Evil is Everywhere

"S-O-U-L?" I thought it read "S-O-L-E"

Every choice we make is a bargain with the devil. Every choice we make is obscured by a smokescreen. We, the consumer have been blindsided by information that is never assuring. It seems we have “scientific reports” that these products will cause you no harm. Trust the companies that manufacture and distributed these “harmless chemicals”. The companies have been around for a hundred years. People are not dying from using our products. Whatever ingredients that is toxin is so minute it can’t harm you. Trust us. We do our own testing and nothing is found to be life-threatening. Not only companies can be trusted but government agencies whose job is to protect us from harmful practices are doing their job. Take the Environment Protection Agency. You would think that before any product is marketed that it would be tested by the EPA. Actually, the EPA has no jurisdiction to tell companies what they should or should not do. It is the companies’ responsibility to report any misgivings about potential harmful products. Right! So what does the EPA do? Collect data from research labs and add to a database. Do they analysis the incoming data? Do they do their own experimentation? No. Just collect and report. And what about the reporting? Well, since industry representatives find themselves on panels or committees associated with the EPA, could be assumed that there is bias in favour of the industry. This is true for the fossil fuel industry, the electrical utility industry, the tobacco industry, the petrochemical industry, the cosmetic industry. So are we been lied to? Most likely. When it comes to scientific research, few phrases are more fraught than “more research is needed”. The EPA is very much underfunded and this is deliberate. EPA can only do so much and that’s the way industry likes it.

Studies showing the harmful effects of toxins have been known by the EPA and the chemical industries for a least four decades. And what does the chemical industries chimed? “ We’re living longer and better than we ever have, and I think that these sort of studies make people worry when I don’t see a reason for that level of concern.” And “Don’t get in the way of progress!” Or “The study wasn’t scientific! How can we say that these common household products contain harmful ingredients, when there is not enough evidence?”

So what do you believe? Do you trust that perfume you are spraying on? What about that baby powder you applied to your lovely daughter? Is that bottled water really safe to drink from? Consumer beware! We hear this over and over again. But without the proper information how can a person decide what is safe and what is not? The citizens now have to be a chemist, a toxinologist, a lab technician, and basically a consumer advocate. There are sincere, consumer friendly non-profit organizations who report honestly what is harmful and what is not. It is not fair that choices are left with the public but if that the way industry and politicians want to play it, so be it!

Here are some startling facts about the invasion of chemicals in our environment and in our bodies:

In 2005, an examination of “the pollution in newborns” found some 287 industrial chemicals – including 180 that cause cancer, 281 that are toxic to the brain, and 208 that can cause birth defects or abnormal development—in umbilical cord blood taken from ten babies around the United States.

Prenatal programming – Almost all illness can be found to originate from the mother’s womb. Scientists have found almost all leukemia and many other childhood cancers begin before birth. The womb is so influence by exposures to chemicals, both inside the mother and the outside environment, that it seems to set the cellular code for life. The new theory of prenatal programming also further postulates that illnesses seeded in the womb can wait to emerge until later in life.

Exposure to lead in the womb may contribute to high blood pressure in adulthood. Pesticides and trichloroethylene (an industrial solvent) may contribute to Parkinson’s disease. Exposures to pesticides in the organo-phosphate family will also affect cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, and endocrine function later in life. The enormous increase in asthma in recent years cannot be explained by outside environmental influences alone. And this is also true of breast and prostrate cancers and Alzheimer’s disease among the aging baby boomers. This remarkable epidemic may be explained by prenatal programming.

Also, even more startling, is that an individual today could experience a disease that was triggered by his grandparent’s exposure to a pollutant! The reverse must be true as well. Any exposures by toxins in a mother’s womb could lead to diseases in future generations. And this has nothing to do with genetic defects. The genes were reprogrammed to behave differently. This is called genetic expression.

When you are a parent, when you think about the future of the world and the future of your child, you wonder: Are things going to get worse or better? It could be a shocker to learn that growing up in the eighties and not one kid in your neighbourhood have autism, and now all your friends’ kids are autistic and so is your child. It’s hard to say what causes it, but this is really something that we need to look at. Looking back in the past, when a mother was pregnant, did toxins passed into the fetus from her body, or were they transfer from breast milk? Were toxins in a mother’s body came from her mother or was the mother exposed by toxic chemicals while pregnant? It makes you think some of the decisions your parents and grandparents made and question them. Someone made some bad decisions along the way. Unfortunately, many just didn’t know and now we are finding out what the resulting consequences could be. For generations to come.

Edmund Burke says “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men do nothing.”

So let’s change that. We all need to be consumer advocates! We must focus on safety and health in everything we purchased, consume and dispose of. Be a vigilante. Maybe, just maybe, our leaders will get the message. No more consumer beware, Producers Beware!