There is a natural, easy, and inexpensive way to perform detoxification. Want to know what to do?
1. Eat more organic fiber
Fiber can be found in many foodstuffs, including fruits, vegetables, and brown rice. Eating lots of fiber sources are able to eliminate toxins from the body. Foods rich in fiber that could be the best detoxifying ingredients including fruit beets, radishes, artichokes, cabbage, broccoli, spirulina (a type of algae growth), chlorella (green algae), and seaweed.
2. Diligent drink natural vitamin C
It sounds trivial, but the vitamins did have many benefits for our bodies. Besides containing antioxidants, vitamin C also helps the body produce glutathione, the liver compound that is able to eliminate toxins in the body.
3. Drink more filtered water
Drink at least 2 liters a day will remove toxins and maintain the body’s cells remain hydrated, especially after you eat a lot less healthy food.
4. Take a deep breath
All who live must breathe, but not many know how to breathe correctly. Breathing deeply will allow more oxygen circulates through your body system. To that end, practice taking a breath at least 10 minutes every day. Sit comfortably with your back straight. Inhale through your nose in seven counts, hold for four counts and then exhale through the mouth of the eight counts. You’ll want to inhale all the air in the lungs so it can attract more oxygen in the next breath.
5. Sauna
Our bodies get rid of toxins through sweat. With a sauna, skin pores will open, and through that poison and all the dirt on the body will come out. You can help the body eliminate some toxins through sweat. In addition, the sauna also helps blood circulation and reduce muscle soreness.
6. Oil Pulling
Oil Pulling is a safe, simple, cheap and gentle ‘do it yourself home remedy’ that cures and prevents diseases and extends your healthy life. It involves gently rinsing the mouth with 1 tablespoon (10ml) of cold pressed oil for 15 to 20 minutes and spitting it out. You can use either sunflower oil or sesame oil or olive oil. This simple therapy is completely harmless as you do not take any medicines - even the oil you use is spit out after OP. By helping the body get rid of toxins that have accumulated, Oil Pulling has been mentioned in the ancient texts of Ayurveda and promotes self healing from within.
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Nixon's Republicans created the EPA - these Republicans want to destroy it!
A Gallup poll released on Dec. 19 shows Congress' approval rate at 11 percent, the lowest rating since Gallup began asking the question in 1974.
The U.S. House voted 191 times to weaken our clean air and other environmental protections this year. That's an average of more than one anti-environmental vote per legislative day! Which makes this is one of the most anti-environmental Congresses in American history - their efforts to dismantle the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the other key protections standing between us and the destructive desires of Big Oil and Big Coal. Our forests, our national parks, polar bears, whales, caribou, the very air we breathe and the water we drink are all at risk. Nixon's Republicans created the EPA - these Republicans want to destroy it!
The U.S. House voted 191 times to weaken our clean air and other environmental protections this year. That's an average of more than one anti-environmental vote per legislative day! Which makes this is one of the most anti-environmental Congresses in American history - their efforts to dismantle the EPA, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the other key protections standing between us and the destructive desires of Big Oil and Big Coal. Our forests, our national parks, polar bears, whales, caribou, the very air we breathe and the water we drink are all at risk. Nixon's Republicans created the EPA - these Republicans want to destroy it!
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
“An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There a Correlation?”
PRESS RELEASE - Janette D. Sherman, MD - 12-19-2011
This report, “An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There a Correlation?” published in the Internat. J. of Health Sciences today, is not new science, but confirms research done over the decades as to adverse effects caused by radioisotopes to the unborn and the very young because of their rapidly developing cells, immature immunological systems and relatively small weight.
As background, in the 1950s, I worked for the Atomic Energy Commission (the forerunner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) at the Radiation Laboratory, University of California in Berkeley and the US Navy Radiation Laboratory at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco. Near 60 years ago, we learned that radiation could damage animals and plants and cause cancer, genetic damage, and other problems.
The issue of the danger from nuclear power plants is not just the engineering, but biology and chemistry. We have understood for decades where and how radioisotopes interact with life systems.
Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 have half-lives of approx 30 years. It takes 10 half-lives for an isotope to fully decay, thus it will take 300 years or Three Centuries before radioactive cesium and strontium will be gone.
Cs134, Cs-137 and Sr-90 continue to be released from Fukushima in tons of contaminated water that is making its’ way across the Pacific Ocean. Cesium concentrates in soft tissue, strontium in bones and teeth, of the unborn and young.
Immediately after Chernobyl the level of thyroid disease increased. Given the large amounts of radioactive iodine
(I-131) released from Fukushima, thyroid disease will develop in those exposed in Japan, as well as in those exposed to lesser amounts throughout the northern hemisphere. Public health officials need to anticipate and prepare for these findings.
The highest levels of I-131 measured by EPA in precipitation varied from a high of 390 pico Curies (pCi) in Boise to 92 in Boston, with intermediate levels in Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Jacksonville and Olympia, WA. (Normal is @ 2 pCi)
Not every system was evaluated after Chernobyl, but of those that were: wild and domestic animals, birds, fish, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses - even humans - were altered by the radiation, often for generations.
Birds in the 30-kilometer “exclusion zone” of Chernobyl display small brain size, alterations of normal coloration, poor survival of offspring, and poor adaptability to stress,
Recent, independent studies conducted in Scandinavia shows a decline on academic performance in children exposed during the Chernobyl fallout.
80% of children in Belarus are considered un-well by government standards.
Unless the earth stops tuning, and the laws of biology, chemistry and physics are rescinded, we will continue to see sickness and harm spread to the children of Fukushima, the same that occurred after Chernobyl. We ignore history at our peril.
Full article available on 12-20-2011 at: www.janettesherman.com see also: www.radiation.org
This report, “An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the United States Follows Arrival of the Radioactive Plume from Fukushima: Is There a Correlation?” published in the Internat. J. of Health Sciences today, is not new science, but confirms research done over the decades as to adverse effects caused by radioisotopes to the unborn and the very young because of their rapidly developing cells, immature immunological systems and relatively small weight.
As background, in the 1950s, I worked for the Atomic Energy Commission (the forerunner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) at the Radiation Laboratory, University of California in Berkeley and the US Navy Radiation Laboratory at Hunter’s Point in San Francisco. Near 60 years ago, we learned that radiation could damage animals and plants and cause cancer, genetic damage, and other problems.
The issue of the danger from nuclear power plants is not just the engineering, but biology and chemistry. We have understood for decades where and how radioisotopes interact with life systems.
Cesium-137 and Strontium-90 have half-lives of approx 30 years. It takes 10 half-lives for an isotope to fully decay, thus it will take 300 years or Three Centuries before radioactive cesium and strontium will be gone.
Cs134, Cs-137 and Sr-90 continue to be released from Fukushima in tons of contaminated water that is making its’ way across the Pacific Ocean. Cesium concentrates in soft tissue, strontium in bones and teeth, of the unborn and young.
Immediately after Chernobyl the level of thyroid disease increased. Given the large amounts of radioactive iodine
(I-131) released from Fukushima, thyroid disease will develop in those exposed in Japan, as well as in those exposed to lesser amounts throughout the northern hemisphere. Public health officials need to anticipate and prepare for these findings.
The highest levels of I-131 measured by EPA in precipitation varied from a high of 390 pico Curies (pCi) in Boise to 92 in Boston, with intermediate levels in Kansas City, Salt Lake City, Jacksonville and Olympia, WA. (Normal is @ 2 pCi)
Not every system was evaluated after Chernobyl, but of those that were: wild and domestic animals, birds, fish, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses - even humans - were altered by the radiation, often for generations.
Birds in the 30-kilometer “exclusion zone” of Chernobyl display small brain size, alterations of normal coloration, poor survival of offspring, and poor adaptability to stress,
Recent, independent studies conducted in Scandinavia shows a decline on academic performance in children exposed during the Chernobyl fallout.
80% of children in Belarus are considered un-well by government standards.
Unless the earth stops tuning, and the laws of biology, chemistry and physics are rescinded, we will continue to see sickness and harm spread to the children of Fukushima, the same that occurred after Chernobyl. We ignore history at our peril.
Full article available on 12-20-2011 at: www.janettesherman.com see also: www.radiation.org
Monday, December 19, 2011
Glyphosate (RoundUp), frogs and childhood cancers.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3352-argentina-poison-from-the-sky
Argentina: Poison from the Sky
by Marcela Valente
(IPS) - Argentina's soy boom has been a major source of foreign exchange. But the other side of the coin is the toxic effects among the rural population, from spraying agrochemicals.
Research by the National University of Río Cuarto in the northwestern province of Córdoba demonstrated that glyphosate, the herbicide used on transgenic soy crops, causes genetic damage in mice and amphibians, like frogs.
Two years ago, another research study by Andrés Carrasco, a professor at the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine and principal researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), also demonstrated damage in amphibians.
Genetically modified (GM) soy seeds, approved amid controversy in the 1990s for use in Argentina, were developed by the U.S.-based multinational biotechnology corporation Monsanto to be resistant to glyphosate, the active principle in the "Roundup" herbicide sold by the company.
Introduction of the GM seeds launched an expansion of soy cultivation and increased use of glyphosate. Today, 18 million hectares are planted to soy, out of a total of nearly 30 million hectares of all kinds of grain crops.
Sales of "Roundup" herbicide, which contains glyphosate and other ingredients that aid its absorption by plants, soared dramatically from one million litres a year in the 1990s to nearly 300 million litres a year today, according to official figures.
In 2006, a group of NGOs with access to medical reports from provinces where soy cultivation was expanding, launched the "Stop the Spraying" ("Paren de Fumigar") campaign, which managed to get an official commission created to look into the reports of health damages.
But the commission produced no results, and Monsanto insists that, with proper precautions, the herbicide is not toxic.
Delia Aiassa, a biologist in the Genetics and Environmental Mutagenesis group at the Natural Sciences Department of the University of Río Cuarto, leads a research team studying the impact of glyphosate on health.
The expert explained that exposure to glyphosate can cause asthma, chronic bronchitis, skin and eye irritation, damage to the kidneys, liver and nervous system, cancer, developmental problems in children and birth defects.
She also said that pregnant women are at greater risk of miscarriage, and in men fertility problems are more frequent, if they are exposed to the chemical.
Recently Aiassa published the results of her experiments in mice and amphibians, and her research team has carried out surveys in repeatedly sprayed areas which demonstrated the impact the herbicide has on human health.
Aiassa told IPS that mice and amphibians treated with glyphosate, in its pure form or as the commercial herbicide, mixed with additives, "had increased genetic damage to blood cells, bone marrow and liver." At higher doses, the animals died.
At the request of small towns in Córdoba that are surrounded by soy plantations, the multidisciplinary team carried out "human monitoring" to study the use of herbicides and pesticides from the vantage point of those directly involved.
In Rincón de los Sauces, in Córdoba, where 34 families are surrounded by large soy fields, 34 percent of respondents said that the area round their homes was repeatedly sprayed.
Fifty-three percent of those interviewed said they had never received any information about risks posed by the misuse of agrochemicals, and 35 percent reported symptoms of poisoning (of whom 83 percent worked as sprayers in the fields).
Similar results were obtained by the team in other small towns like Las Vertientes, Marcos Juárez and Saria in the same province. The experts also found "a lack of medical records reflecting the ailments experienced by local residents."
This shortcoming was highlighted by Dr Damián Verzeñassi, academic under-secretary of the School of Medical Sciences at the National University of Rosario, in the northeastern province of Santa Fe.
Aiassa and Verzeñassi gave a talk for health workers Dec. 6 at the Juan Garrahan Paediatric Hospital in Buenos Aires, where severely ill children from all over the country are treated.
"One cannot keep thinking about human health as though it were unconnected with the health of ecosystems," Verzeñassi said in his talk, warning of the health effects of a model of production based on large-scale production of transgenic soy.
Verzeñassi told IPS that because some health impacts only appear a considerable time after exposure to an agricultural chemical, it as essential for doctors in affected areas - and at the Garrahan hospital - to keep patient records.
"Case-based reasoning is a key tool in these situations, but it requires reliable case histories from which to gather data to visibilise the problem," the doctor from Rosario told his colleagues.
IPS asked him about the trial to be held next year in Córdoba province against two agribusiness producers and the pilot of a crop duster plane, for illegal spraying of glyphosate in the vicinity of the village of Ituzaingó and for damages caused to the local population.
In Verzeñassi's view, the trial is "very important" to establish criminal responsibility in the case. He regretted that a group of women from Ituzaingó had to push hard for prosecution to go ahead, instead of the public health system performing that duty.
In spite of loud demands, there is no national law to regulate agricultural chemicals in Argentina. There are regulations in the provinces and in some municipalities, which are permissive to different degrees and are not always enforced.
Among the doctors attending the talk was the head of Oncology at the Garrahan hospital, Pedro Zubizarreta. He told IPS that one-third of the country's child cancer cases - usually the most severe - come for treatment to the Garrahan.
"We can't prove an increase in cancer cases associated with glyphosate use, because we don't have enough detailed records, but what matters is that an agricultural chemical that causes harm is being used on a massive scale," he said.
"We might not be able to demonstrate today that this causes more child cancer, but we do know it is bad for our health and that of our children, and it has an enormous effect on biodiversity and the variety of our foods," he stressed.
The concern expressed by doctors and scientists echoed those of people in Chaco province in the northeast, where IPS covered a debate among the participants at a Women's Hearing for Climate Justice, held in October, which focused on agricultural chemicals.
"They ruin the earth; people around here can't plant any crops because they all wither. They spray toxic chemicals alongside our crops, and the wind burns them all up," Juana Ozuna of the small farmers' organisation in Colonias Unidas, Chaco province, told IPS at that event.
"We don't have much education, but we can see that it does harm, because we can't keep animals or have a vegetable garden, the water is polluted and there are pitiful cases of deformed babies," she concluded.
Argentina: Poison from the Sky
by Marcela Valente
(IPS) - Argentina's soy boom has been a major source of foreign exchange. But the other side of the coin is the toxic effects among the rural population, from spraying agrochemicals.
Research by the National University of Río Cuarto in the northwestern province of Córdoba demonstrated that glyphosate, the herbicide used on transgenic soy crops, causes genetic damage in mice and amphibians, like frogs.
Two years ago, another research study by Andrés Carrasco, a professor at the Molecular Embryology Laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine and principal researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), also demonstrated damage in amphibians.
Genetically modified (GM) soy seeds, approved amid controversy in the 1990s for use in Argentina, were developed by the U.S.-based multinational biotechnology corporation Monsanto to be resistant to glyphosate, the active principle in the "Roundup" herbicide sold by the company.
Introduction of the GM seeds launched an expansion of soy cultivation and increased use of glyphosate. Today, 18 million hectares are planted to soy, out of a total of nearly 30 million hectares of all kinds of grain crops.
Sales of "Roundup" herbicide, which contains glyphosate and other ingredients that aid its absorption by plants, soared dramatically from one million litres a year in the 1990s to nearly 300 million litres a year today, according to official figures.
In 2006, a group of NGOs with access to medical reports from provinces where soy cultivation was expanding, launched the "Stop the Spraying" ("Paren de Fumigar") campaign, which managed to get an official commission created to look into the reports of health damages.
But the commission produced no results, and Monsanto insists that, with proper precautions, the herbicide is not toxic.
Delia Aiassa, a biologist in the Genetics and Environmental Mutagenesis group at the Natural Sciences Department of the University of Río Cuarto, leads a research team studying the impact of glyphosate on health.
The expert explained that exposure to glyphosate can cause asthma, chronic bronchitis, skin and eye irritation, damage to the kidneys, liver and nervous system, cancer, developmental problems in children and birth defects.
She also said that pregnant women are at greater risk of miscarriage, and in men fertility problems are more frequent, if they are exposed to the chemical.
Recently Aiassa published the results of her experiments in mice and amphibians, and her research team has carried out surveys in repeatedly sprayed areas which demonstrated the impact the herbicide has on human health.
Aiassa told IPS that mice and amphibians treated with glyphosate, in its pure form or as the commercial herbicide, mixed with additives, "had increased genetic damage to blood cells, bone marrow and liver." At higher doses, the animals died.
At the request of small towns in Córdoba that are surrounded by soy plantations, the multidisciplinary team carried out "human monitoring" to study the use of herbicides and pesticides from the vantage point of those directly involved.
In Rincón de los Sauces, in Córdoba, where 34 families are surrounded by large soy fields, 34 percent of respondents said that the area round their homes was repeatedly sprayed.
Fifty-three percent of those interviewed said they had never received any information about risks posed by the misuse of agrochemicals, and 35 percent reported symptoms of poisoning (of whom 83 percent worked as sprayers in the fields).
Similar results were obtained by the team in other small towns like Las Vertientes, Marcos Juárez and Saria in the same province. The experts also found "a lack of medical records reflecting the ailments experienced by local residents."
This shortcoming was highlighted by Dr Damián Verzeñassi, academic under-secretary of the School of Medical Sciences at the National University of Rosario, in the northeastern province of Santa Fe.
Aiassa and Verzeñassi gave a talk for health workers Dec. 6 at the Juan Garrahan Paediatric Hospital in Buenos Aires, where severely ill children from all over the country are treated.
"One cannot keep thinking about human health as though it were unconnected with the health of ecosystems," Verzeñassi said in his talk, warning of the health effects of a model of production based on large-scale production of transgenic soy.
Verzeñassi told IPS that because some health impacts only appear a considerable time after exposure to an agricultural chemical, it as essential for doctors in affected areas - and at the Garrahan hospital - to keep patient records.
"Case-based reasoning is a key tool in these situations, but it requires reliable case histories from which to gather data to visibilise the problem," the doctor from Rosario told his colleagues.
IPS asked him about the trial to be held next year in Córdoba province against two agribusiness producers and the pilot of a crop duster plane, for illegal spraying of glyphosate in the vicinity of the village of Ituzaingó and for damages caused to the local population.
In Verzeñassi's view, the trial is "very important" to establish criminal responsibility in the case. He regretted that a group of women from Ituzaingó had to push hard for prosecution to go ahead, instead of the public health system performing that duty.
In spite of loud demands, there is no national law to regulate agricultural chemicals in Argentina. There are regulations in the provinces and in some municipalities, which are permissive to different degrees and are not always enforced.
Among the doctors attending the talk was the head of Oncology at the Garrahan hospital, Pedro Zubizarreta. He told IPS that one-third of the country's child cancer cases - usually the most severe - come for treatment to the Garrahan.
"We can't prove an increase in cancer cases associated with glyphosate use, because we don't have enough detailed records, but what matters is that an agricultural chemical that causes harm is being used on a massive scale," he said.
"We might not be able to demonstrate today that this causes more child cancer, but we do know it is bad for our health and that of our children, and it has an enormous effect on biodiversity and the variety of our foods," he stressed.
The concern expressed by doctors and scientists echoed those of people in Chaco province in the northeast, where IPS covered a debate among the participants at a Women's Hearing for Climate Justice, held in October, which focused on agricultural chemicals.
"They ruin the earth; people around here can't plant any crops because they all wither. They spray toxic chemicals alongside our crops, and the wind burns them all up," Juana Ozuna of the small farmers' organisation in Colonias Unidas, Chaco province, told IPS at that event.
"We don't have much education, but we can see that it does harm, because we can't keep animals or have a vegetable garden, the water is polluted and there are pitiful cases of deformed babies," she concluded.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Peripheral precocious puberty in a 4-month-old girl: role of pesticides?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21306193
Gynecol Endocrinol. 2011 Sep;27(9):721-4. Epub 2011 Feb 9.
Peripheral precocious puberty in a 4-month-old girl: role of pesticides?
Gaspari L, Paris F, Jeandel C, Sultan C.
Source
Unité d'Endocrinologie-Gynécologie Pédiatrique, Service de Pédiatrie 1, Hôpital Arnaud-de-Villeneuve, CHU Montpellier, Université Montpellier I, Montpellier, France.
Abstract
A 4-month-old girl presented with sexual development, including breast enlargement, menstruation, uterine length of 69 mm at ultrasonography, and dramatically high estrogen bioactivity, but no growth acceleration, pubic hair, pelvis masses or adrenal tumors. Gas chromatography with an electron capture detector and mass spectrometry detected pesticides (p,p'-DDD, p,p'-DDT, lindane and endosulfan sulfate) in plasma from the infant, the mother, and the 38-year-old father, who reported a dramatic decrease in libido, and in soil samples from their farm. The precocious sexual development was probably caused by the estrogen activity of the environmental contamination by tons of pesticides stored in the family farm.
PMID:
21306193
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Gynecol Endocrinol. 2011 Sep;27(9):721-4. Epub 2011 Feb 9.
Peripheral precocious puberty in a 4-month-old girl: role of pesticides?
Gaspari L, Paris F, Jeandel C, Sultan C.
Source
Unité d'Endocrinologie-Gynécologie Pédiatrique, Service de Pédiatrie 1, Hôpital Arnaud-de-Villeneuve, CHU Montpellier, Université Montpellier I, Montpellier, France.
Abstract
A 4-month-old girl presented with sexual development, including breast enlargement, menstruation, uterine length of 69 mm at ultrasonography, and dramatically high estrogen bioactivity, but no growth acceleration, pubic hair, pelvis masses or adrenal tumors. Gas chromatography with an electron capture detector and mass spectrometry detected pesticides (p,p'-DDD, p,p'-DDT, lindane and endosulfan sulfate) in plasma from the infant, the mother, and the 38-year-old father, who reported a dramatic decrease in libido, and in soil samples from their farm. The precocious sexual development was probably caused by the estrogen activity of the environmental contamination by tons of pesticides stored in the family farm.
PMID:
21306193
[PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
NIOSH Fact Sheet Highlights Pesticide Poisoning Monitoring Program.
NIOSH Fact Sheet Highlights Pesticide Poisoning Monitoring Program
A variety of occupations such as agricultural workers, groundskeepers, pet groomers, and fumigators are at risk for exposure to pesticides including fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fumigants, and sanitizers.
Dec 12, 2011
Among the estimated two million agricultural workers in the United States, physicians diagnose 10,000 to 20,000 pesticide poisonings each year. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) established the Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risks - Pesticides Program (SENSOR-Pesticides) to reduce the number of injuries and illnesses associated with occupational pesticide exposure.
The Program is a U.S. state-based surveillance effort that monitors pesticide-related illness and injury in 11 states. Under this program, NIOSH provides technical support and funding to state health departments to build and maintain surveillance capacity and to bolster pesticide-related illness and injury surveillance. EPA also provides funding support for the program.
The SENSOR-supported surveillance systems tabulate the number of acute occupational pesticide poisonings, allowing for the timely identification of outbreaks. The program also helps develop preventive interventions and maintains a national database that compiles information from participating states.
Researchers and government officials from the SENSOR-Pesticides Program have published research articles highlighting findings from the data and build state and national capacity by facilitating communication across participating states. Publications have discussed issues as diverse as pesticide poisoning among agricultural workers, pesticide poisoning in schools, birth defects, and residential use of total release foggers (aka: bug bombs), which are devices that release an insecticide mist.
In 2005, three migrant farm workers living in the same region of Florida gave birth to infants with birth defects within eight weeks of each other. Though suspected, the possibility of workplace pesticide exposure during the maximum sensitivity period of their pregnancies was not initially confirmed because one of the three women had not been working in Florida during this period. The SENSOR-Pesticides Program facilitated collaboration between states that revealed that the three mothers worked for the same tomato grower during their maximum sensitivity periods—two at the grower's Florida operations and one in North Carolina. Thorough investigation was not able to establish a causal link between the mothers’ possible workplace pesticide exposure and their infants' birth defects. However, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspected the tomato grower's farms and found several pesticide and record keeping violations. Later, North Carolina created a taskforce whose findings motivated the state legislature to pass anti-retaliation and recordkeeping laws, training mandates to protect the health of agricultural workers, and funding for improved surveillance. The Florida state legislature provided funding to add ten new pesticide inspectors.
Relevant Information
About 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides are used annually in the U.S. and over 20,000 pesticide products are marketed.
A variety of occupations such as agricultural workers, groundskeepers, pet groomers, and fumigators are at risk for exposure to pesticides including fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fumigants, and sanitizers.
Surveillance serves as an early warning system for harmful effects not detected by manufacturer pre-market testing of pesticide products.
http://ohsonline.com/articles/2011/12/12/niosh-fact-sheet-highlights-pesticide-poisoning-monitoring-program.aspx
A variety of occupations such as agricultural workers, groundskeepers, pet groomers, and fumigators are at risk for exposure to pesticides including fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fumigants, and sanitizers.
Dec 12, 2011
Among the estimated two million agricultural workers in the United States, physicians diagnose 10,000 to 20,000 pesticide poisonings each year. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) established the Sentinel Event Notification System for Occupational Risks - Pesticides Program (SENSOR-Pesticides) to reduce the number of injuries and illnesses associated with occupational pesticide exposure.
The Program is a U.S. state-based surveillance effort that monitors pesticide-related illness and injury in 11 states. Under this program, NIOSH provides technical support and funding to state health departments to build and maintain surveillance capacity and to bolster pesticide-related illness and injury surveillance. EPA also provides funding support for the program.
The SENSOR-supported surveillance systems tabulate the number of acute occupational pesticide poisonings, allowing for the timely identification of outbreaks. The program also helps develop preventive interventions and maintains a national database that compiles information from participating states.
Researchers and government officials from the SENSOR-Pesticides Program have published research articles highlighting findings from the data and build state and national capacity by facilitating communication across participating states. Publications have discussed issues as diverse as pesticide poisoning among agricultural workers, pesticide poisoning in schools, birth defects, and residential use of total release foggers (aka: bug bombs), which are devices that release an insecticide mist.
In 2005, three migrant farm workers living in the same region of Florida gave birth to infants with birth defects within eight weeks of each other. Though suspected, the possibility of workplace pesticide exposure during the maximum sensitivity period of their pregnancies was not initially confirmed because one of the three women had not been working in Florida during this period. The SENSOR-Pesticides Program facilitated collaboration between states that revealed that the three mothers worked for the same tomato grower during their maximum sensitivity periods—two at the grower's Florida operations and one in North Carolina. Thorough investigation was not able to establish a causal link between the mothers’ possible workplace pesticide exposure and their infants' birth defects. However, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services and the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspected the tomato grower's farms and found several pesticide and record keeping violations. Later, North Carolina created a taskforce whose findings motivated the state legislature to pass anti-retaliation and recordkeeping laws, training mandates to protect the health of agricultural workers, and funding for improved surveillance. The Florida state legislature provided funding to add ten new pesticide inspectors.
Relevant Information
About 1.1 billion pounds of pesticides are used annually in the U.S. and over 20,000 pesticide products are marketed.
A variety of occupations such as agricultural workers, groundskeepers, pet groomers, and fumigators are at risk for exposure to pesticides including fungicides, herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides, fumigants, and sanitizers.
Surveillance serves as an early warning system for harmful effects not detected by manufacturer pre-market testing of pesticide products.
http://ohsonline.com/articles/2011/12/12/niosh-fact-sheet-highlights-pesticide-poisoning-monitoring-program.aspx
Monday, December 12, 2011
Turmeric Curcumin - Natural Cancer-Fighting Spice Reduces Tumors by 81%
Turmeric Curcumin - Natural Cancer-Fighting Spice Reduces Tumors by 81% - It also reduces pain, inflammation, diabetes, arthritis and many other health problems. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP7S5VDHtFY
The health benefits of turmeric lie in its active ingredient called curcumin. This powerful compound gives turmeric its therapeutic benefits, its yellow color, and its pungent flavor. More specifically, curcumin harbors antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, stomach-soothing, and liver-and heart-protecting effects. Turmeric is thought to reduce inflammation by lowering histamine levels and it may also stimulate the adrenal glands to increase production of a hormone that reduces inflammation. It is often used to ease joint pain and inflammation associated with arthritis. However, it is also used to reduce joint pain and in inflammation in other disorders as well. Turmeric (curcumin) also harbors rich stores of antioxidants. Antioxidants are disease-fighting substances that mop up the continuous onslaught of free radicals. Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules that damage cells as they travel through the body and are responsible for premature aging and diseases such as cancer if left unchecked. In fact, Naturopaths often recommend turmeric for situations in which high concentrations of antioxidants are required.
Studies with animals show that turmeric benefits liver health. Several animal studies suggest that turmeric protects the liver from the damaging effects of certain toxins, including alcohol. These findings certainly lend credence to the herb's history of use in liver aliments. Among the many health benefits of turmeric, is that it harbors antiplatelet activity. The herb reduces the ability of the blood to form clots and, as such, this action may improve circulation as well as offer some protection against heart attacks and strokes. If you suffer from digestive problems this may be the herb for you. Turmeric helps digest fats by stimulating the flow of bile. No wonder it was used traditionally as a digestive aid. Laboratory studies indicate that curcumin has anti-cancer activity. More specifically, it destroys some types of cancer cells. For example, in the laboratory, curcumin kills cultures of human leukemia cells. This action may be due to turmeric's antioxidant properties or some other anti-cancer activity. Tumeric may help fight bacteria infections.
Precautions and Side Effects of Turmeric. Turmeric is considered a safe herb. However, prolong use of higher than recommended doses can cause stomach upset and other gastrointestinal disturbances. There is no RDA (recommended daily allowance) on turmeric because it is not considered an essential nutrient. However, a typical adult dosage as a stand-alone supplement is 400 to 600 of curcumin a day. Who should avoid the use of Turmeric? People with congestive heart disease whose cause remains unidentified and people with painful gallstones, obstructive jaundice, acute bilious colic, or extremely toxic liver disorders. The following people should check with their medical provider before starting any supplements - Pregnant women, women who are trying to conceive or women that have a history of fertility problems. Women who are nursing. People with a blood-clotting disorder. People on any type of medication. People with health conditions.
Tips on Choosing a Quality Turmeric Supplement - Choose a supplement using only standardized extracts of at least 95% curcumin or greater. Curcumin is not well absorbed by the body when taken taken orally. As such, it is often sold with piperine to enhance absorption. Bromelain also enhances the bioavailability of curcumin.
The health benefits of turmeric lie in its active ingredient called curcumin. This powerful compound gives turmeric its therapeutic benefits, its yellow color, and its pungent flavor. More specifically, curcumin harbors antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, stomach-soothing, and liver-and heart-protecting effects. Turmeric is thought to reduce inflammation by lowering histamine levels and it may also stimulate the adrenal glands to increase production of a hormone that reduces inflammation. It is often used to ease joint pain and inflammation associated with arthritis. However, it is also used to reduce joint pain and in inflammation in other disorders as well. Turmeric (curcumin) also harbors rich stores of antioxidants. Antioxidants are disease-fighting substances that mop up the continuous onslaught of free radicals. Free radicals are unstable oxygen molecules that damage cells as they travel through the body and are responsible for premature aging and diseases such as cancer if left unchecked. In fact, Naturopaths often recommend turmeric for situations in which high concentrations of antioxidants are required.
Studies with animals show that turmeric benefits liver health. Several animal studies suggest that turmeric protects the liver from the damaging effects of certain toxins, including alcohol. These findings certainly lend credence to the herb's history of use in liver aliments. Among the many health benefits of turmeric, is that it harbors antiplatelet activity. The herb reduces the ability of the blood to form clots and, as such, this action may improve circulation as well as offer some protection against heart attacks and strokes. If you suffer from digestive problems this may be the herb for you. Turmeric helps digest fats by stimulating the flow of bile. No wonder it was used traditionally as a digestive aid. Laboratory studies indicate that curcumin has anti-cancer activity. More specifically, it destroys some types of cancer cells. For example, in the laboratory, curcumin kills cultures of human leukemia cells. This action may be due to turmeric's antioxidant properties or some other anti-cancer activity. Tumeric may help fight bacteria infections.
Precautions and Side Effects of Turmeric. Turmeric is considered a safe herb. However, prolong use of higher than recommended doses can cause stomach upset and other gastrointestinal disturbances. There is no RDA (recommended daily allowance) on turmeric because it is not considered an essential nutrient. However, a typical adult dosage as a stand-alone supplement is 400 to 600 of curcumin a day. Who should avoid the use of Turmeric? People with congestive heart disease whose cause remains unidentified and people with painful gallstones, obstructive jaundice, acute bilious colic, or extremely toxic liver disorders. The following people should check with their medical provider before starting any supplements - Pregnant women, women who are trying to conceive or women that have a history of fertility problems. Women who are nursing. People with a blood-clotting disorder. People on any type of medication. People with health conditions.
Tips on Choosing a Quality Turmeric Supplement - Choose a supplement using only standardized extracts of at least 95% curcumin or greater. Curcumin is not well absorbed by the body when taken taken orally. As such, it is often sold with piperine to enhance absorption. Bromelain also enhances the bioavailability of curcumin.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Tribunal verdict vs. 6 agrochemical TNCs hailed, urgent action on recommendations urged
Tribunal verdict vs. 6 agrochemical TNCs hailed, urgent action on recommendations urged
Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International hailed the verdict of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) against the world’s six largest agrochemical companies Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont and BASF after a historic four-day session that culminated in Bangalore, India yesterday.
Victims and survivors of the pesticide industry from all over the world, represented by PAN International, testified before a distinguished international jury to indict the “Big 6” for human rights violations. Based on evidence presented before it, the Tribunal found the Defendant agrochemical TNCs “responsible for gross, widespread and systematic violations of the right to health and life, economic, social and cultural rights, as well as of civil and political rights, and women and children’s rights.” (see the verdict http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/)
The Tribunal also found agrochemical TNCs responsible for violation of indigenous peoples’ human rights, and further found that “their systematic acts of corporate governance have caused avoidable catastrophic risks, increasing the prospects of extinction of biodiversity, including species whose continued existence is necessary for reproduction of human life.”
Sarojeni Rengam, PAN Asia Pacific Executive Director, said that the Tribunal’s verdict is a victory for peoples who have been most affected by the Big 6’s control over food and agriculture. “We are elated with the verdict. It affirms what people all over the world already know and are experiencing: that the pesticide industry is to blame and should be held accountable for the systematic poisoning of human health and the environment, loss of food sovereignty and self-determination, and increased world hunger and poverty,” she said.
The PPT, founded in 1979 in Italy, is an international opinion tribunal that looks into complaints of human rights violations. Borne out of the tribunals on the Vietnam War and Latin American dictatorships, the PPT has held 37 sessions so far using the rigorous conventional court format. While its verdicts are not legally binding, these can set precedent for future legal actions against Defendants, and can pressure governments and institutions.
Jurors for the PPT Session on Agrochemical TNCs are Indian legal scholar Upendra Baxi, British scientist Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, African environmental lawyer Ibrahima Ly, German economist Elmar Altvater, Italian professor Paolo Ramazotti, and PPT Secretary General Dr. Gianni Tognoni. (see profile of jury http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/)
The Tribunal said that the home States of the Big 6 (US, Switzerland, and Germany), have “failed to comply with their internationally accepted responsibility to promote and protect human rights,” by not adequately regulating, monitoring and disciplining these corporations. The Tribunal further said that these States have “unjustifiably promoted a double standard approach prohibiting the production of hazardous chemicals at home while allowing their own TNCs unrestrained license for these enterprises in other States, especially of the Global South.”
The Tribunal also found host States responsible for failure to protect the human rights of its citizens by offering “magic carpet type hospitality” to agrochemical TNCs and therefore not adequately protecting social movement activists or independent scientists from harassment, not limiting the “global corporate ownership of knowledge production in universities and related research sites,” “not recognizing the value of indigenous knowledge and social relationships they create and sustain,” and “not fully pursuing alternative and less hazardous forms of agricultural production without having learnt the full lessons from the First Green Revolution.”
The Tribunal also found that the policies of World Trade Organization in relation to Intellectual Property Rights are “not balanced with any sincere regard for the grave long-term hazards to humans and nature already posed by the activities of agribusiness and agrochemical industries.” International financial institutions, named in the indictment as the International Monetary Fund-World Bank, do not follow “a strict regime of human rights conditionalities” and “have yet to develop policies concerning their support for hazardous manufacture, application or process,” said the Tribunal.
The Tribunal recommended that national governments should “prosecute the Defendant agrochemical companies in terms of criminal liability rather than civil liability.” It also urged governments to take action to “restructure international law” to ensure the accountability of transnational corporations, to “accept a less heavy burden of proof on the victims and to fully commit to and legislate for the precautionary principle,” and “to prevent TNCs from directly or indirectly harassing and intimidating scientists, farmers and human rights and environmental defenders.”
It also urged international organizations and intergovernmental institutions to uphold human rights and the welfare of populations, and protect of biodiversity and ecosystems by subordinating the interests of corporations pursuing patents.
“The Tribunal’s recommendations must immediately be acted upon, for they echo what civil society and people’s organizations have been demanding for a very long time. The prosecution of the Big 6 must be started to bring justice to fruition for the thousands of victims and survivors of the pesticide industry. The precautionary principle must be put into place and the patent regime abolished, as recommended by the Tribunal. That is the only way to stop these human rights violations, which continue every day without impunity,” said Rengam.
Rengam further added that the Tribunal just marks the beginning of an escalated international people’s movement against agrochemical TNCs, which is now armed with a powerful verdict that can be used in every part of the world. “The next step towards justice and liberation from the Big 6’s control will be determined by the people’s unity, strength, and determination to stand up against corporate greed and aggression, just as was shown in this victorious PPT Session,” she concluded. ###
_____________________________________________
E-mail: inquiry@agricorporateaccountability.net, media@agricorporateaccountability.net
Website: http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net
The Permanent People's Tribunal Session on Agrochemical TNCs is organised by Pesticide Action Network International, a global network of more than 600 organisations in over 90 countries which has been working to eliminate the use of pesticides and other hazardous technologies.
See the full coverage of the PPT Session http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/.
Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International hailed the verdict of the Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) against the world’s six largest agrochemical companies Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont and BASF after a historic four-day session that culminated in Bangalore, India yesterday.
Victims and survivors of the pesticide industry from all over the world, represented by PAN International, testified before a distinguished international jury to indict the “Big 6” for human rights violations. Based on evidence presented before it, the Tribunal found the Defendant agrochemical TNCs “responsible for gross, widespread and systematic violations of the right to health and life, economic, social and cultural rights, as well as of civil and political rights, and women and children’s rights.” (see the verdict http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/)
The Tribunal also found agrochemical TNCs responsible for violation of indigenous peoples’ human rights, and further found that “their systematic acts of corporate governance have caused avoidable catastrophic risks, increasing the prospects of extinction of biodiversity, including species whose continued existence is necessary for reproduction of human life.”
Sarojeni Rengam, PAN Asia Pacific Executive Director, said that the Tribunal’s verdict is a victory for peoples who have been most affected by the Big 6’s control over food and agriculture. “We are elated with the verdict. It affirms what people all over the world already know and are experiencing: that the pesticide industry is to blame and should be held accountable for the systematic poisoning of human health and the environment, loss of food sovereignty and self-determination, and increased world hunger and poverty,” she said.
The PPT, founded in 1979 in Italy, is an international opinion tribunal that looks into complaints of human rights violations. Borne out of the tribunals on the Vietnam War and Latin American dictatorships, the PPT has held 37 sessions so far using the rigorous conventional court format. While its verdicts are not legally binding, these can set precedent for future legal actions against Defendants, and can pressure governments and institutions.
Jurors for the PPT Session on Agrochemical TNCs are Indian legal scholar Upendra Baxi, British scientist Dr. Ricarda Steinbrecher, African environmental lawyer Ibrahima Ly, German economist Elmar Altvater, Italian professor Paolo Ramazotti, and PPT Secretary General Dr. Gianni Tognoni. (see profile of jury http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/)
The Tribunal said that the home States of the Big 6 (US, Switzerland, and Germany), have “failed to comply with their internationally accepted responsibility to promote and protect human rights,” by not adequately regulating, monitoring and disciplining these corporations. The Tribunal further said that these States have “unjustifiably promoted a double standard approach prohibiting the production of hazardous chemicals at home while allowing their own TNCs unrestrained license for these enterprises in other States, especially of the Global South.”
The Tribunal also found host States responsible for failure to protect the human rights of its citizens by offering “magic carpet type hospitality” to agrochemical TNCs and therefore not adequately protecting social movement activists or independent scientists from harassment, not limiting the “global corporate ownership of knowledge production in universities and related research sites,” “not recognizing the value of indigenous knowledge and social relationships they create and sustain,” and “not fully pursuing alternative and less hazardous forms of agricultural production without having learnt the full lessons from the First Green Revolution.”
The Tribunal also found that the policies of World Trade Organization in relation to Intellectual Property Rights are “not balanced with any sincere regard for the grave long-term hazards to humans and nature already posed by the activities of agribusiness and agrochemical industries.” International financial institutions, named in the indictment as the International Monetary Fund-World Bank, do not follow “a strict regime of human rights conditionalities” and “have yet to develop policies concerning their support for hazardous manufacture, application or process,” said the Tribunal.
The Tribunal recommended that national governments should “prosecute the Defendant agrochemical companies in terms of criminal liability rather than civil liability.” It also urged governments to take action to “restructure international law” to ensure the accountability of transnational corporations, to “accept a less heavy burden of proof on the victims and to fully commit to and legislate for the precautionary principle,” and “to prevent TNCs from directly or indirectly harassing and intimidating scientists, farmers and human rights and environmental defenders.”
It also urged international organizations and intergovernmental institutions to uphold human rights and the welfare of populations, and protect of biodiversity and ecosystems by subordinating the interests of corporations pursuing patents.
“The Tribunal’s recommendations must immediately be acted upon, for they echo what civil society and people’s organizations have been demanding for a very long time. The prosecution of the Big 6 must be started to bring justice to fruition for the thousands of victims and survivors of the pesticide industry. The precautionary principle must be put into place and the patent regime abolished, as recommended by the Tribunal. That is the only way to stop these human rights violations, which continue every day without impunity,” said Rengam.
Rengam further added that the Tribunal just marks the beginning of an escalated international people’s movement against agrochemical TNCs, which is now armed with a powerful verdict that can be used in every part of the world. “The next step towards justice and liberation from the Big 6’s control will be determined by the people’s unity, strength, and determination to stand up against corporate greed and aggression, just as was shown in this victorious PPT Session,” she concluded. ###
_____________________________________________
E-mail: inquiry@agricorporateaccountability.net, media@agricorporateaccountability.net
Website: http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net
The Permanent People's Tribunal Session on Agrochemical TNCs is organised by Pesticide Action Network International, a global network of more than 600 organisations in over 90 countries which has been working to eliminate the use of pesticides and other hazardous technologies.
See the full coverage of the PPT Session http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Permanent People’s Tribunal Session on Agrochemical TNCs to be broadcasted live
Permanent People’s Tribunal Session on Agrochemical TNCs to be broadcasted live
The first-ever Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) Session on Agrochemical Transnational Corporations (TNCs) will be broadcasted via livestreaming on December 3 to 6, 2011 from Bangalore, India.
This was announced today by Pesticide Action Network International, which will bring the indictment in behalf of victims and survivors from all over the world who will gather and give testimony for the landmark trial.
Pesticide industry giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, BASF, and Dow Chemical will be charged with violations of more than 20 instruments of international human rights law before a distinguished panel of jurors.
The schedule and livestreaming of the PPT can be seen here:
http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/en/page/media-resources/51
Live updates from the PPT can be seen here:
http://twitter.com/#!/PANAsiaPacific
The first-ever Permanent People’s Tribunal (PPT) Session on Agrochemical Transnational Corporations (TNCs) will be broadcasted via livestreaming on December 3 to 6, 2011 from Bangalore, India.
This was announced today by Pesticide Action Network International, which will bring the indictment in behalf of victims and survivors from all over the world who will gather and give testimony for the landmark trial.
Pesticide industry giants Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, DuPont, BASF, and Dow Chemical will be charged with violations of more than 20 instruments of international human rights law before a distinguished panel of jurors.
The schedule and livestreaming of the PPT can be seen here:
http://www.agricorporateaccountability.net/en/page/media-resources/51
Live updates from the PPT can be seen here:
http://twitter.com/#!/PANAsiaPacific
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol.
Old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol.
http://www.anh-usa.org/starting-children-on-drugs/
What is “bad” cholesterol, anyway? Conventional medicine says HDL cholesterol is good, and LDL is bad. But scientists at Texas A&M University have found that LDL cholesterol is actually needed by the body to build new muscle—a finding that is particularly important both for kids and for the rest of us as we get older and lose muscle more rapidly. It also helps get vitamin D around our body.
A review of nineteen large studies of more than 68,000 deaths by the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota found that low cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.
A recent study shows that the statin drug simvastatin, which the government is advocating we take to lower cholesterol levels, actually weakens our immune system and makes it difficult to fight off bacterial infections.
Yale’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine found that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol.
http://www.anh-usa.org/starting-children-on-drugs/
What is “bad” cholesterol, anyway? Conventional medicine says HDL cholesterol is good, and LDL is bad. But scientists at Texas A&M University have found that LDL cholesterol is actually needed by the body to build new muscle—a finding that is particularly important both for kids and for the rest of us as we get older and lose muscle more rapidly. It also helps get vitamin D around our body.
A review of nineteen large studies of more than 68,000 deaths by the Division of Epidemiology at the University of Minnesota found that low cholesterol predicted an increased risk of dying from gastrointestinal and respiratory diseases.
A recent study shows that the statin drug simvastatin, which the government is advocating we take to lower cholesterol levels, actually weakens our immune system and makes it difficult to fight off bacterial infections.
Yale’s Department of Cardiovascular Medicine found that old people with low cholesterol died twice as often from a heart attack as did old people with high cholesterol.
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Organic herbicides - the cure to your weed woes!
Weeds can compete with productive crops or pasture, or convert productive land into unusable scrub. Weeds are also often poisonous, distasteful, produce burrs, thorns or other damaging body parts or otherwise interfere with the use and management of desirable plants by contaminating harvests or excluding or poisoning livestock. Weeds tend to thrive at the expense of the more refined edible or ornamental crops. They provide competition for space, nutrients, water and light, although how seriously they will affect a crop depends on a number of factors. Some crops have greater resistance than others - smaller, slower growing seedlings are more likely to be overwhelmed than those that are larger and more vigorous. Vigorous plant stands are the best means for eradicating weeds. Using high quality seed, well-calibrated planting equipment, adapted varieties, optimal soil fertility, good soil drainage and tilth, and proper soil preparation will usually result in rapid, vigorous crop growth.
SOIL FERTILITY & CONDITION
In the 1930s, it was noted that heavy use of newly introduced chemical fertilizers in Germany brought about a very perceptible alteration in the proportion of different types of weed species. Some species which had formerly been very common as field weeds were rapidly disappearing, while other types of weeds were becoming much more prominent. We continue to see today that the type of fertility amendments one uses has a powerful effect on weed pressure, in both the number and species present. In an organic system, it is important to rely on the biological activity of the soil as the main source of fertility and favorable physical structure. An active and diverse microbial population in the soil is key to growing healthy, high-yielding organic crops. While the chemical components of a soil are important, fertility management should focus on feeding the soil microbial life for the long term, rather than tending to the immediate and changing needs of the plants. Any fertility amendments or inputs should be considered supplemental to the natural fertility of the soil. This population can be stimulated by increasing organic matter, by performing certain tillage operations that add oxygen to the soil, and limiting other tillage operations that unnecessarily disturb soil structure, and by avoiding the addition of any materials that will adversely affect microbial growth. The presence of microorganisms and organic material in the soil is essential to holding soil nutrient ions in the crop root zone, to prevent them from being lost to erosion or leaching. Microbial activity in soil may also shorten the life of dormant weed seeds and break down perennial roots and rhizomes, further reducing potential weed pressure.
Weed control is the botanical component of pest control, using physical and chemical methods to stop weeds from reaching a mature stage of growth when they could be harmful to domesticated plants, people, pets and livestock. In order to reduce weed growth, many "weed control" strategies have been developed in order to contain the growth and spread of weeds. The most basic is ploughing which cuts the roots of annual weeds.
Another mechanical method of weed control includes covering an area of ground with several layers of wet newspaper or one black plastic sheet for several weeks. In the case of using wet newspaper, the multiple layers prevent light from reaching all plants beneath, which kills them. Saturating the newspaper with water daily speeds the decomposition of the dead plants. Any weed seeds that start to sprout because of the water will also be deprived of sunlight, be killed, and decompose. After several weeks, all germinating weed seeds present in the ground should be dead. Then the newspaper can be removed and the ground can be planted. The decomposed plants will help fertilize the plants or seeds planted later. In the case of using the black plastic sheet, the greenhouse effect is used to kill the plants beneath the sheet. A 5-10 cm layer of wood chip mulch on the ground will also prevent most weeds from sprouting. Also, gravel can be spread over the ground as an inorganic mulch. Many people find that although the black plastic sheeting is extremely effective at preventing the weeds in areas where it covers, but in actual use it is difficult to achieve full coverage. You can also use asphalt rolled roofing or shingles, wood, cardboard, etc to cover and kill weeds. Knowing how weeds reproduce, spread and survive adverse conditions can help in developing effective control and management strategies. Weeds have a large range of techniques that enable them to invade and then thrive.
Man-made or Synthetic Herbicides, also commonly known as weed killers, are pesticide POISONS used to kill unwanted plants. Selective herbicides kill specific targets while leaving the desired crop relatively unharmed. Some of these act by interfering with the growth of the weed and are often synthetic "imitations" of plant hormones. Herbicides used to clear waste ground, industrial sites, railways and railway embankments are non-selective and kill all plant material with which they come into contact. Smaller quantities are used in forestry, pasture systems, and management of areas set aside as wildlife habitat. More than 166 Canadian cities have banned the cosmetic application of pesticide POISONS on lawns. As a result, urban streams in Ontario have seen an 80% reductiion of the three most commonly used lawn herbicides - 2, 4-D, dicamba and MCPP. The easiest treatment for lawn weeds is to tolerate or ignore them. "We are rightly appalled by the genetic effects of radiation; how then, can we be indifferent to the same effect in chemicals we disseminate widely in our environment?" - Rachel Carson
Synthetic herbicide POISONS have widely variable toxicity e.g., http://www.scribd.com/doc/57277946/RoundupandBirthDefectsv5. In addition to acute toxicity from high exposures there is concern of possible carcinogenicity as well as other long-term (chronic) health problems such as contributing to Parkinson's disease. Some herbicide POISONS cause a range of health effects ranging from skin rashes to death. The pathway of attack can arise from intentional or unintentional direct consumption, improper application resulting in the herbicide POISON coming into direct contact with people or wildlife, inhalation of volatile sprays, or food consumption prior to the labeled pre-harvest interval. Under extreme conditions, herbicide POISONS can also be transported via surface runoff to contaminate distant water sources. Most herbicide POISONS are supposed to decompose rapidly in soils via soil microbial decomposition, hydrolysis, or photolysis.
Some plants produce natural herbicides, such as the genus Juglans (walnuts), or the tree of heaven; such action of natural herbicides, and other related chemical interactions, is called allelopathy.
Herbicide POISONS are widely used in agriculture and in landscape turf management. In the U.S., they account for about 70% of all agricultural pesticide POISON use. Prior to the widespread use of chemical herbicides, cultural controls, such as altering soil pH, salinity, or fertility levels, were used to control weeds. Mechanical control (including tillage) was also (and still is) used to safely and effectively control weeds.
Recently the term organic has come to imply products used in organic farming. Under this definition an organic herbicide is one that can be used in a farming enterprise that has been classified as organic. Commercially-sold organic herbicides are expensive and may not be affordable for commercial farming. Depending on the application, they are generally used along with cultural and mechanical weed control practices.
Typically a combination of methods are used in organic situations.
Drip irrigation: Rubber hoses and other methods are used to bring water directly to the roots of the desired plants. This limits weed access to water.
Manually pulling weeds: Laborers are used to pull weeds at various points in the growing process.
Mechanically tilling around plants: Tractors are used to carefully till weeds around the crop plants at various points in the growing process. Besides tilling, other mechanical weed control methods including hoeing also exist.
Ploughing: Ploughing includes tilling of soil, intercultural ploughing and summer ploughing. Ploughing through tilling of soil uproots the weeds which causes them to die. In summer ploughing is done during deep summers. Summer ploughing also helps in killing other pests.
Crop rotation: Rotating crops with ones that kill weeds by choking them out, such as hemp, Mucuna pruriens, and other crops, can be a very effective method of weed control. It is a way to avoid the use of herbicides, and to gain the benefits of crop rotation.
Weed mats: A weed mat is an artificial mulch, fibrous cloth material, bark or newspaper laid on top of the soil preventing weeds from growing to the surface. Thee are special weed mats for lake vegetation.
Thermal methods
There are several thermal methods known to control weeds. Weed burners heat up soil quickly and destroy superficial parts of the plants. Weed seeds are often heat resistant and even react with an increase of growth on dry heat. Since the 19th century soil steam sterilization is used as a farming technique to clean soil completely from weeds. Several research results confirm the high effectiveness of humid heat against weeds and its seeds.
Homemade organic herbicides include:
Corn gluten meal (CGM) is a natural preemergence weed control used in turf grass, which reduces germination of many broadleaf and grass weeds. Corn Meal - Sometimes the most effective safe weed killers are the ones that stop the weeds before they even appear. Corn meal has a chemical in it that acts as a pre-emergent on plant seeds. That means that it will prevent the seed from germinating. Sprinkling corn meal in an area that you want to keep weeds out of, will not harm the current plants but will keep weeds from growing.
Sugar is another organic weed killer. It puts the soil organisms into overdrive and the soil becomes temporarily unsuitable for plants. It is great for killing weed trees, bushes or vines that are hard to pull out. Simply pour some sugar at the base of the plant you wish to kill. If you are concerned about it becoming an attraction to pests, simply mix the sugar with equal parts chili pepper to deter those possible pests.
Some spices are now effectively used in herbicides.
Vinegar is effective for 5-20% solutions of acetic acid with higher concentrations most effective but mainly destroys surface growth and so respraying to treat regrowth is needed. Resistant plants generally succumb when weakened by respraying. Straight vinegar or vinegar with a squirt or two of dishwashing liquid will also lay weeds low, but it may take repeated applications to do the job. (You can help the vinegar along by adding of 10% clove oil or lemon juice concentrate to each quart of vinegar.) The more acidic the vinegar, the more effective it will be at controlling weeds, but it also becomes more dangerous for you to handle as the concentration increases. “Regular” grocery-store vinegar typically has 3 to 5 percent acidity; you may be able to find 10 percent vinegar at a restaurant-supply store or where supplies for pickling are sold. Railway companies use a MUCH stronger concentration - 20% solution but at that strength, it can be dangerous to handle. For more difficult weeds, you may need this stronger vinegar concentration. You can purchase a 20% acetic acid solution that uses Yucca extract as a sticking agent. The solution will kill unwanted grass, weeds or plant material by dehydrating the plant. Be careful, even though this is considered an environmentally safe weed killer, it can harm you and it will kill any vegetation that comes in contact. Repeated applications of "regular" vinegar will eventually acidify the soil, making it harder for future generations of weeds (or any plants) to get a roothold. Ordinary strength vinegar (5-6% acetic acid) can be used. To a gallon of vinegar, one would add a 1/2 tsp of dish detergent to act as a surfactant so the vinegar would penetrate the soil well and move down the root. Put the vinegar into a large squeeze bottle (for a small job). For larger jobs, use a garden sprayer that will deliver a thin stream instead of a wide spray. You can sweeten the soil later with lime.
Hot Water/Steam has been applied commercially - it kills surface growth but not underground growth and so respraying to treat regrowth of perennials is needed. (Use the water from boiling your eggs in the morning. This is a great spot weed killer.)
Flame is considered more effective than steam but suffers from the same difficulties. You can invest in a handheld flame weeder – basically a propane torch with an extended nozzle – that lets you wipe out weeds without any herbicides at all. You can find flame-weeder nozzles that attach to a gas-grill-sized propane tank by means of a long hose, or small models that use a I-pound propane tank you can carry easily. An advantage of a flame weeder is that you can use it in the winter to rid you patio of treacherous icy patches, too. Do not burn Poison Ivy!
D-limonene (citrus oil). D-limonene (citrus oil) is a natural degreasing agent that strips the waxy skin or cuticle from weeds, causing dehydration and ultimately death. Many safe weed killers are typically made of citrus oils, which are nontoxic, but effective.
Borax, Powdered Laundry Detergent (especially with bleach), Floor strippers and many de-greasers will also kill most plants - but can contaminate for a long time.
Bleach kills almost everything, including plants. To use it as a weed killer, put a 50% bleach solution in a spray bottle and mist the offending plants.
Soap. Spray a 50% dish soap, 50% water mixture on your weeds. You will suffocate them.
Rubbing Alcohol: This one acts as a contact herbicide, burning the leaves of any plant it touches. It does not kill the entire plant, though. Vinegar can be used for the same purpose. Gin will also work and you can again help kill plants by adding the juice of two lemons.
Saltwater or salt applied in appropriate strengths to the rootzone will kill most plants.
Acids applied in appropriate strengths to the rootzone will kill virtually every plant. After which you can apply lime to sweeten the soil.
Monocerin produced by certain fungi will kill certain weeds such as Johnson Grass.
Most homemade organic weed killers use vinegar (acetic acid) and sulfur. If you are growing asparagus or celery, and will be growing it more or less forever in the same spot, you can also use rock salt. Otherwise, stay away from the salt. Prepare a mixture of 1/8 soap, ½ vinegar and 3/8 water. Pour into a spray bottle and mist plants. The soap will help the vinegar “stick” to the plant, and the top of the plant will begin to die.
Ready-to-use products that zap weeds with fatty acids (herbicidal soap), vinegar (acetic acid), or essential oils (such as eugenol, or clove oil; and d-limonene, or citrus oil) are available from various manufacturers.
One more important thing - it is generally best to do weed control on a SUNNY HOT day for best effects. If you try it during cool or wet weather, your results will generally be less effective. It generally needs a few days of hot weather to do the best weed control job.
Weeds can compete with productive crops or pasture, or convert productive land into unusable scrub. Weeds are also often poisonous, distasteful, produce burrs, thorns or other damaging body parts or otherwise interfere with the use and management of desirable plants by contaminating harvests or excluding or poisoning livestock. Weeds tend to thrive at the expense of the more refined edible or ornamental crops. They provide competition for space, nutrients, water and light, although how seriously they will affect a crop depends on a number of factors. Some crops have greater resistance than others - smaller, slower growing seedlings are more likely to be overwhelmed than those that are larger and more vigorous. Vigorous plant stands are the best means for eradicating weeds. Using high quality seed, well-calibrated planting equipment, adapted varieties, optimal soil fertility, good soil drainage and tilth, and proper soil preparation will usually result in rapid, vigorous crop growth.
SOIL FERTILITY & CONDITION
In the 1930s, it was noted that heavy use of newly introduced chemical fertilizers in Germany brought about a very perceptible alteration in the proportion of different types of weed species. Some species which had formerly been very common as field weeds were rapidly disappearing, while other types of weeds were becoming much more prominent. We continue to see today that the type of fertility amendments one uses has a powerful effect on weed pressure, in both the number and species present. In an organic system, it is important to rely on the biological activity of the soil as the main source of fertility and favorable physical structure. An active and diverse microbial population in the soil is key to growing healthy, high-yielding organic crops. While the chemical components of a soil are important, fertility management should focus on feeding the soil microbial life for the long term, rather than tending to the immediate and changing needs of the plants. Any fertility amendments or inputs should be considered supplemental to the natural fertility of the soil. This population can be stimulated by increasing organic matter, by performing certain tillage operations that add oxygen to the soil, and limiting other tillage operations that unnecessarily disturb soil structure, and by avoiding the addition of any materials that will adversely affect microbial growth. The presence of microorganisms and organic material in the soil is essential to holding soil nutrient ions in the crop root zone, to prevent them from being lost to erosion or leaching. Microbial activity in soil may also shorten the life of dormant weed seeds and break down perennial roots and rhizomes, further reducing potential weed pressure.
Weed control is the botanical component of pest control, using physical and chemical methods to stop weeds from reaching a mature stage of growth when they could be harmful to domesticated plants, people, pets and livestock. In order to reduce weed growth, many "weed control" strategies have been developed in order to contain the growth and spread of weeds. The most basic is ploughing which cuts the roots of annual weeds.
Another mechanical method of weed control includes covering an area of ground with several layers of wet newspaper or one black plastic sheet for several weeks. In the case of using wet newspaper, the multiple layers prevent light from reaching all plants beneath, which kills them. Saturating the newspaper with water daily speeds the decomposition of the dead plants. Any weed seeds that start to sprout because of the water will also be deprived of sunlight, be killed, and decompose. After several weeks, all germinating weed seeds present in the ground should be dead. Then the newspaper can be removed and the ground can be planted. The decomposed plants will help fertilize the plants or seeds planted later. In the case of using the black plastic sheet, the greenhouse effect is used to kill the plants beneath the sheet. A 5-10 cm layer of wood chip mulch on the ground will also prevent most weeds from sprouting. Also, gravel can be spread over the ground as an inorganic mulch. Many people find that although the black plastic sheeting is extremely effective at preventing the weeds in areas where it covers, but in actual use it is difficult to achieve full coverage. You can also use asphalt rolled roofing or shingles, wood, cardboard, etc to cover and kill weeds. Knowing how weeds reproduce, spread and survive adverse conditions can help in developing effective control and management strategies. Weeds have a large range of techniques that enable them to invade and then thrive.
Man-made or Synthetic Herbicides, also commonly known as weed killers, are pesticide POISONS used to kill unwanted plants. Selective herbicides kill specific targets while leaving the desired crop relatively unharmed. Some of these act by interfering with the growth of the weed and are often synthetic "imitations" of plant hormones. Herbicides used to clear waste ground, industrial sites, railways and railway embankments are non-selective and kill all plant material with which they come into contact. Smaller quantities are used in forestry, pasture systems, and management of areas set aside as wildlife habitat. More than 166 Canadian cities have banned the cosmetic application of pesticide POISONS on lawns. As a result, urban streams in Ontario have seen an 80% reductiion of the three most commonly used lawn herbicides - 2, 4-D, dicamba and MCPP. The easiest treatment for lawn weeds is to tolerate or ignore them. "We are rightly appalled by the genetic effects of radiation; how then, can we be indifferent to the same effect in chemicals we disseminate widely in our environment?" - Rachel Carson
Synthetic herbicide POISONS have widely variable toxicity e.g., http://www.scribd.com/doc/57277946/RoundupandBirthDefectsv5. In addition to acute toxicity from high exposures there is concern of possible carcinogenicity as well as other long-term (chronic) health problems such as contributing to Parkinson's disease. Some herbicide POISONS cause a range of health effects ranging from skin rashes to death. The pathway of attack can arise from intentional or unintentional direct consumption, improper application resulting in the herbicide POISON coming into direct contact with people or wildlife, inhalation of volatile sprays, or food consumption prior to the labeled pre-harvest interval. Under extreme conditions, herbicide POISONS can also be transported via surface runoff to contaminate distant water sources. Most herbicide POISONS are supposed to decompose rapidly in soils via soil microbial decomposition, hydrolysis, or photolysis.
Some plants produce natural herbicides, such as the genus Juglans (walnuts), or the tree of heaven; such action of natural herbicides, and other related chemical interactions, is called allelopathy.
Herbicide POISONS are widely used in agriculture and in landscape turf management. In the U.S., they account for about 70% of all agricultural pesticide POISON use. Prior to the widespread use of chemical herbicides, cultural controls, such as altering soil pH, salinity, or fertility levels, were used to control weeds. Mechanical control (including tillage) was also (and still is) used to safely and effectively control weeds.
Recently the term organic has come to imply products used in organic farming. Under this definition an organic herbicide is one that can be used in a farming enterprise that has been classified as organic. Commercially-sold organic herbicides are expensive and may not be affordable for commercial farming. Depending on the application, they are generally used along with cultural and mechanical weed control practices.
Typically a combination of methods are used in organic situations.
Drip irrigation: Rubber hoses and other methods are used to bring water directly to the roots of the desired plants. This limits weed access to water.
Manually pulling weeds: Laborers are used to pull weeds at various points in the growing process.
Mechanically tilling around plants: Tractors are used to carefully till weeds around the crop plants at various points in the growing process. Besides tilling, other mechanical weed control methods including hoeing also exist.
Ploughing: Ploughing includes tilling of soil, intercultural ploughing and summer ploughing. Ploughing through tilling of soil uproots the weeds which causes them to die. In summer ploughing is done during deep summers. Summer ploughing also helps in killing other pests.
Crop rotation: Rotating crops with ones that kill weeds by choking them out, such as hemp, Mucuna pruriens, and other crops, can be a very effective method of weed control. It is a way to avoid the use of herbicides, and to gain the benefits of crop rotation.
Weed mats: A weed mat is an artificial mulch, fibrous cloth material, bark or newspaper laid on top of the soil preventing weeds from growing to the surface. Thee are special weed mats for lake vegetation.
Thermal methods
There are several thermal methods known to control weeds. Weed burners heat up soil quickly and destroy superficial parts of the plants. Weed seeds are often heat resistant and even react with an increase of growth on dry heat. Since the 19th century soil steam sterilization is used as a farming technique to clean soil completely from weeds. Several research results confirm the high effectiveness of humid heat against weeds and its seeds.
Homemade organic herbicides include:
Corn gluten meal (CGM) is a natural preemergence weed control used in turf grass, which reduces germination of many broadleaf and grass weeds. Corn Meal - Sometimes the most effective safe weed killers are the ones that stop the weeds before they even appear. Corn meal has a chemical in it that acts as a pre-emergent on plant seeds. That means that it will prevent the seed from germinating. Sprinkling corn meal in an area that you want to keep weeds out of, will not harm the current plants but will keep weeds from growing.
Sugar is another organic weed killer. It puts the soil organisms into overdrive and the soil becomes temporarily unsuitable for plants. It is great for killing weed trees, bushes or vines that are hard to pull out. Simply pour some sugar at the base of the plant you wish to kill. If you are concerned about it becoming an attraction to pests, simply mix the sugar with equal parts chili pepper to deter those possible pests.
Some spices are now effectively used in herbicides.
Vinegar is effective for 5-20% solutions of acetic acid with higher concentrations most effective but mainly destroys surface growth and so respraying to treat regrowth is needed. Resistant plants generally succumb when weakened by respraying. Straight vinegar or vinegar with a squirt or two of dishwashing liquid will also lay weeds low, but it may take repeated applications to do the job. (You can help the vinegar along by adding of 10% clove oil or lemon juice concentrate to each quart of vinegar.) The more acidic the vinegar, the more effective it will be at controlling weeds, but it also becomes more dangerous for you to handle as the concentration increases. “Regular” grocery-store vinegar typically has 3 to 5 percent acidity; you may be able to find 10 percent vinegar at a restaurant-supply store or where supplies for pickling are sold. Railway companies use a MUCH stronger concentration - 20% solution but at that strength, it can be dangerous to handle. For more difficult weeds, you may need this stronger vinegar concentration. You can purchase a 20% acetic acid solution that uses Yucca extract as a sticking agent. The solution will kill unwanted grass, weeds or plant material by dehydrating the plant. Be careful, even though this is considered an environmentally safe weed killer, it can harm you and it will kill any vegetation that comes in contact. Repeated applications of "regular" vinegar will eventually acidify the soil, making it harder for future generations of weeds (or any plants) to get a roothold. Ordinary strength vinegar (5-6% acetic acid) can be used. To a gallon of vinegar, one would add a 1/2 tsp of dish detergent to act as a surfactant so the vinegar would penetrate the soil well and move down the root. Put the vinegar into a large squeeze bottle (for a small job). For larger jobs, use a garden sprayer that will deliver a thin stream instead of a wide spray. You can sweeten the soil later with lime.
Hot Water/Steam has been applied commercially - it kills surface growth but not underground growth and so respraying to treat regrowth of perennials is needed. (Use the water from boiling your eggs in the morning. This is a great spot weed killer.)
Flame is considered more effective than steam but suffers from the same difficulties. You can invest in a handheld flame weeder – basically a propane torch with an extended nozzle – that lets you wipe out weeds without any herbicides at all. You can find flame-weeder nozzles that attach to a gas-grill-sized propane tank by means of a long hose, or small models that use a I-pound propane tank you can carry easily. An advantage of a flame weeder is that you can use it in the winter to rid you patio of treacherous icy patches, too. Do not burn Poison Ivy!
D-limonene (citrus oil). D-limonene (citrus oil) is a natural degreasing agent that strips the waxy skin or cuticle from weeds, causing dehydration and ultimately death. Many safe weed killers are typically made of citrus oils, which are nontoxic, but effective.
Borax, Powdered Laundry Detergent (especially with bleach), Floor strippers and many de-greasers will also kill most plants - but can contaminate for a long time.
Bleach kills almost everything, including plants. To use it as a weed killer, put a 50% bleach solution in a spray bottle and mist the offending plants.
Soap. Spray a 50% dish soap, 50% water mixture on your weeds. You will suffocate them.
Rubbing Alcohol: This one acts as a contact herbicide, burning the leaves of any plant it touches. It does not kill the entire plant, though. Vinegar can be used for the same purpose. Gin will also work and you can again help kill plants by adding the juice of two lemons.
Saltwater or salt applied in appropriate strengths to the rootzone will kill most plants.
Acids applied in appropriate strengths to the rootzone will kill virtually every plant. After which you can apply lime to sweeten the soil.
Monocerin produced by certain fungi will kill certain weeds such as Johnson Grass.
Most homemade organic weed killers use vinegar (acetic acid) and sulfur. If you are growing asparagus or celery, and will be growing it more or less forever in the same spot, you can also use rock salt. Otherwise, stay away from the salt. Prepare a mixture of 1/8 soap, ½ vinegar and 3/8 water. Pour into a spray bottle and mist plants. The soap will help the vinegar “stick” to the plant, and the top of the plant will begin to die.
Ready-to-use products that zap weeds with fatty acids (herbicidal soap), vinegar (acetic acid), or essential oils (such as eugenol, or clove oil; and d-limonene, or citrus oil) are available from various manufacturers.
One more important thing - it is generally best to do weed control on a SUNNY HOT day for best effects. If you try it during cool or wet weather, your results will generally be less effective. It generally needs a few days of hot weather to do the best weed control job.
Monday, November 7, 2011
Use this as a safe (contraceptive) rodenticide...
Tripterygium wilfordii
Tripterygium wilfordii, or lei gong teng, is a twining vine in the botanical family Celastraceae common to southern China. T. wilfordii and its botanical cousins T. hypoglaucum and T. regeli have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 2000 years, treating everything from fever and chills to edema and carbuncles. More recently it has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, chronic hepatitis, chronic nephritis, and several skin disorders. Some men given T. wilfordii by their doctors are not able to conceive children. T. wilfordii’s contraceptive effect has been anecdotally known in China for many years; the first published finding came in 1982. A derivative of T. wilfordii could be an effective pharmaceutical alternative to hormonal contraceptives.
Most of the current studies on Tripterygium extracts take place in China, under the auspices of the Jiangsu Family Health Institute and Beijing and Shanghai ’s Institute of Materia Medica. A group of researchers at Harbor-UCLA’s Medical Center has also investigated one of T. wilfordii’s derivatives, triptolide.
How does it work?
T. wilfordii has not been tested in men as a contraceptive. What we know about its contraceptive effects comes from studies on rodents and retrospective studies of men taking a Tripterygium preparation for some other medical reason. These studies show that low doses of various Tripterygium preparations produce significantly lowered sperm density, with the remaining sperm incapable of swimming effectively. One study suggests that, like nifedipine, T. wilfordii derivatives may act as calcium channel blockers (Bai 2002). Much current research is focused on establishing the mechanism by which the plant affects fertility and investigating potential toxicity and side effects.
How is it delivered?
In traditional Chinese medicine, men prescribed some form of Tripterygium would make a decoction by simmering peeled, dried roots of the plant for at least an hour. Depending on the malady being treated, a doctor would prescribe 15-25 grams of Tripterygium prepared in this way each day. Researchers have found that a decoction is an effective contraceptive at one-third of this dose, or 5-8 grams per day (Qian 1987).
Although the dried roots are commonly available in Chinese pharmacies around the world, Researchers do not expect that preparing a decoction everyday is a practical way to deliver a male contraceptive. They are investigating a number of different Tripterygium preparations as possible contraceptives. These preparations would most likely be delivered in the form of a tablet or pill.
Tripterygium wilfordii, or lei gong teng, is a twining vine in the botanical family Celastraceae common to southern China. T. wilfordii and its botanical cousins T. hypoglaucum and T. regeli have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for over 2000 years, treating everything from fever and chills to edema and carbuncles. More recently it has been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, chronic hepatitis, chronic nephritis, and several skin disorders. Some men given T. wilfordii by their doctors are not able to conceive children. T. wilfordii’s contraceptive effect has been anecdotally known in China for many years; the first published finding came in 1982. A derivative of T. wilfordii could be an effective pharmaceutical alternative to hormonal contraceptives.
Most of the current studies on Tripterygium extracts take place in China, under the auspices of the Jiangsu Family Health Institute and Beijing and Shanghai ’s Institute of Materia Medica. A group of researchers at Harbor-UCLA’s Medical Center has also investigated one of T. wilfordii’s derivatives, triptolide.
How does it work?
T. wilfordii has not been tested in men as a contraceptive. What we know about its contraceptive effects comes from studies on rodents and retrospective studies of men taking a Tripterygium preparation for some other medical reason. These studies show that low doses of various Tripterygium preparations produce significantly lowered sperm density, with the remaining sperm incapable of swimming effectively. One study suggests that, like nifedipine, T. wilfordii derivatives may act as calcium channel blockers (Bai 2002). Much current research is focused on establishing the mechanism by which the plant affects fertility and investigating potential toxicity and side effects.
How is it delivered?
In traditional Chinese medicine, men prescribed some form of Tripterygium would make a decoction by simmering peeled, dried roots of the plant for at least an hour. Depending on the malady being treated, a doctor would prescribe 15-25 grams of Tripterygium prepared in this way each day. Researchers have found that a decoction is an effective contraceptive at one-third of this dose, or 5-8 grams per day (Qian 1987).
Although the dried roots are commonly available in Chinese pharmacies around the world, Researchers do not expect that preparing a decoction everyday is a practical way to deliver a male contraceptive. They are investigating a number of different Tripterygium preparations as possible contraceptives. These preparations would most likely be delivered in the form of a tablet or pill.
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Study Links Pollutants to a 450 Percent Increase in Risk of Birth Defects.
http://www.utexas.edu/news/2011/10/19/finnell_birth_defects/
Study Links Pollutants to a 450 Percent Increase in Risk of Birth Defects
AUSTIN, Texas — Pesticides and pollutants are related to a 450 percent increase in the risk of spina bifida and anencephaly in rural China, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University.
Richard Finnell with a newborn baby in Lanxing province.
Two of the pesticides found in high concentrations in the placentas of affected newborns and stillborn fetuses were endosulfan and lindane. Endosulfan is only now being phased out in the United States for treatment of cotton, potatoes, tomatoes and apples. Lindane was only recently banned in the United States for treatment of barley, corn, oats, rye, sorghum and wheat seeds. It still is used for the "treatment" of lice!
Strong associations were also found between spina bifida and anencephaly and high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are byproducts of burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Spina bifida is a defect in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close before birth. Anencephaly is the absence of a large part of the brain and skull.
“Our advanced industrialized societies have unleashed upon us a lot of pollutants,” says Richard Finnell, professor of nutritional sciences and director of genomic research at the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas. “We’ve suspected for a while that some of these pollutants are related to an increase in birth defects, but we haven’t always had the evidence to show it. Here we quite clearly showed that the concentration of compounds from pesticides and coal-burning are much higher in the placentas of cases with neural tube defects than in controls.”
The study, which was published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the result of a more than decade-long collaboration between Finnell and a team of researchers in Shanxi, a province in northern China.
Finnell sought collaborators in China because the prevalence of neural tube defects is much greater there than it is in the United States. Also, because of its population policies, China is good at tracking births.
“It’s an extraordinary natural experiment,” says Finnell, who was recently recruited to the university to help anchor the Dell Pediatric Research Institute. “It would be much harder to do this study in the United States, where neural tube defects are more rare. It’s also an opportunity to assist the Chinese government in their efforts to lower their birth defect rates.”
Working with public health officials in four rural counties in Shanxi, researchers collected placentas from 80 newborn or stillborn fetuses that suffered from spina bifida or anencephaly. Once a fetus or a newborn with such defects was identified as a case, the placenta of a healthy newborn with no congenital malformations born in the same hospital was selected as a control.
Finnell and his colleagues screened these placentas for the presence of a class of substances known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Common POPs include agricultural pesticides, industrial solvents and the byproducts of burning fuels such as oil and coal.
They found strong associations between the birth defects and high levels of a number of compounds present in commonly used pesticides. They also found elevated placental concentrations of PAHs.
“This is a region where they mine and burn a lot of coal,” says Finnell. “Many people cook with coal in their homes. The air is often black. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to say that maybe there’s something in there that isn’t good for babies.”
Finnell says although the environmental conditions in Shanxi are dramatically worse than they are in most areas of the United States, they are comparable to what the United States was like a century ago, and the neural tube defects are not solely a Chinese problem.
Every year about 3,000 pregnancies in the United States are complicated by neural tube defects. Many other congenital conditions, including autism, may one day prove to be related to environmental pollutants.
“Ultimately you need enough cells to make a proper, healthy baby,” says Finnell, “and these are the types of compounds that cause cell death. At the most basic level, we’re learning that environmental things kill cells, and if that occurs in a critical progenitor population at a crucial time, you’re going to have problems.”
For more information, contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, College of Natural Sciences College of Natural Sciences, 512 232 0682; Richard Finnell, 512-495-3001.
Study Links Pollutants to a 450 Percent Increase in Risk of Birth Defects
AUSTIN, Texas — Pesticides and pollutants are related to a 450 percent increase in the risk of spina bifida and anencephaly in rural China, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and Peking University.
Richard Finnell with a newborn baby in Lanxing province.
Two of the pesticides found in high concentrations in the placentas of affected newborns and stillborn fetuses were endosulfan and lindane. Endosulfan is only now being phased out in the United States for treatment of cotton, potatoes, tomatoes and apples. Lindane was only recently banned in the United States for treatment of barley, corn, oats, rye, sorghum and wheat seeds. It still is used for the "treatment" of lice!
Strong associations were also found between spina bifida and anencephaly and high concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are byproducts of burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. Spina bifida is a defect in which the backbone and spinal canal do not close before birth. Anencephaly is the absence of a large part of the brain and skull.
“Our advanced industrialized societies have unleashed upon us a lot of pollutants,” says Richard Finnell, professor of nutritional sciences and director of genomic research at the Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas. “We’ve suspected for a while that some of these pollutants are related to an increase in birth defects, but we haven’t always had the evidence to show it. Here we quite clearly showed that the concentration of compounds from pesticides and coal-burning are much higher in the placentas of cases with neural tube defects than in controls.”
The study, which was published in August in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the result of a more than decade-long collaboration between Finnell and a team of researchers in Shanxi, a province in northern China.
Finnell sought collaborators in China because the prevalence of neural tube defects is much greater there than it is in the United States. Also, because of its population policies, China is good at tracking births.
“It’s an extraordinary natural experiment,” says Finnell, who was recently recruited to the university to help anchor the Dell Pediatric Research Institute. “It would be much harder to do this study in the United States, where neural tube defects are more rare. It’s also an opportunity to assist the Chinese government in their efforts to lower their birth defect rates.”
Working with public health officials in four rural counties in Shanxi, researchers collected placentas from 80 newborn or stillborn fetuses that suffered from spina bifida or anencephaly. Once a fetus or a newborn with such defects was identified as a case, the placenta of a healthy newborn with no congenital malformations born in the same hospital was selected as a control.
Finnell and his colleagues screened these placentas for the presence of a class of substances known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs). Common POPs include agricultural pesticides, industrial solvents and the byproducts of burning fuels such as oil and coal.
They found strong associations between the birth defects and high levels of a number of compounds present in commonly used pesticides. They also found elevated placental concentrations of PAHs.
“This is a region where they mine and burn a lot of coal,” says Finnell. “Many people cook with coal in their homes. The air is often black. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to say that maybe there’s something in there that isn’t good for babies.”
Finnell says although the environmental conditions in Shanxi are dramatically worse than they are in most areas of the United States, they are comparable to what the United States was like a century ago, and the neural tube defects are not solely a Chinese problem.
Every year about 3,000 pregnancies in the United States are complicated by neural tube defects. Many other congenital conditions, including autism, may one day prove to be related to environmental pollutants.
“Ultimately you need enough cells to make a proper, healthy baby,” says Finnell, “and these are the types of compounds that cause cell death. At the most basic level, we’re learning that environmental things kill cells, and if that occurs in a critical progenitor population at a crucial time, you’re going to have problems.”
For more information, contact: Daniel Oppenheimer, College of Natural Sciences College of Natural Sciences, 512 232 0682; Richard Finnell, 512-495-3001.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
The need for Organic Agriculture.
Of the more than 80,000 chemicals used in the U.S., only 300 or so have ever undergone health and safety testing. In fact, only five chemicals have ever been restricted or banned by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Agriculture is humankind’s most important activity. According to some estimates, some 70% of the water we use goes to crops and farm animals, and agriculture takes up more space than any other human activity. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), agriculture employs at least half of the world’s workforce. Agriculture therefore must be at the very center of any project for revolutionary social change.
The green revolution is at the very center of the problems of agriculture in the 20th and 21st centuries. In brief, the corporate green revolution was the export of the American-style industrial and mechanized model of agriculture to the third world... The corporate green revolution was one of the single largest non-military undertakings of the twentieth century. In terms of massive use of human resources, proprietary scientific expertise and public funding, it was comparable to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space program.
But, the corporate green revolution failed miserably. After decades of relentless work, world hunger has not been ameliorated. The world does not have less hungry people today, but it has more. Considering the vast human and financial resources that went into this endeavor, it is no exaggeration to state that the corporate green revolution was one of the biggest failures of the twentieth century. In spite of its painfully obvious failure, the corporate green revolution’s protagonists and spokespeople continue to stubbornly refer to it as a success, that it was and still is one of the most noble and successful humanitarian undertakings of all time. In light of the persistence of this triumphalist discourse of denial, one can also say that the corporate green revolution was also one of the major deceptions of the last century.
The corporate green revolution had been under continuous and unending criticism ever since it started. In the early 1960′s authors Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin warned about the environmental and human health hazards of pesticides, one of the main elements of the corporate green revolution. In the following decade, American activists Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins founded the non-governmental organization Food First, which has produced educational materials on food, agriculture and hunger, with an explicitly critical view on the corporate green revolution and neoliberal policies. In 1977 Lappe and Collins, with the collaboration of Cary Fowler, wrote “Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity”. This pioneering book made a bold frontal attack on every assumption of the corporate green revolution, from Malthusianism to the need for pesticides in agriculture. In 1981 Food First published “Circle of Poison”, a book about the hazards of pesticides, which led to the founding of the Pesticide Action Network, a global network that today comprises over 600 non-governmental organizations, institutions and individuals in 90 countries. They are not alone in their criticism.
Scientists Estimate That Pesticides are Reducing Crop Yields by ONE-THIRD Through Impaired Nitrogen Fixation - July 2007 - http://www.organic-center.org/science.hot.php?action=view&report_id=99 . Over the last forty years nitrogen fertilizer use has increased seven-fold and nearly every acre of intensively farmed, conventional cropland is treated with corporate pesticides. A team of scientists explored the impact of pesticides and other environmental toxicants on symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) brought about by Rhizobium bacteria (Fox et al., 2007). Their findings were published June 12, 2007 in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/24/10282
The team describes the critical role played by SNF in supporting crop yields and environmental quality. SNF has great potential to reduce farm production costs – a factor of growing importance as rising natural gas prices push upward the cost of nitrogen fertilizers. In Brazil, SNF from soybeans reduces production costs an estimated $1.3 billion per year. The research by Fox et al. (2007) explored in depth the signaling processes between plants and bacteria colonizing plant roots – processes that govern the degree of SNF and the production of certain phytochemicals. They focused on the ways that pesticides can disrupt signaling and impair the efficiency of SNF. Some 30 pesticides are known to disrupt SNF; the most widely used pesticide in the United States, glyphosate (Roundup) is known to be toxic to nitrogen fixing bacteria. The "Conclusions" section of the paper begins by stating: "The results of this study demonstrate that one of the environmental impacts of pesticides and contaminants in the soil environment is disruption of chemical signaling between the host plants and N-fixing Rhiz(obia) necessary for efficient SNF and optimal plant yield."
Drawing on their recent work and other published studies, the team projected that pesticides and other contaminants are reducing plant yield by one-third as a result of impaired SNF. This remarkable conclusion suggests one mechanism, or explanation of the yield-enhancing benefits of well-managed, long-term organic farming systems.
Throughout the 1980′s and 90′s a new chorus of critical voices spoke up against the corporate green revolution: the advocates and practitioners of what has come to be known as organic, or ecological, farming. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) defines organic agriculture as "a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved."
What is not done for love - is done for money. A corporation has no soul, its only goal is to make a profit. A corporation cares not who is harmed in its pursuit of profit. A corporation cares not about the misery and pollution it causes - it cares only for its "bottom line". And when faced with the proof of the evil it has done in order to make a profit - the corporation can declare itself bankrupt and can not even be incarcerated. The Author believes the corporate green revolution should be more correctly called the corporate greed revolution!
For years the Author has written if you sow POISON you will reap POISON and that there are many safe and far more effective alternatives - that is what this entire free book (http://www.thebestcontrol2.com) is about. It is my free gift to mankind and it is the Author's hope and prayer that we can stop the use/misuse of POISONS, synthetic fertilizers and frankenfoods before it is too late!
Agriculture is humankind’s most important activity. According to some estimates, some 70% of the water we use goes to crops and farm animals, and agriculture takes up more space than any other human activity. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), agriculture employs at least half of the world’s workforce. Agriculture therefore must be at the very center of any project for revolutionary social change.
The green revolution is at the very center of the problems of agriculture in the 20th and 21st centuries. In brief, the corporate green revolution was the export of the American-style industrial and mechanized model of agriculture to the third world... The corporate green revolution was one of the single largest non-military undertakings of the twentieth century. In terms of massive use of human resources, proprietary scientific expertise and public funding, it was comparable to the Manhattan Project and the Apollo space program.
But, the corporate green revolution failed miserably. After decades of relentless work, world hunger has not been ameliorated. The world does not have less hungry people today, but it has more. Considering the vast human and financial resources that went into this endeavor, it is no exaggeration to state that the corporate green revolution was one of the biggest failures of the twentieth century. In spite of its painfully obvious failure, the corporate green revolution’s protagonists and spokespeople continue to stubbornly refer to it as a success, that it was and still is one of the most noble and successful humanitarian undertakings of all time. In light of the persistence of this triumphalist discourse of denial, one can also say that the corporate green revolution was also one of the major deceptions of the last century.
The corporate green revolution had been under continuous and unending criticism ever since it started. In the early 1960′s authors Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin warned about the environmental and human health hazards of pesticides, one of the main elements of the corporate green revolution. In the following decade, American activists Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins founded the non-governmental organization Food First, which has produced educational materials on food, agriculture and hunger, with an explicitly critical view on the corporate green revolution and neoliberal policies. In 1977 Lappe and Collins, with the collaboration of Cary Fowler, wrote “Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity”. This pioneering book made a bold frontal attack on every assumption of the corporate green revolution, from Malthusianism to the need for pesticides in agriculture. In 1981 Food First published “Circle of Poison”, a book about the hazards of pesticides, which led to the founding of the Pesticide Action Network, a global network that today comprises over 600 non-governmental organizations, institutions and individuals in 90 countries. They are not alone in their criticism.
Scientists Estimate That Pesticides are Reducing Crop Yields by ONE-THIRD Through Impaired Nitrogen Fixation - July 2007 - http://www.organic-center.org/science.hot.php?action=view&report_id=99 . Over the last forty years nitrogen fertilizer use has increased seven-fold and nearly every acre of intensively farmed, conventional cropland is treated with corporate pesticides. A team of scientists explored the impact of pesticides and other environmental toxicants on symbiotic nitrogen fixation (SNF) brought about by Rhizobium bacteria (Fox et al., 2007). Their findings were published June 12, 2007 in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/104/24/10282
The team describes the critical role played by SNF in supporting crop yields and environmental quality. SNF has great potential to reduce farm production costs – a factor of growing importance as rising natural gas prices push upward the cost of nitrogen fertilizers. In Brazil, SNF from soybeans reduces production costs an estimated $1.3 billion per year. The research by Fox et al. (2007) explored in depth the signaling processes between plants and bacteria colonizing plant roots – processes that govern the degree of SNF and the production of certain phytochemicals. They focused on the ways that pesticides can disrupt signaling and impair the efficiency of SNF. Some 30 pesticides are known to disrupt SNF; the most widely used pesticide in the United States, glyphosate (Roundup) is known to be toxic to nitrogen fixing bacteria. The "Conclusions" section of the paper begins by stating: "The results of this study demonstrate that one of the environmental impacts of pesticides and contaminants in the soil environment is disruption of chemical signaling between the host plants and N-fixing Rhiz(obia) necessary for efficient SNF and optimal plant yield."
Drawing on their recent work and other published studies, the team projected that pesticides and other contaminants are reducing plant yield by one-third as a result of impaired SNF. This remarkable conclusion suggests one mechanism, or explanation of the yield-enhancing benefits of well-managed, long-term organic farming systems.
Throughout the 1980′s and 90′s a new chorus of critical voices spoke up against the corporate green revolution: the advocates and practitioners of what has come to be known as organic, or ecological, farming. The International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) defines organic agriculture as "a production system that sustains the health of soils, ecosystems and people. It relies on ecological processes, biodiversity and cycles adapted to local conditions, rather than the use of inputs with adverse effects. Organic agriculture combines tradition, innovation and science to benefit the shared environment and promote fair relationships and a good quality of life for all involved."
What is not done for love - is done for money. A corporation has no soul, its only goal is to make a profit. A corporation cares not who is harmed in its pursuit of profit. A corporation cares not about the misery and pollution it causes - it cares only for its "bottom line". And when faced with the proof of the evil it has done in order to make a profit - the corporation can declare itself bankrupt and can not even be incarcerated. The Author believes the corporate green revolution should be more correctly called the corporate greed revolution!
For years the Author has written if you sow POISON you will reap POISON and that there are many safe and far more effective alternatives - that is what this entire free book (http://www.thebestcontrol2.com) is about. It is my free gift to mankind and it is the Author's hope and prayer that we can stop the use/misuse of POISONS, synthetic fertilizers and frankenfoods before it is too late!
Monday, October 10, 2011
Pesticide may cause ADHD in children.
Pesticide may cause ADHD in children.
Children who are exposed to commonly used pesticides through their food have a higher risk of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Canadian researchers analyzed nearly 1,140 children participating in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and the pesticide by-products in their urine.
Results showed that children who had substantially higher levels of a breakdown product of neurotoxic organophosphate pesticides in their body were two times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), most people face exposure to about 40 different organophosphate pesticides registered by that agency through food, drinking water, and pesticide use.
A 2008 US Pesticide Residue Program Report found detectable concentrations of one organophosphate alone, malathion, in 28 percent of frozen blueberries, 25 percent of strawberries, and 19 percent of sampled celery.
Many other studies have also linked pregnant women's exposure to pesticides and a higher risk of ADHD and leukemia in their children.
Researchers suggested everyone especially pregnant women and families with kids to use organic food and agricultural products.
http://presstv.com/detail/198741.html
Avoid all use/misuse of pesticide POISONS - read my free book at: http://www.thebestcontrol2.com
Children who are exposed to commonly used pesticides through their food have a higher risk of developing attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Canadian researchers analyzed nearly 1,140 children participating in the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and the pesticide by-products in their urine.
Results showed that children who had substantially higher levels of a breakdown product of neurotoxic organophosphate pesticides in their body were two times more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD, researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics.
According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), most people face exposure to about 40 different organophosphate pesticides registered by that agency through food, drinking water, and pesticide use.
A 2008 US Pesticide Residue Program Report found detectable concentrations of one organophosphate alone, malathion, in 28 percent of frozen blueberries, 25 percent of strawberries, and 19 percent of sampled celery.
Many other studies have also linked pregnant women's exposure to pesticides and a higher risk of ADHD and leukemia in their children.
Researchers suggested everyone especially pregnant women and families with kids to use organic food and agricultural products.
http://presstv.com/detail/198741.html
Avoid all use/misuse of pesticide POISONS - read my free book at: http://www.thebestcontrol2.com
Thursday, October 6, 2011
New York pesticide use blamed for late-summer lobster die-off.
New York pesticide use blamed for late-summer lobster die-off.
Long Island Sound lobster fishers, grappling with the 12th year of a tragic die-off that threatens the livelihood of the few left in the industry, asked state lawmakers on Wednesday to persuade neighboring New York to change the chemical it uses to attack mosquitoes. Bridgeport Connecticut Post, Connecticut. http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/N-Y-pesticide-use-blamed-for-late-summer-lobster-2204057.php
Long Island Sound lobster fishers, grappling with the 12th year of a tragic die-off that threatens the livelihood of the few left in the industry, asked state lawmakers on Wednesday to persuade neighboring New York to change the chemical it uses to attack mosquitoes. Bridgeport Connecticut Post, Connecticut. http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/N-Y-pesticide-use-blamed-for-late-summer-lobster-2204057.php
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Organic Pet Care
There is an entirely new, free Chapter 45 on Organic Pet Care available at:
http://www.stephentvedten.com/45_Organic_Pet_Care.pdf
http://www.stephentvedten.com/45_Organic_Pet_Care.pdf
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Scabies Testimonial letter.
Scabies Testimonial letter: The Lice R Gone shampoo was the ONLY thing that got rid of the Scabies. After many weeks of suffering, a friend recommended it. I had to drive 1-1/2 hours from San Diego to Riverside (Corona) to purchase their last two bottles. It was worth it, after 5 days they were all gone. I purchased more bottles to keep on hand in case it comes back. Wish you sold this in San Diego. If I can help with the distribution, let me know. If you go to the blog site where I've posted my story to help others by recommending your product, you can go to http://www.topix.com/forum/health/scabies/TK9L70A0LRNJAFIJT and select the last page and scroll back to look for my posts under LoriSaysHey. Thank you again so VERY much for inventing this amazing product! God Bless! Lori
Monday, September 26, 2011
Pesticides and Cancer
Pesticides and Cancer
by Gwen Petreman
http://www.livinggreen.info/library/pestices_and_cancer.cfm
The most convincing evidence that pesticides are carcinogens comes from epidemiological studies. Farmers who frequently use 2,4-D have a six-fold increase in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Scientists believe that the use of lawn chemicals such as 2,4-D has been a significant factor in the 50% rise in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma over the past 20 years in the American population. (World health Organization. 2,4-D Environmental Aspects. Geneva, Switzerland, 1989.) 2,4-D has also been linked to malignant lymphoma in dogs. Pets are exposed to higher doses of pesticides because they are closer to the ground where concentrations are the highest. Parts of their bodies, such as their scrotum and armpits, are often directly exposed to pesticides. They also ingest pesticides when they are grooming themselves. Studies show that the risk of lymphomas doubled in dogs whose owners treated lawns four times a year.
The lawn pesticides, mancozeb and chlorothalonil have been classified by the EPA as "probable" cancer causing chemicals in humans, as they have been found to cause cancer in animals. Mancozeb has also been found to react with sunlight to form a new compound the EPA categorizes as a "known" human carcinogen. The common lawn pesticide 2,4-D has been shown to increase the risk of lymphatic cancer in farmers six times the normal rate, according to a National Cancer Institute report. (Sinclair, W. 18 Studies Show Why Pesticides Are More Dangerous than Previously Realized. Tampa, Florida)
A University of Iowa study found that working as a golf superintendent significantly increased one’s risk of getting non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, brain cancer, lung cancer, large intestine cancer, and prostrate cancer. Other experts are starting to find that golfers, and non-golfers who live near golf courses, are experiencing similar health problems. A 1996 research project studied brain cancer rates among 600 people. The research demonstrated a twofold increase risk for developing brain cancer for people who lived within 2600 feet of an agricultural area. (American Journal of Public Health, 86(9): 1289-96, 1996.) In 1983 the National Cancer Institute studied 3,827 Florida pesticide applicators who had been spraying for more than 20 years. They found that these pesticide applicators had nearly 3 times the risk of developing lung cancer and 2 times the risk of developing brain cancer. There was no increased risk for pesticide applicators who had been spraying for only 5 years. (Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 71(1), July 1983.)
Beginning in the late 1970s there have been reports linking pesticides to leukemia in children. A 1987 study by the National Cancer Institute showed that children living in pesticide-treated homes had nearly a 4 times greater risk of developing leukemia (cancer of the blood). If the children lived in homes where pesticide was sprayed on lawns and gardens, the risk of developing leukemia was 6.5 times greater. All the children in the study were 10 years of age or younger. (Dr. John Peters, University of Southern California, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, July 1987.) Cancer rates in the US have increased by 37% between 1950 and 1986. Over a million people are diagnosed with cancer in the US reach year. 10,400 people in the US die each year from cancer related to pesticides. It is estimated that the cost of cancer in term of lost production, income, and medical expenses amount to over US $38 billion each year.
One easy way that you can help reduce your chances of getting cancer is to reduce the toxic load in the environment by reducing your reliance on pesticides inside and outside your home. Also, support local initiatives to get a pesticide bylaw enacted in your community as quickly as possible.
If you want to stop using any dangerous pesticide POISONS read my free book at: http://www.thebestcontrol2.com - Chapter 40 tells you how to Detox and heal cancer Chapter 41 tells you how to heal disease.
All the best, Steve
Friday, September 16, 2011
Mouthwash kills young woman at dentist
Mouthwash kills young woman at dentist
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/8302925/mouthwash-kills-young-woman-at-dentist
An English woman died in the dentist's chair after suffering a deadly reaction to mouthwash, an inquest has heard.
Sacha Rumaner was receiving treatment for a suspected infected tooth at a Brighton dental clinic in February when she began complaining of feeling hot and itchy after rinsing with household mouthwash Corsodyl.
She then suffered an anaphylactic shock and slid onto the floor, dying within minutes.
Dentistry staff thought she had an epileptic shock or choked on vomit and followed instructions from an emergency call operator who told them to clear her airways and monitor her breathing.
Paramedics arrived within minutes but could not resuscitate her. She was pronounced dead en route to Brighton's Royal Sussex County Hospital.
The inquest heard how Miss Rumaner turned blue, had no pulse and stopped breathing after using the mouthwash.
Staff should have given her adrenaline, oxygen and chest compressions.
Dentist Labina Rahman admitted she missed the warning signs of anaphylactic shock despite the deputy coroner saying it is the main cause of cardiac arrest in dental patients.
Miss Rumaner was later found to be allergic to a chemical called chlorhexidinel.
The hearing has been adjourned
Monsanto's Corn Is Toppling Over
Monsanto's Corn Is Toppling Over
"As the summer growing season draws to a close, 2011 is emerging as the year of the super insect - the year pests officially developed resistance to Monsanto's genetically engineered (ostensibly) bug-killing corn.
"In late July scientists in Iowa documented the existence of corn rootworms (a ravenous pest that attacks the roots of corn plants) that can happily devour corn plants that were genetically tweaked specifically to kill them. Monsanto's corn, engineered to express a toxic gene from a bacterial insecticide called Bt, now accounts for 65 percent of the corn planted in the US.
"The super insect scourge has also arisen in Illinois and Minnesota.
"'Monsanto's insect-killing corn is toppling over in northwestern Illinois fields, a sign that rootworms outside of Iowa may have developed resistance to the genetically modified crop,' reports Bloomberg. In southern Minnesota, adds Minnesota Public Radio, an entomologist has found corn rootworms thriving, Bt corn plants drooping, in fields.
"[A] 2008 study, conducted by University of Missouri researchers and published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that within three generations, rootworms munching Monsanto's Bt corn survived at the same rate as rootworms munching pesticide-free corn-meaning that complete resistance had been achieved. Takeaway message: rootworms are capable of evolving resistance to Monsanto's corn in 'rapid' fashion."
- "Monsanto Denies Superinsect Science," by Tom Philpott, Mother Jones, September 8, 2011
Friday, September 9, 2011
Mercury Amalgams: The Surprising 32-Year Scandal That's Kept This Toxic Substance in Your Head
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/09/09/fda-coverup-on-the-mercury-dentistry-issue.aspx?e_cid=20110909_DNL_art_1
Mercury Amalgams: The Surprising 32-Year Scandal That's Kept This Toxic Substance in Your Head
By Dr. Mercola
With Consumers for Dental Choice
Story at-a-glance
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been concealing the mercury in amalgam dental fillings from the American public for more than 30 years
A revolving door allows amalgam insiders to bounce between well-paid positions in industry and high-ranking FDA positions that regulate industry
FDA's new commissioner Margaret Hamburg came straight from the boardroom of America's largest seller of amalgam, Henry Schein, Inc.
Public outcry against the FDA's cover-up and lack of action in their amalgam rule, and the worldwide treaty addressing mercury, have the mercury issue poised for much-needed change
Detailed action plan for Americans, Canadians, Australians, Britons, and Europeans to help remove mercury fillings from their countries
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), once the world's "gold standard" for food, drug, and device regulation, has evolved from industry regulator to industry captive.
Political scientists are not surprised. The evolution from tough regulator to passive regulator to industry captive is a pattern in Washington. Unless an agency engages in a major system of reinvigoration, the spiral continues. But the FDA seems comfortable being the hand-maiden for industry; it has brought big bucks to the agency and lucrative jobs after time at the FDA.
The big bucks are in the FDA's pay-to-play approval system. Drug companies pay seven-figure amounts into FDA coffers to gain approval of their drugs.
FDA staff knows that the cash means higher salaries and more perks in the agency budget. The drug companies know the high fees prevent small competitors with good ideas from getting their products to market. The coziness between the FDA and major drug and device companies gets tighter, while innovative entrepreneurs are shut out and the public loses twice: good drugs aren't being considered, and controversial drugs are rubber-stamped.
FDA: Captive of Corporate America
Another bitter legacy of federal regulation is the "revolving door," where insiders bounce between well-paid positions in industry, to high-ranking FDA positions that regulate that industry.
Those in the political party out of power hold cushy jobs awaiting their return to power, at which point – in the game of Washington musical chairs – those in the party leaving power in turn take the high-paying jobs in industry. The current FDA Commissioner, Margaret Hamburg, coming to FDA from Henry Schein, Inc., the largest seller of dental products and a major seller of medical products too, is a perfect example. Hamburg was a high official in the Clinton Administration, so Schein's CEO Stanley Bergman, an active Democrat, tapped Hamburg for the light work of being a board member during the Bush II years, paying her millions of dollars to likey sit in meetings and file occasional reports.
When Bergman's party returned to power in 2009, he escorted Hamburg back through the revolving door – as Commissioner of the world's most powerful food and drug regulator, the FDA.
FDA Covers Up Amalgam's Mercury from Consumers – for 32 Years
The dirty secret of conventional dentistry is this: those "silver fillings" aren't silver. They are mainly mercury – and mercury, of course, is a virulent neurotoxin that can kill babies in the womb, can cause permanent brain damage to children, and can cause irreversible kidney damage in adults (among many other things).
When industry is engaged in a cover-up of a health problem, the solution for the past century in America has been to turn to the U.S. FDA. But on amalgam, like on many health issues affecting our lives in recent years, FDA has been AWOL – focusing on blocking Americans' access to products Americans want and need and which are not harmful, instead of doing its legal duties.
In the case of amalgam, the violation of law was flagrant and continuing – and ultimately resulted in sharp language and a direct order from a United States federal judge. In 1976, Congress directed the FDA to classify (determine the risk of) every medical device. Dental fillings are a medical device. The FDA proceeded to classify all filling materials except the most common one – and the most controversial one – mercury amalgam.
Despite letters, petitions, Congressional hearings, and a lawsuit, the FDA refused to budge. The FDA had no intention of doing what, by law, it was required to do.
Why?
Because by classifying amalgam, the FDA would have to address the dirty little secret of dentistry ---they FDA would have to tell the American people that amalgam is mainly mercury. So instead of letting parents know that their child is getting a dose of the most toxic and the most volatile of the heavy metals, the FDA stood as the silent partner of the pro-mercury American Dental Association. For 32 years, from 1976 to 2008, the FDA defied the law. And they would still be doing so had not Charlie Brown and Consumers for Dental Choice sued them.
In 2008 Charlie Brown sued the FDA. United States District Judge Ellen Huvelle convened a hearing, and demanded to know why the FDA was refusing to classify amalgam. When the FDA's lawyer said the agency was working on it, the Judge was incredulous -- and ordered the parties into mediation to set a date to classify.
Since the FDA had not really started its work, and since its rule was still in the public comment phase, requiring clearance of all legal hurdles would require over a year. Hence, the FDA agreed to re-write its website in addition to classifying by August 2009. FDA Associate Commissioner Randall Lutter and Charlie Brown negotiated the website line by line, and, for the first time, the FDA issued this frank and serious warning about amalgam:
Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and fetuses."
FDA's New Commissioner Enters from Boardroom of Nation's #1 Seller of Dental Amalgam
During the time between the court settlement and final action, enter Margaret Hamburg as Commissioner – coming straight from the boardroom of America's largest seller of amalgam. To get appointed, Hamburg was required to sign an agreement promising:
To sell her Schein stock and stock options
Not to participate in regulator matters affecting Schein while owning these options
Sign she did, but she apparently had her fingers crossed. Selling her stock, Hamburg retained her stock options, which in a few weeks gained from being "under water" (no value) to having market value. Promising to cut her ties with Schein, she allegedly continued regular correspondence with Schein's general counsel on her private e-mail.
Charlie Brown wrote her June 1, 2009, to inquire whether she had recused (disqualified) herself from working on the amalgam rule.
Not even answering, she convened a meeting with the American Dental Association's best friend at the FDA, dentist Susan Runner. On July 1, in a meeting whose notes are heavily expunged from public records requests, Henry Schein alumna Hamburg and pro-amalgam dentist Runner put together a disgraceful rule on amalgam, one that allowed continued concealment of the mercury, buried the warnings for children and unborn children so deep in the rule no one would find them, and allowed Runner to be the FDA's spokesperson to proclaim amalgam safe.
At the end of July, Runner unveiled this monstrosity of a rule, along with a website that concealed all the language that Brown and Lutter had agreed to (Lutter by then having been shipped to another agency by Hamburg). Immediately after Runner's announcement, Schein's general counsel wrote Hamburg that Schein is "indebted" to her for her work as Commissioner.
"Unprecedented" Public Outcry Against the FDA's Amalgam Rule
Consumers worldwide reacted harshly to the FDA's decision to continue the amalgam cover-up. Such a massive number of letters, e-mails, telephone calls, and faxes were generated that a leading journalist in the trade press, Jim Dickinson of FDA Webview, wrote:
"No final rule in FDA's modern history, or perhaps ever, has attracted this kind of organized opposition."
The American Dental Association sought help from the FDA to overturn state and local fact sheets that plainly warn of amalgam's risks, but Consumers for Dental Choice turned back a second assault on our right to know. In early 2010, in a dramatic confrontation in Philadelphia, the FDA backed off any suggestion it sought to weaken that city's fact sheet – and in fact asked the city to hold off acting because the FDA was considering its options.
The FDA threatened to retaliate against the leader of this grassroots opposition; its chief press officer wrote Commissioner Hamburg and Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein that the FDA needed to mount an "end game re: [Charlie] Brown."
Enter Negotiations for a Worldwide Treaty Addressing Mercury
Things turned our way in 2010. The nations of the world began a series of meetings to hammer out a treaty addressing all mercury. To its great credit, the United States not only was an active participant, but a leader as these negotiations began – negotiations to address all major uses of mercury, including amalgam. With the Department of State, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality all seeking ways to phase out or at least reduce mercury in our society, the FDA became odd man out.
A noted attorney, Ellen Brown, called the breach between the FDA's protection of amalgam and the Obama Administration's stand the "Mercury Mischief." Her article in the Huffington Post was headlined: " As Obama Warns of Hazards, The FDA Approves Mercury Dental Filling."
In June 2010 the FDA retreated, announcing it would reconsider the amalgam rule it had issued only 10 months earlier. The FDA announced it would convene a scientific panel in December to determine what changes need to be made.
December 2010 Hearings
Two days of testimony that were alternatively scientific and emotional were utterly convincing, even to scientists handpicked by the FDA. With no dissent, they recommended that the FDA promptly:
Make sure that all consumers and all parents know that amalgam is mainly mercury
Stop amalgam use for children and pregnant women
As panelist Dr. Suresh Kotagal – a pediatric neurologist at the Mayo Clinic – summed it up, there is "no place for mercury in children." Unprecedented press coverage accompanied these hearings, with every network and most major newspapers writing stories that the FDA is determining the health risk of amalgam.
FDA Town Meetings
But the FDA still did not act.
Instead, Jeff Shuren, director of its Center for Devices (amalgam is a device), organized three "town meetings" in 2011 to hear concerns about FDA policies. At both Dallas and Orlando, the turnout was overwhelmingly about amalgam, and about the FDA's cover-up. Again, major press coverage about FDA inaction accompanied these meetings. The third "town meeting" will be in San Francisco on September 22; if you live in northern California and would consider going, write Charlie Brown, charlie@toxicteeth.org
On July 29 Director Shuren signaled he may act soon. In a letter to those who had petitioned FDA to act, Shuren wrote:
"We agree that the Panel [of scientists in December] raised issues concerning uncertainties with previous risk assessments on mercury vapor and sensitivities in certain populations to mercury released from dental amalgam. Note that we are currently considering our regulatory options for determining what steps the agency will take to address these concerns."
Help Consumers for Dental Choice Fight the FDA
Consumers for Dental Choice is challenging the world's most powerful health regulator and the well-funded corporate interests that back it -- and you can help!
During this Mercury-Free Dentistry Awareness Week, I urge you to take action.
Here's what you can do:
Americans: Our number one problem is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has partnered with the American Dental Association (ADA) to cover up the mercury; to make you think you are getting silver instead of toxic mercury in your mouth. The FDA intentionally conceals the warnings about amalgam deep in its regulation -- so parents will never see them. On its website, the FDA gives dentists the green light to continue to deceive consumers with the term "silver fillings"
"Americans are ready for the end of amalgam." This was the theme of the testimony to the U.S. Department of State on August 18 by former West Virginia state Senator Charlotte Pritt. Yes, Americans are ready. But FDA is not. So let's send them a message.Nine months ago, FDA scientists advised the agency to disclose the mercury to all patients and parents, and to stop amalgam for children and pregnant women. Yet FDA sits – sits actually in the pocket of the American Dental Association – ignoring its own scientists.
Please write the Director of FDA's Center for Devices, Jeff Shuren, jeff.shuren@fda.hhs.gov Ask Dr Shuren why the FDA continues to ignore scientists and covers up the mercury from American parents and consumers. Ask when the FDA is going to get in step with the world on mercury.
Dr. Jeff Shuren, Director
Center for Devices, U.S. Food & Drug Admin.
10903 New Hampshire Ave.
WO66-5431, Room 5442
Silver Spring, MD 20993-0002
Telephone: 301-796-5900
Fax: 301-847-8149
Fax: 301-847-8109
Californians: Dr. Shuren is coming to San Francisco for a "town meeting" on September 22. We urge Northern Californians to attend. It will go from 8 am to 12 noon, at the Embassy Suites Hotel, San Francisco Airport (telephone: 650.589.3400)
In Southern California, Consumers for Dental Choice is organizing a city-by-city attack on amalgam --- and needs volunteers. If you wish to help with the grassroots work of organizing for city council hearings, gathering petitions, and telephoning, volunteer by writing announcements@toxicteeth.org
Australians: Your government, Aussies, is now in last place on the mercury treaty, asking the world to throw in the towel instead of working to phase out dental mercury. A great new group has started, Australians for Mercury-Free Dentistry, led by dentist Lisa Matriste and consumer activist Anna Priest. We urge you to go to its website and join: http://www.mercuryfreedentistry.com.au/
Canadians: The chief dental officer of Health Canada doubles as a lobbyist for the pro-mercury World Dental Federation. Pretty outrageous, eh? We ask that you write Minister of Environment Canada Peter Kent at Minister@ec.gc.ca, and tell him that you as a taxpayer are amazed that Environment Canada is letting someone with such a conflict of interest influence the nation's treaty policy on amalgam. Ask him why Environment Canada is silent on amalgam, and if this is due to the fact that Canada's Chief Dental Officer was at the treaty sessions boasting that he "wears two hats," paid government employee and lobbyist for a special interest group.
Brits and other Europeans: The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe passed a resolution this spring calling for the end of amalgam. The Council of Europe is not the European Union -- it is every European nation, all 47 of them. Deputy Jean Huss drafted the meticulously-researched report upon which this resolution was based. This ground-breaking report explained that "[A]malgams are the prime source of exposure to mercury for developed countries, also affecting embryos, fetuses (through the placenta) and children (through breastfeeding)… Exposure to mercury can seriously affect the health of patients and dental professionals…[B]etween 60 and 90 tonnes of mercury from dental surgeries are released into and contaminate Europe's atmosphere, surface waters and soil every year." Please thank Deputy Huss for his excellent work at Jhuss@chd.lu.
Folks worldwide: If you aren't on that list, there's plenty to do – for example, Dominique Bally, an outstanding young advocate from the Ivory Coast, runs the Amalgam-Free Africa Campaign. If you want to help somewhere, anywhere, and there's nothing on the list above for you, write Charlie Brown at charlie@toxicteeth.org
Last but certainly not least, I encourage you to contribute to Consumers for Dental Choice. The Natural Health Research Foundation, founded by me, Dr. Mercola, will double match whatever you give this week. I believe that strongly in the mission, the commitment, and the quality of work of Consumers for Dental Choice and its Campaign for Mercury-Free Dentistry.
Consumers for Dental Choice
316 F St., N.E., Suite 210
Washington DC 20002
Thursday, September 8, 2011
Banned pesticide use remains high in California strawberry fields.
Banned pesticide use remains high in California strawberry fields.
In some of California’s top strawberry-growing counties, levels of banned methyl bromide remain nearly as high as they were a decade ago, despite a mandated phaseout, according to an analysis by New America Media. New America Media
http://newamericamedia.org/2011/09/banned-pesticide-remains-high-as-ever-in-california.php
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Testing the Dose Addition Hypothesis: The Impact of Pyrethroid Insecticide Mixtures on Neurons.
Testing the Dose Addition Hypothesis: The Impact of Pyrethroid Insecticide Mixtures on Neurons
Kris S. Freeman
Kris S. Freeman has written for Encarta encyclopedia, NIH, ABCNews.com, and the National Park Service. Her research on the credibility of online health information appeared in the June 2009 IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication.
Citation: Freeman KS 2011. Testing the Dose Addition Hypothesis: The Impact of Pyrethroid Insecticide Mixtures on Neurons. Environ Health Perspect 119:a399-a399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.119-a399a
Online: 01 September 2011
Pyrethroid insecticides are used extensively in agriculture and in homes to control fleas, cockroaches, bedbugs, and other insects. In a new in vitro study researchers tested the hypothesis that mixtures of pyrethroids have a dose-additive effect—that is, that pyrethroids as a chemical group produce toxicity in mammals via a common mode of action and that the combined toxicity of a pyrethroid mixture reflects the sum of its constituents’ toxicities [EHP 119(9):1239–1246; Cao et al.]. Using increased sodium ion influx as a specific functional measure of toxicity, the researchers found that effects of a mixture of commonly used pyrethroids were consistent with a dose-additive effect on mammalian neurons.
Pyrethroids act on the nervous system by disrupting the normal function of voltage-gated sodium channels (VGSCs), which control the influx of sodium ions into neurons to transmit nerve signals. When VGSCs open, the influx of sodium generates the nerve signal; when they close, the electrical signal halts abruptly. Pyrethroids bind to VGSCs and delay their closing, which causes repetitive nerve stimulation that can lead to muscle tremors as well as interfere with the ability of the channels to respond to stimulation.
Previous research demonstrated that a mixture of 11 pyrethroids had a dose-additive effect on the rat nervous system, decreasing the animals’ motor activity at doses below the threshold dose of each constituent compound. The authors of the current study exposed neurons cultured from the cerebral cortices of embryonic mice to the same 11 pyrethroids, then examined how VGSCs responded. To measure sodium influx without disrupting cell function, neurons were treated with a sodium-sensitive dye that fluoresced when VGSCs were open.
Seven of the pyrethroids tested increased sodium influx in a dose-dependent manner (from highest to lowest potency: deltamethrin, S-bioallethrin, β-cyfluthrin, λ-cyhalothrin, esfenvalerate, telfluthrin, fenpropathrin). Cypermethrin and bifenthrin had only a marginal effect on sodium influx, whereas permethrin and resmethrin had no effect. Despite these variations in activity, the results when neurons were exposed to all 11 compounds together were consistent with a cumulative, dose-additive effect on neuronal sodium influx.
People are commonly exposed to low doses of pyrethroid mixtures, which tend to persist as residues on treated surfaces and in household dust. Currently the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is determining whether a cumulative dose-additive model is appropriate to evaluate potential human health effects of pyrethroid mixtures. This model shows that simultaneous exposure to multiple compounds will produce an effect that is consistent with additivity at the VGSC molecular target.
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.119-a399a
Household spray warning- problems with pyrethroids.
Household spray warning- problems with pyrethroids
Mounting concern in Germany over the health effects of synthetic pyrethroids used as household insecticide sprays may lead to a ban on their use. A study earlier this year indicated a link between cancer and these sprays (see PN 28) and a new study suggests that pyrethroid poisoning may be affecting people using pyrethroid sprays. Symptoms have included damage to the central nervous system, dizziness, headaches, diarrhoea and panic attacks. The German Ministry of Health has drafted a proposal to ban these products, which is awaiting a departmental vote. Heike Schmitt investigates these issues.
Synthetic pyrethroids have been on the market for several decades. They are derived from pyrethrins, extracted from a variety of the Chrysanthemum flower native to Kenya. Synthetic pyrethroids were designed with greater persistence to enhance shelf-life. The perceived advantage was their relatively low mammalian toxicity, but a broad spectrum of activity against insects has meant they can kill not only pests but also the natural predators of pests. New German research raises further concern, linking synthetic pyrethroids to chronic health effects. The German Federal Institute of Public Health has advised consumers to keep use as low as possible.
If confirmed, the results of this study will have considerable significance, as synthetic pyrethroids are widely used in the home and in closed environments such as glasshouses and horticulture. A recent US survey draws further attention to the problems of home use of pesticides, and particularly the effect on children(1). “Indoor air use of pesticide products in the home is the main source of exposure for children,” says toxicologist William Pease of the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health, who also believes exposures from household use exceed those from pesticide residues in food.
New study—chronic concern
At a seminar of experts in Berlin in March 1995, Professor H. Müller-Mohnssen summarised the symptoms of one hundred patients suffering from pyrethroid poisoning. Some had acute symtoms and some had chronic symyoms lasting over a period of years(2).
The cases were selected from 500 patients according to a number of criteria. Chronic exposure was measured by residues in either in urine or dust. The effects of other types of pesticide active ingredient were eliminated by selecting cases where exposure could be restricted to formulations containing pyrethroids only. Cases were used only where there was an appropriate interval between exposure and the onset of symptoms, or between cessation of exposure and the reduction of symptoms. Only cases involving adults were considered. The patients comprised pest controllers and private users, including owners of treated textiles, especially carpets, users of electric vaporisers (small boxes containing pyrethroid formulations) and users of wood preservatives.
A total of 24% suffered acute poisoning symptoms following application of pyrethroids. Although air concentration decreases rapidly after spraying, initial concentrations can be as high as 500µg/m3 (parts per billion)(3). Sub-acute poisoning, with a latency period of 2-6 days, occurs when electric vaporisers, are used within distances of less than 50 cm from the face. Poisoning can also occur when working in a room that was sprayed two days previously. Just over half of the cases (57%) showed symptoms of poisoning after repeated or even single exposure following spraying or use of a vaporiser. Although air concentrations may be as small as 0.01 µg/m3, concentrations may be greater in dust and on textiles—generally more than 10 mg/kg in dust.
Poisoning symptoms
Typically synthetic pyrethroids affect the nervous system and acute exposure can lead to parasthaesia and irritation of the eyes, mouth, and the respiratory system. Disorders of the central and autonomic nervous system can follow: nausea, dizziness, headaches, diarrhoea, sweating and panic attacks. The condition can worsen for 2-6 weeks afterwards, giving rheumatic pains, squinting, asthma-like symptoms and difficulties in walking, writing and speaking. In a plateau phase (lasting 2-6 weeks), lethargy, aggression and depression may occur. Chronic effects can include multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) and neurological damage: some 40% of cases resulted in MCS.
Inert ingredients, as a possible cause of ill-effects in sprays, have been discounted because symptoms were similar for sprays and electric vaporisers (which do not contain inerts).
Interpretation of the results would be assisted by further details of case selection and statistical analysis. We understand that the latter aspect cannot yet be published because of issues of confidentiality. Nevertheless, the results are of sufficient significance that further research should be treated as a matter of urgency. The German agrochemical industry association disagrees, saying that the proposed ban on synthetic pyrethroids is politically motivated and is not based on scientific evidence(4). The ban suggested by the German Ministry of Health would not extend to ‘short-life’ pyrethroids, nor professional use of pyrethroid products.
Pesticides Trust [now PAN UK] comment
As the study by Professor Müller-Mohnssen is yet to be corroborated, it would be prudent to wait before making a final judgement. Clearly a public airing on this research would facilitate open discussion.
In the meantime, less toxic alternatives can be used in the home and public demand for alternatives is increasing. In many cases effective alternatives are yet to be developed. For other pests they exist, for example, silicon dioxide provides an effective and safer control against household and pet animal pests (see p16). There is need for a comprehensive research programme into the chronic effects of widely-used household pesticides and development of non-toxic replacements.
1. Grossman, J., Dangers of Household Pesticides, Env. Health Perspectives, 103:6, 550-54, 1995.
2. Müller-Mohnssen, H., Über eine Methode zur Früherkennung neurotoxischer Erankungen (am Beispiel der Pyrethroidintoxikation), Gesundh.-Wes. 57, 214-222, 1995.
3. Walter, G., Keller, R., Beckert, J., and Budde, W., Anreichung von Bioziden in Innenräumen am Beispiel der Pyrethroide. Zbl. Hygiene 195, 450-456, 1994.
4. Agrow 30 June 1995.
Heike Schmitt is from Germany and is currently seconded to the Pesticides Trust [now PAN UK].
http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Issue/pn29/pn29p3.htm
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