Health Concerns: We are what we eat (and touch and breathe)

The death of my former wife from cancer this winter has been weighing heavily on my mind. And as I’ve spoken with friends about it, stories of otherwise healthy people suddenly coming down with cancer surface regularly.

This week, at a pot luck dinner meeting of the local Sierra Club, I raised the issue and one by one, individuals related their own sad stories about friends and relatives.

"We’re all ticking time bombs" offered the person seated next to me who, as it turned out, is a teacher of environmental health. No one out there, no matter how healthy, is immune. But where and how does it happen, we all ask ourselves?

My visit this winter with my son at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, was a real eye-opener.

I attended one of his classes which covered environmental health issues and then later in the week, a lecture in Seattle, by Jane Houlihan of the DC-based Environmental Working Group (EWG).

The recommendations coming out of the sessions include eating low on the food chain (less fatty-foods, more grain and veggies), as well as consuming more locally-grown, sustainably-produced foods plus, of course, keeping in good shape through regular exercise.

The questions the presentations raised were troubling. The first is how and why our bodies are contaminated with approximately 100 chemicals, including PCBs, dioxins, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, and lead? What about the EPA and FDA; aren’t these the governmental gate keepers that are supposed to protect the public from eating, touching, drinking, or breathing known carcinogens?

Then there’s the "chemical body burden," the capacity of our body to carry long and short-term industrial chemicals. How many of these contaminants can our bodies keep neutralized before cancer or some other disease surfaces?

According to the EWG, since WWII more than 70,000 individual industrial chemicals have been registered. Not only that, but each day, the EPA approves an average of seven new chemicals - all minimally tested or not tested at all. So where and how do we routinely come into contact with and absorb these contaminants?

Think about household cleansers, carpets, Gortex, fire retardants on clothing, computers, plastics, car interiors, Teflon-coated utensils, deodorants, shampoos, gels, can linings, DVDs, plywood, paint, eyeglass lenses; all those "better living through chemistry" products we’ve developed over the past 60 years.

Women and children are the most susceptible. Some of the chemicals, particularly PCBs and PBDEs, are stored in our bodies and accumulate rather than get excreted through our kidneys.

Breast milk is particularly contaminated. Women have more fat tissue and, it seems, are capable of storing more toxins. Children are at risk because of their size and the fact that many of the carcinogens they’re exposed to today may not show up as a cancer for another 30 to 40 years.

So, you’ve got to wonder about the reason why an otherwise healthy person who, out of the blue it seems, gets pancreatic cancer and is dead in two months’ time.

Then, there’s the issue of what’s in the food we eat. For years now, mainstream agriculture has spent a lot of money trying to convince us that our food is safe. That’s why I found my son’s Evergreen College class reading Pulitzer Prize finalist Duff Wilson’s book Fateful Harvest (Perennial Paperback, Harper Collins Publishing) so relevant in light of the EWG findings.

The book documents a 30-year history of American industries converting toxic waste into "fertilizer" which gets spread on farmers fields and home gardens. It also relates how state and federal governments allow loopholes and non-regulation of heavy metals and low-level radioactive waste which gets re-classified as a marketable commodity once it’s sold as fertilizer.

So, regularly its seems, chimney ash, loaded with lead, chromium, and zinc, which are classified as dangerous waste, gets bagged up and sold under names like "Lime Plus" and "Nutrilime" and gets spread on gardens and farmland to raise the ph level and "sweeten" the soil.

Uranium processing plants routinely get rid of their waste by labeling it something like "raffinate," getting it registered and approved by state and federal agencies and then shake their heads when 124 cases of cancer and birth defects are found near a community where it was applied. "No proof," they say!

And the next time you use a de-icing agent on your sidewalk, know that there’s no law requiring the company to list hazardous waste on their label.

The case the book documents is the story of a few farmers, a courageous mayor, and an investigative reporter who uncover a 30-year history of the dumping of toxic waste onto their land and in the air and water. I’d recommend reading Fateful Harvest, especially if you work for an agency like the EPA which, during the Clinton Administration, appeared to turn its back on the problem.

The book raises the issue of how safe the food supply is. Don’t forget, unless you’re eating local, sustainably-raised food you have no idea of what’s in the soil of the food (and thus in the food) shipped over from California and the Northwest.

The book documents that the zinc used by some Washington and Oregon fruit growers was contaminated by heavy metals and hazardous waste by-products. And the powerful national fertilizer industry had been blocking the listing of ingredients in their commercial fertilizers.

Plus, farmers have been routinely using industrial chimney fly ash and heavy metal contaminated soil to grow their crops for more than 30 years now. What’s the long term impact? We don’t know. But at least we do know a possible source of where all those heavy metals found in our bodies by the EWG might be coming from.

At the local level

When it comes to Maryland, the Office of State Chemist, which is a part of the Department of Agriculture, seems to be very vigilant and well-staffed.

The head chemist, Warren Bontoyan, was particularly alert and knowledgeable about the issue of heavy metals in MD fertilizers. Approximately 20 percent are tested (approximately 1,000/year) and he reports never having seen evidence of heavy metals present in our fertilizers. He was very reassuring, as was John Breitsman, Pennsylvania State Chief of the Division of Agronomic and Regional Services. (Although he felt Wilson’s Fateful Harvest raised a lot of good questions.)

However, the phrase "not above allowable limits" is commonly used. The standards are set by the Association of American Plant Food Control Officials, not the federal government! As of 2002, they allowed 1.6 percent lead, .4 percent arsenic, and .3 percent cadmium in common zinc fertilizer. The issue of lead in Washington, DC drinking water is in the news lately. Agency responsibility for the problem sounds like a running joke. Unfortunately, the situation is deadly serious.

I did not receive a return phone call from Dr. Phil Heard of the MD Department of Environment Protection. They share responsibility when it comes to MD consumer safety. So, I don’t know about state testing and standards for biosolids (sludge) spread on farmland. I do know we are processing and selling Baltimore’s sludge and turning it into compost for garden and farm enrichment.

No one, it seems, routinely tests for radioactive waste in fly ash or fertilizer in MD. And, there is no local facility for the testing of dioxins (if there are suspicions, it’s sent elsewhere for testing). No one looks at de-icing ingredients.

Regarding the chemical body burden, there’s no state testing of DBP, PFCs, PBDE, BPA, and all the myriad of chemicals you absorb on a daily basis which are stored in your fatty tissue. That’s left to the EPA and many questions have been raised about their level of vigilance.

Our best ally, when it comes to a federal agency, is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. What’s not understood currently, is whether current levels of toxins in our bodies are associated with adverse health effects.

What is known is that there is a link between those twelve million American kids who suffer from developmental learning or behavioral disabilities (3-6 percent of school children). The National Academy of Science indicates toxic chemicals play a part. So, exposure to organophosphate pesticides (i.e., Dursban), mercury consumed by fish, residual PCBs, and lead in the drinking water all affect the developing fetus and young children. Most of the new chemicals approved on a daily basis by the EPA do not get tested for their impact on human biology. We are, essentially, human guinea pigs.

What to do?