10 Toxic Truths
Microbes inhabiting your body are more numerous than stars in the known universe. Bacteria out-number human cells, viruses out-number bacteria, and microbial genes out-number human genes. There are more than 5000 species of bacteria, archea, fungi, protozoa and viruses and a new species is discovered with every 6 people tested.
Everyone is affected.
Toxicity is everywhere. Toxic chemicals travel the globe and have entered every habitat on earth. Toxic exposures affect all living things and can be found in our water, food, air, buildings and soil and in all our body organs, tissues, umbilical cord blood and breast milk.
2. The full extent is unknown
Tens of thousands of toxic chemicals are produced commercially and even more are created as pollutants. These chemicals are often invisible, produce toxic metabolites and have delayed effects, yet very few chemicals are ever tested for toxicity and even fewer are monitored in humans.
3. Tiny doses have big effects
The dose makes a poison, yet extremely small doses of endocrine disrupting chemicals can have large, non-linear effects. We are all part of a global human experiment that has led to an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, cancer, neurodevelopmental conditions, psychiatric diseases and reproductive problems.
4. Levels increase up the food chain
Persistent organic pollutants last for decades in the environment, accumulate in fatty tissue and magnify up the food-chain. This bio-magnification leads to much higher levels in predatory species and higher exposures for human infants who sit at the very top of the food-chain.
5. Combinations are worse
Combinations are much more harmful than individual chemicals. Mixture effects can produce ‘something from nothing’, with toxic effects occurring even when the level of individual chemicals has no effect, yet when chemicals are tested for safety, they are tested one at a time, if at all.
6. Toxic load increases as we age
Our toxic intake exceeds our capacity to excrete. As we age toxic chemicals accumulate in the brain, breast, prostate, bone marrow and other fatty tissues. This toxic body-burden crosses the placenta into the fat-laden brain of the unborn foetus which are born ‘prepolluted’.
7. Timing is critical
Exposure and its effects differ over your lifespan. Exposure during rapid periods of development or other critical times can have irreversible effects that may remain hidden until later in life. Early exposure can impair intellectual development and contribute to metabolic syndrome, cancer and other chronic diseases.
8. Effects last generations
Exposure to industrial chemicals not only affects us when we are exposed, toxic effects are transgenerational and impact on our offspring and future generations. Industrial chemicals can induce genetic and developmental abnormalities, and epigenetic effects can lead to lasting toxic effects in our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
9. Exposure is unequal and accidents happen
Exposure is not equal and varies with age, income, education, occupation, location, lifestyle, mitigation measures and proximity to industrial accidents. Catastrophic accidents have occurred at every stage of the industrial chemical lifecycle and have exposed wildlife and vast human populations to toxic chemicals.
10. Risk is unequal, unjust and greater for the young
Risks vary with your physiology, genetics, geography and income. Children are most vulnerable due to their higher metabolic rate, immature organ systems and greater exposure through contact with the ground, hand-to-mouth behaviour, and longer time in which to develop disease.
