Scientists: American public being poisoned by radiation once thought harmless

Scientists: American public being poisoned by radiation once thought harmless: "'Science for the Vulnerable: Setting Radiation and Multiple Exposure Environmental Health Standards to Protect Those Most at Risk,' released Thursday, the protection standards for cancer-causing radiation in the United States are so low, only the strongest people are protected.

'A central principle of environmental health protection -- protecting those most at risk -- is missing from much of the U.S. regulatory framework for radiation,' said study co-author Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.

The federal standards that limit radiation -- such as what may be found in contaminated soil -- are based on protecting 'Reference Man,' a theoretical white male of Western European or North American habitat or custom, aged 20 to 30, weighing 154 pounds, and standing 5 feet 7 inches tall. Unfortunately, these standards do not apply to women and girls, who are at higher risks of cancer, especially thyroid cancer. A female infant drinking contaminated milk is 100 times more likely to contract thyroid cancer -- and a woman has a 52 percent greater chance -- than an adult male drinking the same milk. The study also found evidence that the offspring of fathers exposed to radiation around the time of conception are at an increased risk of leukemia.

'I've never known a woman to give birth to a full-grown, 154-pound 'Reference Man,'' said Mary Brune, co-founder of California-based group Making Our Milk Safe (MOMS).

The report found that cancer was not the only adverse affect resulting from radiation exposure. The tritium found in water supplies can cross the placenta of a pregnant woman and cause miscarriages and birth defects. "

Fish, seafood on track to disappear by 2048: study on Yahoo! News

Fish, seafood on track to disappear by 2048: study on Yahoo! News: "Fish, seafood on track to disappear by 2048: study

Thu Nov 2, 5:38 PM ET

The world's fish and seafood could disappear by 2048 as overfishing and pollution destroy ocean ecosystems at an accelerating pace, US and Canadian researchers reported.

If current global trends continue, the loss of fish and seafood will threaten humans' food supplies and the environment, according to the most exhaustive study to date on the subject, published in the November 3 issue of the US journal Science.

'Our analyzes suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations,' the international team of ecologists and economists wrote in 'Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services.'

The four-year analysis was the first to study all existing data on ocean species and ecosystems and synthesize them to understand the importance of biodiversity at the global scale.

'Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging,' lead author Boris Worm of Dalhousie University, in Canada, said in a statement.

Worm said the disappearance of species from ocean ecosystems had been accelerating.

"Now we begin to see some of the consequences. For example, if the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime -- by 2048," Worm said.

"In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we expected."

At this point, 29 of currently fished species were considered "collapsed" in 2003, that is, their catches have declined by 90 percent or more, he said.

"It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating," he said."

The Birth of Big Pharma (comic)

The Birth of Big Pharma (comic): "It's astounding: Nearly half the U.S. population is now taking a daily dose of one or more pharmaceuticals. The drug industry, which once merely hoped to medicate sick people, now has a more ambitious goal: medicate everyone, including people who aren't sick.

The way they do that, of course, is to engage in disease mongering (the invention and marketing of fictitious diseases that 'require' medication), false advertising, junk science, bribery of doctors, corruption of government regulators, control of the monopoly drug market, and the destruction of natural alternatives, to name a few of the tactics.

That modern medicine today is even called 'medicine' is astonishing. It has nothing to do with helping patients prevent disease or cure disease, and is almost entirely focused on 'managing' or 'controlling' disease symptoms through drugs that must be taken for a lifetime. The real scam, of course, is that patients actually pay for this sort of chemical abuse. Even worse, they're easily fooled into thinking it's 'medicine.'

Ask yourself a couple of simple questions: If pharmaceuticals make people well, then why is America the sickest nation in the world even though we take more drugs (per capita) than any other nation in the world? And if modern medicine is such a good deal, then why do Americans pay, by far, the highest rates for health care services of any nation in the world, when our mortality statistics are nearly identical to Cuba and China -- two countries that spend a tiny fraction of what we spend on health care? "

Decades after Silent Spring, pesticides remain a menace -- especially to farmworkers | By Tom Philpott | Grist | Victual Reality | 18 Oct 2006

Decades after Silent Spring, pesticides remain a menace -- especially to farmworkers By Tom Philpott Grist Victual Reality 18 Oct 2006: "Many products from this pesticide class -- which came upon the world stage as a nerve gas developed by German engineers during World War II -- remain legal in the United States. Two months ago, after contemplating the matter for 10 years, the U.S. EPA approved use of 32 organophosphates -- a decision so egregious that it prompted a public outcry from hundreds of agency scientists who claimed their leaders had been swayed by industry influence.

Like the oil industry, agribusiness survives on its ability to privatize profits and socialize costs. Heavy pesticide use helped bring about short-term gains in crop yields, which has meant billions in profits for grain traders, food processors, agrichemical giants, and other food-related multinational corporations. To these firms, pesticide-related deaths and maladies are what economists call an 'externality' -- a cost that lands in someone else's ledger. "

Is Monsanto playing fast and loose with Roundup Ready Soybeans in Argentina? | By Kelly Hearn | Grist | Main Dish | 22 Sep 2006

Is Monsanto playing fast and loose with Roundup Ready Soybeans in Argentina? By Kelly Hearn Grist Main Dish 22 Sep 2006: "Monsanto claims RR soybeans decrease the need for repeated herbicide applications. But some weeds build resistance to herbicides, and when they do, different herbicides are needed in the mix. Pengue and Altieri report that in the Argentinean pampas, eight species of weeds exhibit resistance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup. The fear: the more plants become resistant, the more farmers turn to different pesticides, further complicating the soup of poisons being spread through the country's fields.

There are also concerns that all this genetic tinkering is causing GM soy to have lower protein levels than regular varieties. A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2004 analyzed soybeans and soybean meal from the world's top producers: Argentina, Brazil, China, India, and the U.S. Those from Argentina, which Benbrook says at the time were 98 percent Roundup Ready, had the lowest crude protein content. Those from China, which grew no GM soy at the time, had the highest. 'This points directly to the possibility that RR has resulted in significant decline in protein level,' Benbrook said, adding that it mirrors concerns that protein levels in soy and corn in the United States are decreasing.

Meanwhile, experts say that GM crops may be playing a role in rising social dislocation. In 1998 there were 422,000 producers or local farmers in Argentina; by 2002, that number had dropped by 25 percent to 318,000.

And there are health worries stemming from the widespread use of Roundup, which has reportedly been sprayed aerially and drifted onto non-RR crops and into communities. Dario Gianfelici, a general physician from the small town of Cerrito in a soy farming region, says he has seen medical problems in farmhands that stem from herbicide exposure. "I don't have the money or the manpower to [raise awareness] like I would like to do," he said in a telephone interview, "but I continue to talk about this.""

Latest E. coli outbreak should prompt rethink of industrial agriculture | By Tom Philpott | Grist | Victual Reality | 21 Sep 2006

Latest E. coli outbreak should prompt rethink of industrial agriculture By Tom Philpott Grist Victual Reality 21 Sep 2006: "The organic question distracts from the real story behind the outbreak: consolidation of production. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that California produces three-quarters of the spinach consumed in the United States -- and of that, fully three-quarters comes from Monterey County, which encompasses Salinas Valley.

Natural Selection Foods buys, processes, and packs salad greens for such giants as Dole, Trader Joe's, and Sysco, among others. The company's Earthbound Farm brand boasts on its website that it produces '[m]ore than 7 out of 10 organic salads sold in grocery stores' in the U.S.

In 1999, Salinas-based Tanimura & Antle, the largest U.S. fresh-vegetable grower and shipper, with 40,000 acres under cultivation in the United States and Mexico, bought a 33 percent stake in Natural Selection/Earthbound.

Given Natural Selection's scale, it's no surprise that an outbreak in a small region of California's central coast could repeatedly wreak havoc nationwide.

One possible culprit is tainted water, either through irrigation or washing in the processing plant. In a letter last year, an FDA official sounded an alarm about this problem, writing that 'creeks and rivers in the Salinas watershed are contaminated periodically with E. coli.' The rolling hills alongside the Salinas River support 'extensive cattle ranches,' according to the Watershed Institute [PDF] at California State University. Might manure from these operations be leaching into the watershed?

Other sorts of agricultural runoff certainly have, including nitrogen-based fertilizer, which is used heavily on conventional farms. The Waters"

massage for cancer patients

Bottom Line Secrets."In a three-year study of the effect of massage on more than 1,000 cancer patients -- the largest study to date of massage used for cancer patients -- patients rated their symptoms immediately before and after a single treatment of massage therapy.
Result: Anxiety declined by 52%... pain by 40%... fatigue by 41%... depression by 31%... and nausea by 21%. Massage was as effective as standard drug therapy for these symptoms.
Helpful: Insurance companies are more likely to pay for massage therapy if a doctor writes a referral to a certified therapist or if treatment is part of a hospital in-patient therapy.

To locate a massage therapist in your area, contact the American Massage Therapy Association, 877-905-2700, or visit www.amtamassage.org

Our inside source: Barrie R. Cassileth, PhD, chief, Integrative Medicine Service, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City."