>I think it is unfair to focus solely on "chemical" (ie, man-made chemicals).
>Doing this makes it impossible to evaluate their relative riskiness
>compared to everyday things we use or consume. For example, to
>quote from a letter to the editor of New Scientist (7 Feb. 1998) by Cheryl
>Monks in reference to an earlier article about the harmful effects of
>pesticides:
>"The article also stated that bromoxynil is a carcinogen and mutagen.
>While this may be true, it is also true that parsnips, mushrooms and black
>pepper contain carcinogens (namely psoralens, hydrazines and piperine,
>respectively) and that lettuce, rhubarb and string beans, among many
>others, are kinown to be mutagenic. Government authorities haven't yet
>banned the population from eating them, and it is important that the true
>risk to health from pesticides be assessed and understood before
>jumping on the "all-pesticides-are-bad" bandwagon."
Bob,
All those natural foods mentioned above have already been tested on
humans over an extremely long "test" period. They have been around and
been consumed by us humans for thousands (should I say Hundreds of
Thousands) of years. The chemicals have not been tested, or have had very
limited tests.
One report (I think it was in something posted on Sanet) says most
residents of the US have large quantities of chemicals in their bodies now
that were not present in the bodies of our grand parents. What those
chemicals have done, and are doing, to us is pretty much unknown. Some
have been tested, some have shown to have relatively short term hazards at
various levels and maybe a few have ben shown to have no discernible effect
over the short term they have been used.
But do we really know what effects, if any, they DO have? Are any of the
changes in our bodies that have ben seen caused by the use of these
chemicals? The answer seems to be a resounding YES! Lower IQ scores noted
in children exposed to large quantities of pesticides, years younger
maturation of girls who have had a diet high in chicken treated with growth
hormones, reduced sperm counts in men in the overall population in general,
and on and on.
Testing is REQUIRED; not just recommended.
--Dan in Sunny Puerto Rico--
dan.worley@mindless.com
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