logo

Chemical and mould Exposures

  • Home
  •  
  • Chemical and mould Exposures
    • 22 APR 24

    60+ years since Silent Spring: Where are we now? Endocrine-disrupting chemical exposures in early life, sexual identity and male fertility decline. Is there a connection?

    Overview

    It was Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, that launched the modern environmental movement, by drawing attention to evidence on the biological dangers of the widespread use of DDT and other pesticides. Informed by interviews with scientists and physicians with relevant experience, Carson wrote that pesticides should more properly be called “biocides” because of their impact on organisms other than the intended target pests. She warned that the widespread use of pesticides would result in an accumulation of the chemicals in the environment resulting in an increased risk to human and animal health. Since Silent Spring was published, concerns for possible health hazards have grown as a myriad of other chemicals, many of which can interfere with the human endocrine system (endocrine disrupters), have been introduced. There has been little research conducted on the unintended long-term impacts of their use on human health.

    Read more →
    • 01 APR 21

    New Book of interest: Count Down by Dr Shanna Swan and Stacey Colino

    New Book of interest: Count Down, How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race.
    In the tradition of Silent Spring and The Sixth Extinction, an urgent, meticulously researched, and groundbreaking book about the ways in which chemicals in the modern environment are changing–and endangering–human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale, from renowned epidemiologist Shanna Swan.

    Review: “An essential book for this moment….There are a lot of surprises here, including that testosterone therapy decreases sperm counts, and that moms’ exposure to common chemicals during pregnancy alters masculinization of the offspring as well as long-term fertility…. I sincerely hope that everyone reads Count Down–the younger the better–so that they’ll have the chance to preserve their fertility as well as that of their children.”
    –Ruthann Rudel, Research Director at Silent Spring Institute and Research Associate at Brown University

    “Swan solves one of the great mysteries of the moment: why sperm counts and fertility rates are dropping. She zeroes in on chemicals as a chief culprit, but, even more admirably, maps out the entire threat landscape. This book shines an important light on what we need to do to bring back healthy reproduction.”
    –David Michaels, former Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA and author of The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception

    Read more →
    • 02 JUL 20

    Recent Swedish article on chemical emissions and human health

    Excerpt: Health hazards in the form of dangerous chemicals are built into electronic devices when these are manufactured. As scrap, the devices are an environmental risk to both nature and people. But it is less known that the devices can leak hazardous substances during normal use.The role of the chemicals as an essential cause of ill-health is surprisingly rarely discussed. Above all, there is no detailed discussion of possible relationship between chemicals and so called new diseases such as multiple chemical hypersensitivity, electrical hypersensitivity and chronic fatigue…SNIP

    Read more →
    • 28 AUG 17

    What’s warping the faces of monkeys in Uganda?

    NOTE: A fish hatchery farm in Queensland Australia is now seeing deformities in their fingerlings. They are surrounded by macadamia plantations where the farmers spray similar chemicals to the ones mentioned below. In Tasmania concerns have been raised about Atrazine, a carcinogen being widely used by the forestry commission and a possible connection with the mysterious facial tumour disease decimating the threatened Tasmanian Devil.

    The most disgusting revelation in the article below is the response from Trump’s new EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt. Read on… SNIP

    Read more →
    • 27 AUG 17

    Are Corporate Ties Influencing Reuters Science Coverage?

    NOTE: I find it of special interest in the below article the role the Science Media Centre (SMC) has played in spinning science on behalf of its corporate funders. I have written on this previously. See my history of the SMC model of so-called science communication here…

    From EcoWatch
    By Stacy Malkan

    Ever since they classified the world’s most widely used herbicide as “probably carcinogenic to humans,” a team of international scientists at the World Health Organization’s (WHO) cancer research group have been under withering attack by the agrichemical industry and its surrogates. SNIP

    Read more →
    • 31 JUL 17

    The Poison Papers

    100,000 Pages of Chemical Industry Secrets Gathered Dust in an Oregon Barn for Decades – Until Now

    From The Intercept

    Sharon Lerner

    July 27 2017, 12:43 a.m.

    For decades, some of the dirtiest, darkest secrets of the chemical industry have been kept in Carol Van Strum’s barn. Creaky, damp, and prowled by the occasional black bear, the listing, 80-year-old structure in rural Oregon housed more than 100,000 pages of documents obtained through legal discovery in lawsuits against Dow, Monsanto, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Forest Service, the Air Force, and pulp and paper companies, among others.

    As of today, those documents and others that have been collected by environmental activists will be publicly available through a project called the Poison Papers. Together, the library contains more than 200,000 pages of information and “lays out a 40-year history of deceit and collusion involving the chemical industry and the regulatory agencies that were supposed to be protecting human health and the environment,” said Peter von Stackelberg, a journalist who along with the Center for Media and Democracy and the Bioscience Resource Project helped put the collection online. SNIP

    Read more →
    • 12 APR 16

    Endocrine disruptors’ link to infertility confirmed (but what is more important?)

    The emerging danger to future human generations from our exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals which are found in plastics is becoming a major concern in the US and Europe. For example in 2009 ,testing in the US found more than 200 Chemicals in newborn umbilical cord blood. In Sweden in the 1990’s Research supported by the Karolinska Institute found that since 1972 there have been significant annual increases of brominated flame retardants (related to PCBs) in human breast milk.

    Despite the clear scientific evidence that endocrine disruptors pose a substantial risk to public health, the European Commission has refrained from introducing firm measures that would finally limit their use. This is a result of the continuing campaign of maintaining scientific uncertainty from the European chemical/plastics industry sector who argue that it is unscientific to legislate any precautions without first having absolute scientific certainty that harm exists.(Sound familiar?). This viewpoint is clearly seen in the concluding sentence of the following article from Euractive.com.
    SNIP

    Read more →
    • 14 FEB 16

    Argentine and Brazilian doctors suspect mosquito insecticide as cause of microcephaly

    From The Ecologist:

    Claire Robinson / GMWatch
    10th February 2016

    Excerpts:

    With the proposed connection between the Zika virus and Brazil’s outbreak of microcephaly in new born babies looking increasingly tenuous, Latin American doctors are proposing another possible cause: Pyriproxyfen, a pesticide used in Brazil since 2014 to arrest the development of mosquito larvae in drinking water tanks. Might the ‘cure’ in fact be the poison?

    SNIP

    Read more →
    • 26 AUG 12

    Big Chem, Big Harm?

    From the New York Times: Big Chem, Big Harm? By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/opinion/sunday/kristof-big-chem-big-harm.html August 25, 2012 NEW research is demonstrating that some common chemicals all around us may be even more harmful than previously thought. It seems that they may damage us in ways that are transmitted generation after generation, imperiling not only us

    Read more →
    • 11 AUG 12

    The knight who said no: health hazards in the workplace

    The knight who said no. Annie Thébaud-Mony refused France’s top honor Credit: Annie Thébaud-Mony http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/08/french-researcher-snubs-high-sta.html A French public health researcher and advocate has refused to accept one of the highest honors bestowed by the French government to protest what she says is a lax attitude toward health hazards in the workplace. Annie Thébaud-Mony, a semiretired

    Read more →