Environmental Pollutants: The Modern Equivalent of “Death By A Thousand Cuts”?

I’m sure you’ve had the experience where you become sick after eating something that was “off” or “didn’t agree with you”. The reason you became sick was there was something toxic in the food you ate or drank, something that had an effect on you within minutes or hours.

Something that has an effect on you within minutes, hours or days is said to have “acute” toxicity. There are many scientific studies showing common environmental and man-made chemicals can be toxic in this way and make animals very sick. These studies also show the dose of a chemical required to make an animal very sick can vary considerably from animal to animal. While genetic differences between the animals are largely responsible for this variability, it’s more complicated than this. How sensitive you may be to an environmental or man-made chemical is not just up to your genetic makeup. You are more vulnerable at certain stages of your life, like during pregnancy or when you are very young. But the story doesn’t end there either.

With acute toxicity you get sick very soon after being exposed to the chemical. That is not the only way a chemical can do harm however. A chemical can also do harm if you are repeatedly exposed to small doses over a very long time. This is referred to as “chronic” toxicity. With chronic toxicity, each small exposure may not produce any immediately apparent ill effects; it is the cumulative effects of the repeated small doses that cause the problem. The death of a thousand cuts was a form of torture and execution practised in Imperial China. None of the individual cuts was fatal but together… Read the rest of this entry »

Seven Billion and Counting

A month ago we hit an important milestone as a species. It wasn’t some startling new discovery, a medical breakthrough or the completion of a massive engineering project. It was a quiet milestone receiving barely a mention on the evening news. Nevertheless, it was highly significant. With very little fanfare, the world’s human population reached seven billion.

No one knows exactly who the seventh billion person to be born was or where or when they were born. So to mark the event, the United Nations chose October 31 as the date and identified babies in various countries around the globe to act as symbolic heralds for the milestone.

How did we get to this milestone? It’s an important question with a very interesting answer.

It took all of human history to reach 1 billion people in 1800.

It was another 127 years before we reached 2 billion in 1927.

It took 33 more years to reach 3 billion in 1960.

Another 14 years to reach 4 billion in 1974.

Only 13 years to reach 5 billion in 1987.

12 years to reach 6 billion in 1999.

And in 2011 – another 12 years later – we passed 7 billion.

Figures courtesy of the United Nations Population Fund (1).

Look at how fast the population is growing. While it took two human lifetimes to go from 1 to 2 billion, it now takes little more than a decade for the population to increase by the same number. In my lifetime, the world’s human population has increased by over 4 billion.

But growth is a good thing, isn’t it? Shareholders want their stocks, investments and superannuation to go up; we want our houses to increase in value; business owners want greater productivity; employees want more take-home pay and economists and politicians constantly tell us we must have a growing economy to guarantee our future prosperity. So an increasing population must also be good? More people to do the work; more people to buy the goods we make and more people to pay taxes and contribute to the economy. So the faster we grow the better off we are, right? While it sounds great on paper, does it really work that way? Read the rest of this entry »

Something in the air?

What prompted me to write this blog was a recent trip to the rapidly growing Asian city of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The name of the city is not that important however because this blog applies to other fast growing cities and many long established cities around the globe. I was last in Kuala Lumpur around 12 years ago. Back then the government had big plans to convert what was a relatively undeveloped city into a metropolis, the equal of anything in the developed world. Twelve years on and judging from the large number of skyscrapers, hotels, new roads, apartment blocks, shopping centres and expanded railway system, the government could with some justification state “Mission accomplished”, to paraphrase George W. Bush.

But the breakneck speed of development has come at a price. Pedestrian crossings are ignored and the traffic so congested crossing a road at peak hour is not worth the risk. The constant noise. Footpaths with cracked and uneven surfaces. Inadequate gutters and drains and strange smells coming from storm water. For me however, the most troubling aspect of all this “development” was the quality of the air. You can wear earplugs to keep out the noise. You can get used to taking your life in your hands every time you cross the road, and you can learn to take special care when walking on cracked and uneven pavements. However there is really very little you can do about the quality of the air you breathe – we have to breathe to live!

While the poor quality of the air was obvious at street level, it was much more dramatic looking down from the aircraft as my wife and I flew into the city. All we could see was a dirty opaque haze, enveloping the city. As we descended into the haze to land I began to wonder – Where did the haze come from? What is in polluted city air? And more importantly: Is it safe and what does it do to our bodies? Can it increase the risk of disease? And, if it does, which diseases? I made a mental note to look into the topic when I arrived back in Australia. We know quite a lot about air pollution, because many cities around the world have been monitoring both the levels of air pollution and the types of pollutants for many years. Sadly, we know far less about the long-term health effects of air pollution. Read the rest of this entry »

Think Global, Eat Local

I love it when someone makes me think. I also love it when someone puts their money where their mouth is to live their principles. I love it even more when those principles make me look at the way I live and challenges me to be a better person or be more accountable for my life. Such was the case after I ate at the award winning Locavore restaurant at Stirling in the picturesque Adelaide Hills recently.

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase:

“If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem.”

While we all care about health and the environment, caught up in our daily lives it’s often too hard to think about how to become part of the solution. The children are fighting and late for school; the baby’s just upended his porridge bowl on his head again and the dog’s been sick on the carpet. So how do you find time to make the shift and become part of the solution with so much on your plate? And what happens when you aren’t even aware you are part of the problem? So what can you do and what was it about my meal at the Locavore restaurant that got me thinking? Before I can answer these questions we need some background. Read the rest of this entry »

Go easy on fats!

Fats get a lot of bad press. Doctors, nutritionists, authors of fad diets, august government departments and disease-focussed not-for-profit charities have for years pointed an accusing finger at fats as villain in a host of degenerative diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes. They have been blamed for the epidemic of obesity in Western countries, although the role of carbohydrates is rightly coming under increasing scrutiny. Industry has responded to our fear of fats by introducing a raft of low fat products labelled “no fat”, “99% fat free” and “lite”, which now line our supermarket shelves. Yet at the same time as we were told fat was bad and urged to reduce our fat intake, we were told some fats were really good for us. Olive oil, evening primrose oil, fish oils, borage oil, flaxseed oils are apparently good for us, as are the so-called “smart fats” or “functional fats” like phosphatidylserine and lecithin. Then there are the “Good fats” – the omega-3 fats, which we were told assist in maintaining better brain function. And, of course, we have the fatty vitamins A, D, and E all of which must be important for our health because they wouldn’t be called vitamins if they weren’t! Given these mixed messages, is it any wonder we are confused? So what is the bottom line? Are fats good or bad for us? Read the rest of this entry »

Just a teacupful of sugar helps the food go down, in a most delightful way!

On a recent visit to our local greengrocer, I noticed a sign above a small box offering free fruit to children. I asked the shop assistant about the offer and she told me the children visiting the shop with their parents were not very interested in the free fruit. I was not surprised. Given a choice between fresh fruit and chocolate, ice cream or sweets, I have no doubt what most children, or even most adults, would choose. So, what it is about sweets? Why do we crave sugar so much? Read the rest of this entry »

Salt – The ubiquitous food additive

Peanuts are a good food. Plenty of protein (over 20%), dietary fiber (8%), the B vitamins, and minerals such as iron, magnesium, zinc and phosphorus. While fat levels are very high (up to 50%), they are mainly the healthier monounsaturated fats with much smaller amounts of saturated fats (1). Peanut butter, is essentially a paste made from roasted peanuts and a tasty spread very popular with children. On a recent visit to the supermarket I was pleased to find peanut butter in a glass, rather than a plastic container so I bought a jar. I have discussed my concerns about using plastic container for oil rich foods like peanut butter in earlier blogs and in some detail in the Promoting Good Health book “The Silent Threat” which is available through our website. My concern is the possible migration of oil soluble plastic components from the container into the food.

Shortly after I bought the peanut butter, I had a visit from my grandchildren both of whom love peanut butter. Imagine my surprise then when they would not eat the peanut butter in the glass jar I had bought. They both said it had no taste! This got me thinking. Scientists are like that. What was different about the peanut butter in the glass jar? Fortunately I had another jar of peanut butter in the cupboard, in a plastic container. When I gave this peanut butter to my grandchildren they took to it with some relish. So what was different between the two different peanut butters? Read the rest of this entry »

Health effects of long term pollutant exposure – A known unknown?: Part II

In Part I of this blog, we looked at the possible health effects of environmental pollutants. In the conclusion we will look at their unexpected and unpredictable effects.

There is also no doubt some of the environmental chemicals we are exposed to in our every day lives are harmful if taken in large enough amounts. Certainly, many of the pesticides, metals such as arsenic, lead and mercury and a great number of the industrial waste products are considered toxic. Yet governments believe in the amounts we are exposed to, they do not pose a risk to our health. The main reason for this – and this applies to most environmental chemicals – is the amounts finding their way into our bodies are so minute it is difficult to see how they can be harmful. Unfortunately, it may not be this simple. There is plenty of evidence – from reputable medical and scientific sources – to show tiny amounts of enviromental chemicals and pollutants can produce quite unexpected effects. A good example is the well known herbicide, glyphosate – commonly called Roundup®. At the amounts suggested by the manufacturers, it is highly toxic to broad leaf plants but apparently safe to humans. But a surprisingly different effect has been observed at concentrations much lower than those required to kill weeds. At these tiny non-toxic doses, like those generated by the drift of glyphosate spray from neighbouring farms, the herbicide may actually stimulate growth of certain plants (7). Another example is the antioxidant resveratrol, present in food and abundant in red wine. Its presence in red wine is thought by some to explain the “French paradox” – ie the apparently low incidence of heart disease in the French despite a relatively high intake of butter and cream. At higher concentrations, resveratrol can kill a variety of different cancer cells. This is the good news. However, the bad news is at much lower doses, the antioxidant may actually stimulate tumour growth, at least in the test tube (8).

So, these examples show we cannot always predict what a chemical substance will do at very low concentrations. Some scientists refer to this phenomenon as “hormesis”(8). While there was initially a fair amount of skepticism amongst scientists over this, there is increasing acceptance there is a degree of unpredictability about how chemicals can affect biological systems at low concentrations. Indeed, this unpredictability is a good example of what Donald Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary termed “a known unknowns” in his now infamous press briefing of February 12, 2002.

But wait: It’s even more complicated than this! Read the rest of this entry »

Health effects of long term pollutant exposure – A known unknown?: Part I

In his 1973 book, “Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered”, the German born economist E. F. Schumacher stated:

“No degree of prosperity could justify the accumulation of large amounts of highly toxic substances which nobody knows how to make “safe” and which remain an incalculable danger to the whole of creation….”

The “substances” Schumacher was referring to were the radioactive waste products generated by the nuclear power industry. We will discuss the nuclear power industry and the background and implications of the full Schumacher quote at another time. Nevertheless, this quote equally applies to the great number of highly toxic chemical pollutants realeased into the environment on a daily basis through human activities. And as they have also not been “made safe” before release, they pose a potential threat to our health and wellbeing. Rather than accepting responsibility for cleaning up our messes, we either rely on nature to make them “safe” for us or hope we are diluting them enough to make them safe by dumping them into something as large as a river or ocean: The “Dilution is the solution to pollution” approach. Certainly, many of the toxic chemicals from industrial and agricultural waste products are gradually degraded into less toxic materials by nature, either through chemical processes, like heat, light and UV radiation, or through the action of microorganisms in the soil or water. But is it really this simple? Read the rest of this entry »

Fukushima – A Warning

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan on March 11, 2011 was a disaster on an unprecedented scale. Nightly the news showed images that looked like they had come from a Hollywood disaster movie. But these images were real, affecting real people and devastating real lives.

Japan is a proud and resilient nation. They will rebuild; they have done it before. In time and with human effort and commitment, life will return to normal. Or will it? The earthquake and tsunami of March 11 is fundamentally different to any disaster Japan has suffered before. It is fundamentally different because none of the previous disasters caused a leak in a nuclear power plant, releasing radiation to contaminate the environment. As a result, there may well be large parts of Japan where life can never return, let alone return to normal.

I won’t discuss the wisdom of building nuclear reactors on the coast of an earthquake and tsunami prone country or whether we should embrace uranium and plutonium to satisfy our growing lust for energy. I’ll leave that topic for another time. What I want to talk about today is what the radioactive material leaking from the damaged Fukushima reactors means for living systems and public health. And I also want to talk about the mixed or downright misleading information coming from the mass media. Read the rest of this entry »