Toxic! Things that get right up my nose, and your's.
it's time to sort it
I feel motivated to write this as several countries are having or soon to be having elections, either national ones or local ones. People scurry out to vote for their prefered candidate or the candidate preferred by their friendship group. Surveys carried out around the period of these elections show that a lot of people feel it is important to vote and they also have the opinion that their favourite candidate will change things for the better. This seems curious considering that when people are questioned deeper they will also confirm opinions such as ‘politicians can’t be trusted’, ‘ most politicians are corrupt’, ‘politicians and political parties rarely keep their pre-election promises’ and ‘governments rarely or never make things better’.
It is hard, sometimes, to work out if a particular government is making things better, worse or simply preserving the status quo. A part of the problem is dissimulation by the spokespersons of government. We heard, from the UK government, that thanks to their efforts inflation would slow and maybe even stop in 2024. This maybe true but hides what inflation is, an analogy would be a car which is moving very slowly, inflation kicks in and the car starts accelerating and will get up to let’s say 20 kmh. Inflation (acceleration) stops but that doesn’t change the speed attained by the car, which is an analogy for retail prices. Another problem is the different measures concerning economic growth or the positive impact of a government policy. The figures produced by a government rarely if ever correpond to the figures produced by independant researchers. Finally mesures relied upon such as GDP don’t calculate in quality and something which is disastrous to our health can show up as a positive thing on the GDP.
Public health is often seen by governments as being important and they will introduce policies that they hope will improve the health of the population in general. One of the things we do see them do is criminalise the use of certain substances which are deemed harmful to people’s health, for example we can note a long list of recreational drugs that are illegal in many or most countries.
Ok so improving the health and wellbeing of citizens is part of the purview of governments. In this case it is possible to examine whether the government policies are coherent and effective by examining the ecosystem in which these governments exist.
An argument can be easily made that we are making the world increasingly toxic by the continuous production of toxic synthetic molecules. These harm people’s health, damage the environment and many are extremely presistant. It would seem incoherent that a government that wishes to improve public health would permit the production and distribution of these toxic persistant sythetic molecules, yet this is the case. In fact when one studies the subject a question arises, is there anything that we do, is there any place that isn’t toxic?
Food.
I’ve written about this before, in most OECD countries people consume a lot of ultra transformed foods. There are now numerous studies that show how dangerous to our health these products are, despite this they are still promoted by supermarket chains, and, unlike cigarettes, heroin and suchlike, are not controlled. Day after day the consumption of these fake foods is harming and killing people.
If that wasn’t bad enough other studies have shown that the packaging of many foods is contaminating said food with a large number of health destroying synthetic molecules. Again few of these synthetics are controlled or even mentioned on labels.
Here is one study showing the link between UTF’s and cancer
Indoors.
Soap, cleaning products, shampoo, body lotions, paint strippers, lubricants, disinfectants, furniture, carpets, curtains …. These amongst a wide range of other domestic and workplace products release considerable quantities of toxic volatile organic compounds.
and here is where you can check the health impacts of each synthetic molecule.
Transport.
There are just so many studies in this area that it is difficule to know where to start. Perhaps the best way is to look at one of the most vulnerable parts of the population, children. Younger people have, in general, smaller body mass than adults, this means that a toxin will have a greater negative effect on them.
People, for a myriad of different reasons, drive their kids to school. This raises dramatically local levels of PM2.5 particules, coarse particulate matter and, of course, carbon dioxide. The fine and course particles are very damaging to health.
Some people might argue that this is a technological problem and will be resolved when everyone swiches to electric cars. In which case we can talk about the fine particles continually rubbed off tyres, these are microplastics which then circulate around the schools contaminating everywhere and everyone they encounter. Brakes are another source of toxic fine particles.
Drinking water
Well this is contaminated too. Lots of studies have shown dangerous levels of PFAS and pesticide residues but another deeper study done in Denmark identified residues from 400 synthetic chemicals with many of these known to be damaging to our health. Some of these molecules are residues from a wide variety of pharmaceutical products.
If you use tap water to fill your reusable bottle well then there are even more problems if they are plastic. One study found 400 different substances which exuded into the water from the plastic and over 3,500 substances left over from dishwasher detergent.
Fresh air
There are actually relatively few places on Earth where the air either doesn’t contain toxic pollution or where levels are well below those that damage. 98% or so of the human population lives with levels that are either slightly or extremely damaging to our health. Again children are the most at risk from black carbon (or soot), small particulate matter (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitrogen monoxide (NO), and sulphur dioxide (SO2). Air pollution can also impair normal fetal development in the womb, increasing the risk of miscarriage, increase the number of low birth weight babies and premature births. With our children the pollution significantly raises levels of high blood pressure, inattention and hyperactivity, mental illness, undeveloped lungs and asthma. In older people the same pollution increases the risk of strokes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and dementia.
Clothing
Hazardous chemicals known as )high levels of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances have been found in school uniforms sold in North America. Yes these are hazardous chemicals with a range of known negative impacts on our health. The youngsters taking a hit again.
Clothing in general contains thousands of different chemicals and numerous studies have confirmed that many of these synthetic molecules are hazardous. Dangerous levels of quinolines and aromatic amines, have been found in polyester based clothes. Cotton contains high concentrations of benzothiazoles, one might think that organic cotton would be ok but benzothiazoles were found in organic cotton clothes too. Yes indeed, the organic cotton underwear you’ve got on are leaching toxic molecules you know where.
Circularity
We wear, live with, work with, drink, eat and breathe toxic synthetic molecules that have known and validated negative health consequences. We become ill and are then treated with medications which pass through us and into the environment to be absorbed back into the drinking water supply. Which makes us ill and means we need medicines which go into the water supply ad infinitum.
We buy clothes which make us ill and we wash them and molecumles pass into the environment and pass into the food chain and make us ill so we take medicines which pass into the water and food chain and so on ad infinitum.
One wonders if it might not be better to avoid producing toxic synthetic molecules and introducing them into the environment. Of course we wouldn’t want to trample over everyone’s right to chose but maybe there is a way to produce the things we need and are useful to us without the catastrophic health and ecological consequences that we suffer today. It would be nice to have clothes that don’t damage my health nor the environment, the same with food, transport, consumer products, water, food and all the rest. Or is that too much to ask? Why would someone who suggests this be denigrated as a ‘greenie’ or a ‘tree hugger’ or a ‘leftie’?
Maybe it’s just a form of artificial selection, those people who can tolerate the current, past and future levels of toxins will be the ones who reproduce the most and have the most offspring who survive to reproduce. Unfortunately this can have unknown, unfathonable consequences. Many of those Europeans who survived the Black death (the bubonic plague) had two identical copies of a particular gene, known as ERAP2, they survived at a much higher rate than those with the opposing set of copies. This gene protected against bubonic plague but today it is associated with increased susceptibility to autoimmune diseases. Not so good in the long term.
I’m sure it’ll all come out in the wash, except the washing water is contaminated, the detergents are bad for us, the clothes we are washing …. and so on and so on.