TOXICITY AND HUMAN HEALTH

Who is Warning us?

This is our second post on environmental toxins and health. The first is here. (We use ‘toxin’ and ‘toxicant’ interchangeably.)

Mainstream medicine proceeds as though cancer, dementia, autoimmunity and most chronic conditions have unknown causes and are best treated with drugs.

Public health advisories focus on diet, exercise, smoking, vaccinations, and getting medical tests on time.

Where are the much-needed medical and public health advisories on environmental toxins? Has your physician ever discussed hormone disruption with you? While pointing to sources such as PCBs in plastic bottles and pesticides on fresh produce and fragrances in laundry soaps and cosmetics - to name a few common exposures.

If not, check out the research databases available at EWG.org.

Aside from warnings to pregnant women (mercury in fish) and to parents with small children (lead in old paint) and attention-grabbing headlines about toxic spills, neither patients nor the general public understand enough about toxicity to avoid the many sources in everyday life.

Government websites post data on toxins, and the internet is a (too?) prolific source of information on environmental detriments to health, yet many people require personal experience, i.e., motivation, to learn about toxicity. It’s just too hard to believe that we could do such damage to ourselves.

“If it’s on the shelf, it can’t be poison, right? Anyway, my doctor would tell me . . . right?”

And yet…are we aware of the lawsuits being won against commonly used agents like Round-up? Are we aware that Europe bans hundreds of agents in personal care products that are allowed in the U.S.? Are we burying our heads in the sand about the connection between the hundreds of chemicals we come into contact with on a daily basis and human health? What can we do about such an onslaught when those charged with protecting us are not being loud enough?

Effective education and action have fallen to consumer advocacy groups and the growing cadre of health practitioners who actually test and coach patients on the root causes of disease, including toxicity. This means support for proactive toxin awareness is not coming from government or medicine, and certainly not industry. Support comes largely from donations, gifts, grants, and subscriptions to consumer groups. Plus the support that private pay patients provide to integrative practitioners.

Thankfully, government agencies and corporate polluters are being challenged in the courts on everything from ag chemicals and opioids to plastics, electro-pollution, and vaccine injuries. Medicine has entered a new frontier (here), and wellness has become a measurable and growing industry (here).

It will take all hands on deck to stem the tide of toxins flowing into our children, altering their gene expression, and shaping their future - shaping humanity’s future. We don’t yet know whether consumer groups, lawsuits, and dedicated professionals who dare to challenge the mainstream are enough to bend the curve back toward . . . what?

Living Well Locally hopes we will turn the curve on toxin awareness back toward well-being and living in community. And our children will not continue to suffer the fate of the ‘frog in slowly boiling water’.

Humans have been in this misadventure with toxins for a long time. Now we’ve added the side effects of pharmaceuticals and deeper advances into biotechnology for miracle drugs and gene therapies. Political divisions are building over issues with such complex biological roots (e.g. transhumanism, transgender) that the general public is hard pressed to keep up. Unfortunately, this makes it easier to view them as ethical or moral concerns.

All this is taking us somewhere . . . but where?