmful effects of exposure to a naturally
occurring hormone.�
  Papers began to appear in scientific journals showing declines in
wildlife populations, resulting from exposures to certain pesticides.
Reports of odd behavior began to appear as well - pairs of female gulls
(so called �gay gulls�) sharing nests, pairs of terns failing to sit on
their eggs, neglecting to defend their nests against predators.
Alligators with penises so small they couldn�t reproduce. As time passed
hundreds of such studies accumulated from many aprts of the world.
  Yet still these early warnings were ignored. From about 1940 onward,
roughly 1000 new chemicals were introduced into commercial channels each
year (a practice that continues today). Back in the �40s no one asked
whether any of these chemicals might exert an oestrogen-like effect or
might in some other way disrupt the chemical -messaging system on which
we all depend for health and well-being. Still today, no one in any
official capacity is asking. Science alone rarely, if ever provides the
answer. The time has come to pause and finally ask the ethical questions
that have been overlooked in the headlong rush of the 20th century. Is
it right to change Earth�s atmosphere? Is it right to alter the chemical
environment in the womb for every unborn child? Now that we know better,
we must have the courage to be very cautious, for the stakes are very
high.

TACKLING THE CRISIS

  So, bearing this grave situation in mind? How does the chemical
industry at large respond to the threat? Well, If it�s similar to its US
equivalent (which it is), it will be ready to come back at forces for
change with a vengeance: In 1993 the US Chemical Manufacturers
Association created the Chlorine Chemistry Council (CCC) with a budget
said to be about a $100 million per year. The CCC soon hired MBD, a
public relations firm that proudly proclaims that one of its main
strengths is spying on activists and to take notes and make recordings
which MBD then turns into memos (which are often ludicrously inaccurate)
which it sells to gullible corporate clients like the Chlorine Chemistry
Council. MBD now provides the Chlorine Chemistry Council with monthly
updates on the activities of groups working to phase out chlorine. But
MBD goes further, helping the Chlorine Chemistry Council develop
strategies for �managing� public policies that might harm chlorine
sales. Communities Against Toxics activists have many similar tales of
skullduggery by British companies. However since 1990 they have still
managed to stop a substantial numbers of incinerators from being build.
  So much for industry, but what is our governments doing about this?
Closing down incinerators? Banning the use of PVC? Waging war on
chemical corporations? No. Instead, on the 25th July 1995 the institute
of Environment and Health published a Government-commissioned report
entitled �Environmental Oestrogens: Consequences to human health and
wildlife. The conclusion was basically that causes and effect of
environmental oestrogens couldn�t be determined and remained elusive at
this point. And also that it was close to impossible to identify the
various causes of possible health hazards. Recommendations: None. The
various governing bodies continue to ignore and underestimate (willingly
or unwillingly) the increasing threat.
  There have been a lot of excellent independent research through the
last 40 years, but very little has been done in terms of cohesive and
decisive action. This, one of the most dangerous aspects (of countless
other dangerous aspects) of present day life, is also one of the most
ignored. The time for talking is also here, well over. It is not only
our future that is being stolen. Out past has already been stolen and we
are continuously being fucked over in the present. We all have many
reasons to hit the chemical companies where it hurts, in the genitals,
where they continue to hit us. What are we waiting for?

Everything on Earth, the air, the water, each plant, each and every
animal, (including the animal called Human), the Chemical Cocktail
contaminates all.


�We are faced with the prospect of fewer than 10 megacorporations
controlling all forms of mass media, information and entertainment tied
to major manufacturing and financial powers.�

JESSE DREW

   �Half of the species on Earth - up to 40 million will be wiped out
within a decade.�

NORMAN MYERS


 Amos

--
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+ The sad and funny part of modern life...           +
+ CIVILIZATION:          +
+ http://www.midnight-fire.net/civilization         +
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  "The world is a comedy to those who think,
 and a tragedy to those who feel".
    Horace Walpole