Posts Tagged ‘Chemicals’
These Awful Food Practices Are Banned In Europe But Normal In The United States
Sunday, 12 May 2013 14:00
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toxic_atrazineJust great, ruin my lunch. Alternet has a sampling of some of the poisons prominent in the American food supply:

Atrazine. A “potent endocrine disruptor,” Syngenta’s popular corn herbicide has been linked to a range of reproductive problems at extremely low doses in both amphibians and humans, and it commonly leaches out of farm fields and into people’s drinking water. Europe banned it in 2013. (Read more…)

Arsenic in chicken, turkey, and pig feed. Arsenic is beloved of industrial-scale livestock producers because it makes animals grow faster and turns their meat a rosy pink. Arsenic-based compounds “were never approved as safe for animal feed in the European Union, Japan, and many other countries.”

Ractopomine and other pharmaceutical growth enhancers. Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of US hogs, ractopomine makes animals grow fast while also staying lean. Unfortunately, it does so by mimicking stress hormones, making animals miserable. Pigs treated with it suffer from ailments ranging from hyperactivity and trembling to broken limbs and the inability to walk. Traces of these pharmaceuticals routinely end up in our meat, and their effects on humans are little-studied. Europe not only bars its own producers from using ractopamine, it also refuses to allow imports of meat from animals treated with it—as do China and Russia.

Read the rest at Alternet.

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Flame-Retardant Chemicals May Be Linked to Lower IQs in Children
Tuesday, 07 May 2013 16:00
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Picture: PD

Picture: PD

Chemicals once used to make furniture more resistant to flame has been implicated in childhood neurological deficits, including lower IQs and hyperactivity:

Via Scientific American:

The researchers tracked children through the first five years of their lives, looking at a battery of tests for IQ and behavior. They found that children of mothers who had high PBDE levels during their second trimester showed cognition deficits when the children were five years old as well as higher rates of hyperactivity at ages two to five. (Read more…) If the mother’s blood had a 10-fold increase in PBDEs, the average five-year-old had about a four-point IQ deficit. “A four-point IQ difference in an individual child may not be perceivable in…ordinary life. However, in a population, if many children are affected, the social and economic impact can be huge due to the shift of IQ distribution and productivity,” says lead author Aimin Chen, an assistant professor of environmental health at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. The findings, based on women and children from Cincinnati, will be presented May 6 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Washington, D.C. The unpublished results have been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, but the paper has not yet been accepted.

Keep reading.

The post Flame-Retardant Chemicals May Be Linked to Lower IQs in Children appeared first on disinformation.

 
Study Reveals Thirty Toxic Chemicals at High Levels at Exxon Arkansas Tar Sands Pipeline Spill Site
Friday, 03 May 2013 18:30
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Pic PD.

Pic PD.

Steve Horn writes at DeSmogBlog:

An independent study co-published by the Faulkner County Citizens Advisory Group and Global Community Monitor reveals that, in the aftermath of ExxonMobil’s Pegasus tar sands pipeline spill of over 500,000 gallons of diluted bitumen (dilbit) into Mayflower, AR, air quality in the area surrounding the spill has been affected by high levels of cancer-causing chemicals.

(Read more…)

Roughly four weeks after the spill took place, many basic details are still unknown to the public, according to recent reporting by InsideClimate News. Questions include what exactly caused the spill, how big was the spill exactly, and how long did it take for emergency responders to react to the spill, to name a few.

But one thing is certain according to the new study: For the residents of Mayflower, quality of life has been changed forever.

The chemicals found in the samples include benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, n-hexane, and xylenes. Breathing in both ethylbenzene and benzene can cause cancer and reproductive effects, while breathing in n-hexane can damage the nervous system and usher in numbness in the extremities, muscular weakness, blurred vision, headaches, and fatigue.

All of these chemicals are hazardous air pollutants (HAPs), “regulated under the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act amendments as the most toxic of all known airborne chemicals,” as explained in the press release summarzing the study.

As covered here on DeSmog, the spill clean-up in Mayflower has more closely resembled PR image clean-up than on-the-ground clean-up, both because of the firm the AR Attorney General has hired to do spill clean-up assessment and because of the ongoing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) no-fly zone being run on behalf of the FAA by Exxon’s “Aviation Advisor,” Tom Suhrhoff.

Given the revalations in this latest study, Exxon has proven it has much to cover up, with this study only scratching the surface of the ecological harms of the pipeline spill.

“The spill and response has been a disservice to the community,” said Global Community Monitor’s Ruth Breech. “People are obviously suffering and experiencing health symptoms from chemical exposure related to the oil spill. State and Federal need to step up immediately to document and prevent any further health issues associated with the Exxon oil spill. Agencies need to share information in a manner to ensure informed decision making and enable access to necessary resources such as medical treatment for chemical exposure.”

With a decision looming on the future of the prospective TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline by the Obama Administration, Mayflower is yet another sordid case study of the hazards that accompany tar sands pipelines wherever they meander.

Keep reading.

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