by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 13, 2012 | Alienation & Mental Health, Toxification
By Katie Rojas-Jahn / Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The epidemic of autism in children in the U.S. may be linked to the typical American diet according to a new study published online in Clinical Epigenetics by Renee Dufault, et. al. The study explores how mineral deficiencies—affected by dietary factors like high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)—could impact how the human body rids itself of common toxic chemicals like mercury and pesticides.
The release comes on the heels of a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that estimates the average rate of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) among eight year olds is now 1 in 88, representing a 78 percent increase between 2002 and 2008. Among boys, the rate is nearly five times the prevalence found in girls.
“To better address the explosion of autism, it’s critical we consider how unhealthy diets interfere with the body’s ability to eliminate toxic chemicals, and ultimately our risk for developing long-term health problems like autism,” said Dr. David Wallinga, a study co-author and physician at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).
Commander (ret.) Renee Dufault (U.S. Public Health Service), the study’s lead author and a former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) toxicologist, developed an innovative scientific approach to describe the subtle side effects of HFCS consumption and other dietary factors on the human body and how they relate to chronic disorders. The model, called “macroepigenetics,” allows researchers to consider how factors of nutrition, environment and genetic makeup interact and contribute to the eventual development of a particular health outcome.
“With autism rates skyrocketing, our public educational system is under extreme stress,” said Dufault, who is also a licensed special education teacher and founder of the Food Ingredient and Health Research Institute (FIHRI). As part of the current study, the authors found a 91 percent increase in the number of children with autism receiving special educational services in the U.S. between 2005 and 2010.
Key Findings:
- Autism and related disorders affect brain development. The current study sought to determine how environmental and dietary factors, like HFCS consumption, might combine to contribute to the disorder.
- Consumption of HFCS, for example, is linked to the dietary loss of zinc, which interferes with the elimination of heavy metals from the body. Many heavy metals like mercury, arsenic and cadmium are potent toxins with adverse effects on brain development in the young.
- HFCS consumption can also impact levels of other beneficial minerals, including calcium. Loss of calcium further exacerbates the detrimental effects of exposure to lead on brain development in fetuses and children.
- Inadequate levels of calcium in the body can also impair its ability to expel organophosphates, a class of pesticides long recognized by the EPA and independent scientists as especially toxic to the young developing brain.
“Rather than being independent sources of risk, factors like nutrition and exposure to toxic chemicals are cumulative and synergistic in their potential to disrupt normal development,” said Dr. Richard Deth, a professor of Pharmacology at Northeastern University and a co-author of the study. “These epigenetic effects can also be transmitted across generations. As autism rates continue to climb it is imperative to incorporate this new epigenetic perspective into prevention, diagnosis and treatment strategies.”
The picture of how and why a child develops autism is a complicated one influenced by many different factors. The authors of this study have given insight into the complex interplay between several of the factors that may lead to the development of this debilitating neurodevelopmental disorder. In order to curb the epidemic of autism in the U. S., continued analysis of the impact of the industrialized food system and exposure to environmental toxins on ASD must be key areas of research moving forward.
From EcoWatch
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 12, 2012 | Agriculture, Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, NEWS, Toxification
By Jill Ettinger / Organic Authority
West Coast salmon, an already threatened species, are the victim of a new, potentially detrimental threat according to a recent evaluation conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Fisheries Service.
NOAA’s Fisheries Services identified the culprits as three pesticides commonly used in more than 100 pesticide products for home and agricultural applications including the treatment of soy, cotton, corn, grapes and Christmas trees: triflurali, oryzalin and pendimenthalin.
The request for restrictions on the pesticides was submitted as a result of legal action taken by conservation groups and salmon fishers concerned for the health and survival of the species.
According to the NOAA Fisheries report submitted to the EPA, the contamination from the pesticides may be jeopardizing as much as half of the 26 protected West Coast salmon populations already facing survival issues that make them protected by the Endangered Species Act.
In its submission to the EPA, NOAA requested the agency enforce restrictions including no-spray areas that would buffer the fish and help to keep the pesticide run-off from entering streams.
The three most common West Coast salmon species are chinook, coho and sockeye. More than 135 species depend on salmon, according to Salmon Nation. After returning to the place of their birth for spawning, salmon die, leaving their bodies as food for future generations. But the pesticides are creating new challenges for the species, making wild salmon an unsustainable catch for fishers who depend on the species, too. Trifluralin deforms the backbones of the fish, oryzalin poisons plants in the salmon’s environment as does pendimenthalin, which also poisons the food salmon eat.
“Those of us who fight to protect and restore rivers and their critical fisheries are very pleased that the biological opinions were released,” said Sharon Selvaggio, of Northwest Center for Alternatives to Pesticides. “To protect salmon, we need to respond to what the science is showing us.”
From Organic Authority: http://www.organicauthority.com/blog/organic/from-lawn-to-line-home-pesticides-poisoning-west-coast-salmon/
Photo by Brandon on Unsplash
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 11, 2012 | Agriculture, Lobbying, Toxification
By Andrew Pollack / The New York Times
The Environmental Protection Agency on Monday said that the widely used herbicide 2,4-D would remain on the market, denying a petition from an environmental group that sought to revoke the chemical’s approval.
The E.P.A. said that the environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, had not adequately shown that 2,4-D would be harmful under the conditions in which it is used.
“At best, N.R.D.C. is asking E.P.A. to take a revised look at the toxicity of 2,4-D,” the E.P.A. said in its decision, which was posted on its Web site.
“Yet the ground for tolerance revocation is a lack of safety.”
First approved in the late 1940s, 2,4-D is one of the most widely used weed killers in the world. It is an ingredient of numerous home lawn-care products, and it is used by farmers.
Dow Chemical is thought to be the major manufacturer, though the E.P.A. has also approved versions from Nufarm, an Australian company, and Agro-Gor, a joint venture of PBI/Gordon of Kansas City, Mo., and Atanor of Argentina.
Use of the chemical is expected to grow substantially in the coming years because Dow is seeking federal approval to sell seeds of corn genetically engineered to be resistant to 2,4-D.
Farmers planting that corn would be able to spray 2,4-D on their fields to kill weeds without hurting the crop. Now, 2,4-D is not used much on corn, the nation’s most widely grown crop.
The council filed its petition in 2008 asking that the registration of the herbicide, as well as the permissible residue levels on various foods, be revoked. In February, it sued the E.P.A., saying the agency had not acted on the petition fast enough.
The group cited various studies suggesting that exposure to 2,4-D could cause cancer, hormone disruption, genetic mutations and neurotoxicity. It also said the E.P.A., in previous assessments, had underestimated how much people, especially children, might be exposed to the chemical through dust, breast milk and skin contact.
In its ruling, the E.P.A. said that while some studies cited suggested that high doses of the chemical could be harmful, they did not establish lack of safety, and in some cases they were contradicted by other studies.
The agency in particular cited a study, financed by the 2,4-D manufacturers and conducted by Dow, in which the chemical was put into the feed of rats. The study did not show reproductive problems in the rats or problems in their offspring that might be expected if 2,4-D were disrupting hormone activity, the E.P.A. said.
James W. Gray, executive director of the industry task force that sponsored the study, hailed Monday’s decision.
“E.P.A. has done a thorough job in evaluating all the evaluable data and found no cause for concern,” he said.
Mae Wu, a lawyer with the council, said the group was “disappointed that it has taken this long to deny our petition” and also “disappointed that they are not protecting public health by getting this toxic chemical off the market.” She said it was too soon to say what the group’s next step would be, though it will have the right to object to the ruling.
The E.P.A. has reviewed the safety of 2,4-D several times, particularly with regard to an increased risk of cancer.
Some studies have shown a higher risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma among farmers who use the chemical. But E.P.A. reviewers have said the farmers might have been exposed to many things, making it difficult to state that 2,4-D was the cause.
After reviewing the data, the agency renewed the registration for 2,4-D in 2005. In 2007, it declined to conduct a special review of the cancer risk, saying that it had “determined that the existing data do not support a conclusion that links human cancer to 2,4-D exposure.”
2,4-D was an ingredient of Agent Orange, a defoliant used in the Vietnam War that is said to have harmed many Vietnamese civilians and American soldiers. Most experts say the main health problems came from contamination of 2,4,5-T, the other major ingredient in Agent Orange.
From The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/10/business/energy-environment/epa-denies-request-to-ban-24-d-a-popular-weed-killer.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 11, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Karrie Gillett / Press Association
Sixty-nine oil and chemical spills in the North Sea have been reported in three months. Eighteen companies were named in a table published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. The most recent incident was a gas leak at Total’s Elgin platform on 25 March.
Professor Andrew Watterson, the head of the occupational and environmental health research group at the University of Stirling, accused companies of playing down “the potentially catastrophic consequences” of gas and oil leaks. “These are very worrying figures that cannot be slicked over by government agencies and industry,” he said. He blamed “corporate failures” for polluting the sea, and pointed out that the number of reported chemical leaks had more than doubled since 2005.
Oil & Gas UK, which represents offshore companies, said the leaks were “relatively small” and many of the chemicals “benign”. BP and Shell were among the firms listed, with BP reporting the highest number of incidents at 23. Other companies included EnQuest, British Gas and Nexen.
From The Independent: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/north-sea-spills-on-the-rise-7627548.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 10, 2012 | Toxification
By Agence France-Presse
Radioactive iodine was found in kelp off the US West Coast following last year’s earthquake-triggered Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, according to a new study.
It was already known that radioactive iodine 131 (131-I), carried in the atmosphere, made it across the Pacific within days of the March 11, 2011 tsunami disaster, albeit in minuscule amounts.
But marine biologists at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) discovered the radioactive isotope in ocean kelp, which is “one of the strongest plant accumulators of iodine,” within a month of the accident.
“We measured significant, although most likely non-harmful levels of radioactive iodine in tissue of the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera,” said Steven L. Manley, author of the study with Christopher G. Lowe
“Although it is probably not harmful for humans because it was relatively low levels, it may have affected certain fish that graze on the tissue because fish have a thyroid system that utilizes iodine.”
The study, “Canopy-Forming Kelps as California’s Coastal Dosimeter: 131I from Damaged Japanese Reactor Measured in Macrocystis pyrifera,” appears in the online edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Read more from PhysOrg: http://phys.org/news/2012-04-japan-kelp-west-coast.html
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Apr 9, 2012 | Mining & Drilling, Toxification
By Farron Cousins / DeSmog Blog
As we here at DeSmogBlog have been covering in exhaustive detail for quite some time now, there is virtually no safe way to perform hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for unconventional oil and gas.
Fracking has been linked to numerous problems, including the release of radioactive molecules that cause an array of health problems, earthquakes and groundwater contamination. Cancer, pollution, environmental destruction—all of these things have been linked to the practice of fracking in recent years.
So with all of the dangerous side effects, you’d expect the practice to at least be heavily monitored by some sort of official watchdog group.
You’d think so, but you’d be wrong. According to new studies, there is a dangerous lapse in oversight for fracking wells and the pipelines being used to transport gas from these wells. From News Inferno:
According to an AP report, there are thousands of miles of unregulated pipeline going from active fracking wells across the U.S. to larger pipelines transporting the gas to processing facilities. Though many of these pipelines are relatively new construction, there are no guarantees they’ve been built safely or aren’t at risk of cracking, corroding, or exploding.
The report cites a study this week from the Government Accountability Office which counts at least 240,000 miles of natural gas and oil pipeline leading from fracking wells to larger pipelines and eventually to processing facilities around the country. These pipelines are not regulated by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and likely could pose major risks to public health and safety. The report indicates some government officials have no idea where many of these miles of pipeline are and some even wind through residential areas.
The report also says that the majority of the pipelines that are not within about 220 yards of a minimum of ten homes have not been inspected by anyone from local, state or federal agencies. This leaves more rural areas much more at risk of a serious gas leak.
But the lack of inspection is only half of the story. The real danger to the public is the fact that even if a gas leak occurs, the companies that own the pipes aren’t required to let anyone know:
Further, if there have been any problems caused by these virtually unknown pipelines, it’s unlikely the public will ever hear about them … the government, too. Because this pipeline is not regulated, natural gas and oil companies using these pipelines in the fracking process are not required to report any accidents, injuries, fatalities or dangerous releases from them. The federal agency in charge (PHMSA) only concerns itself with the fractional 10 percent of pipeline nearest populated areas. Only preliminary plans to expand oversight of these relatively unknown miles of pipeline exist and it could be years before they’re ever inspected by anyone other than companies which own them.
The fact that there is no federal oversight of the industry has allowed the companies involved to keep their toxic fracking solution recipes hidden from the American public:
As fracking has become a household term, those directly impacted have realized that loose regulations on the drilling process has allowed drillers to open natural gas wells almost unchecked. Lax safety regulations on the process has led to poor well construction which has, in turn, led to leaking of toxic chemicals used in fracking.
It’s those same regulations, or lack thereof, that has allowed companies using the fracking process to deny the public access to information on some of the most toxic chemicals used in it. Dozens of families across the U.S., especially in the Mid-Atlantic region which has seen the biggest boom in fracking drilling, believe fracking has caused their ongoing nightmare, forced to find alternate sources of fresh water because their wells have become too contaminated with fracking chemicals, including benzene and methane gas.
But, in bad news for the fracking industry, the public overwhelmingly supports increasing regulations and oversight of unconventional oil and gas drilling activities.
Sixty-five percent of Americans want the federal government to impose tougher regulations on the industry, while just 18 percent said they didn’t think more regulations were necessary.
It will be interesting to see how the public reacts to the fact that the industry is operating without even basic pipeline safety standards, well construction oversight or other needed health and safety protections.
From EcoWatch
