Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009 | Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009 | Judicial Watch

Judicial Watch Announces List of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians" for 2009

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Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, today released its 2009 list of Washington's "Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians." The list, in alphabetical order, includes:

1. Senator Christopher Dodd (D-CT): This marks two years in a row for Senator Dodd, who made the 2008 "Ten Most Corrupt" list for his corrupt relationship with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and for accepting preferential treatment and loan terms from Countrywide Financial, a scandal which still dogs him. In 2009, the scandals kept coming for the Connecticut Democrat. In 2009, Judicial Watch filed a Senate ethics complaint against Dodd for undervaluing a property he owns in Ireland on his Senate Financial Disclosure forms. Judicial Watch's complaint forced Dodd to amend the forms. However, press reports suggest the property to this day remains undervalued. Judicial Watch also alleges in the complaint that Dodd obtained a sweetheart deal for the property in exchange for his assistance in obtaining a presidential pardon (during the Clinton administration) and other favors for a long-time friend and business associate. The false financial disclosure forms were part of the cover-up. Dodd remains the head the Senate Banking Committee.
2. Senator John Ensign (R-NV): A number of scandals popped up in 2009 involving public officials who conducted illicit affairs, and then attempted to cover them up with hush payments and favors, an obvious abuse of power. The year's worst offender might just be Nevada Republican Senator John Ensign. Ensign admitted in June to an extramarital affair with the wife of one of his staff members, who then allegedly obtained special favors from the Nevada Republican in exchange for his silence. According to The New York Times: "The Justice Department and the Senate Ethics Committee are expected to conduct preliminary inquiries into whether Senator John Ensign violated federal law or ethics rules as part of an effort to conceal an affair with the wife of an aide…" The former staffer, Douglas Hampton, began to lobby Mr. Ensign's office immediately upon leaving his congressional job, despite the fact that he was subject to a one-year lobbying ban. Ensign seems to have ignored the law and allowed Hampton lobbying access to his office as a payment for his silence about the affair. (These are potentially criminal offenses.) It looks as if Ensign misused his public office (and taxpayer resources) to cover up his sexual shenanigans.
3. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA): Judicial Watch is investigating a $12 million TARP cash injection provided to the Boston-based OneUnited Bank at the urging of Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank. As reported in the January 22, 2009, edition of the Wall Street Journal, the Treasury Department indicated it would only provide funds to healthy banks to jump-start lending. Not only was OneUnited Bank in massive financial turmoil, but it was also "under attack from its regulators for allegations of poor lending practices and executive-pay abuses, including owning a Porsche for its executives' use." Rep. Frank admitted he spoke to a "federal regulator," and Treasury granted the funds. (The bank continues to flounder despite Frank's intervention for federal dollars.) Moreover, Judicial Watch uncovered documents in 2009 that showed that members of Congress for years were aware that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were playing fast and loose with accounting issues, risk assessment issues and executive compensation issues, even as liberals led by Rep. Frank continued to block attempts to rein in the two Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs). For example, during a hearing on September 10, 2003, before the House Committee on Financial Services considering a Bush administration proposal to further regulate Fannie and Freddie, Rep. Frank stated: "I want to begin by saying that I am glad to consider the legislation, but I do not think we are facing any kind of a crisis. That is, in my view, the two Government Sponsored Enterprises we are talking about here, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are not in a crisis. We have recently had an accounting problem with Freddie Mac that has led to people being dismissed, as appears to be appropriate. I do not think at this point there is a problem with a threat to the Treasury." Frank received $42,350 in campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac between 1989 and 2008. Frank also engaged in a relationship with a Fannie Mae Executive while serving on the House Banking Committee, which has jurisdiction over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
4. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner: In 2009, Obama Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted that he failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes from 2001-2004 on his lucrative salary at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organization with 185 member countries that oversees the global financial system. (Did we mention Geithner now runs the IRS?) It wasn't until President Obama tapped Geithner to head the Treasury Department that he paid back most of the money, although the IRS kindly waived the hefty penalties. In March 2009, Geithner also came under fire for his handling of the AIG bonus scandal, where the company used $165 million of its bailout funds to pay out executive bonuses, resulting in a massive public backlash. Of course as head of the New York Federal Reserve, Geithner helped craft the AIG deal in September 2008. However, when the AIG scandal broke, Geithner claimed he knew nothing of the bonuses until March 10, 2009. The timing is important. According to CNN: "Although Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told congressional leaders on Tuesday that he learned of AIG's impending $160 million bonus payments to members of its troubled financial-products unit on March 10, sources tell TIME that the New York Federal Reserve informed Treasury staff that the payments were imminent on Feb. 28. That is ten days before Treasury staffers say they first learned 'full details' of the bonus plan, and three days before the [Obama] Administration launched a new $30 billion infusion of cash for AIG." Throw in another embarrassing disclosure in 2009 that Geithner employed "household help" ineligible to work in the United States, and it becomes clear why the Treasury Secretary has earned a spot on the "Ten Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington" list.
5. Attorney General Eric Holder: Tim Geithner can be sure he won't be hounded about his tax-dodging by his colleague Eric Holder, US Attorney General. Judicial Watch strongly opposed Holder because of his terrible ethics record, which includes: obstructing an FBI investigation of the theft of nuclear secrets from Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory; rejecting multiple requests for an independent counsel to investigate alleged fundraising abuses by then-Vice President Al Gore in the Clinton White House; undermining the criminal investigation of President Clinton by Kenneth Starr in the midst of the Lewinsky investigation; and planning the violent raid to seize then-six-year-old Elian Gonzalez at gunpoint in order to return him to Castro's Cuba. Moreover, there is his soft record on terrorism. Holder bypassed Justice Department procedures to push through Bill Clinton's scandalous presidential pardons and commutations, including for 16 members of FALN, a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group that orchestrated approximately 120 bombings in the United States, killing at least six people and permanently maiming dozens of others, including law enforcement officers. His record in the current administration is no better. As he did during the Clinton administration, Holder continues to ignore serious incidents of corruption that could impact his political bosses at the White House. For example, Holder has refused to investigate charges that the Obama political machine traded VIP access to the White House in exchange for campaign contributions – a scheme eerily similar to one hatched by Holder's former boss, Bill Clinton in the 1990s. The Holder Justice Department also came under fire for dropping a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. On Election Day 2008, Black Panthers dressed in paramilitary garb threatened voters as they approached polling stations. Holder has also failed to initiate a comprehensive Justice investigation of the notorious organization ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), which is closely tied to President Obama. There were allegedly more than 400,000 fraudulent ACORN voter registrations in the 2008 campaign. And then there were the journalist videos catching ACORN Housing workers advising undercover reporters on how to evade tax, immigration, and child prostitution laws. Holder's controversial decisions on new rights for terrorists and his attacks on previous efforts to combat terrorism remind many of the fact that his former law firm has provided and continues to provide pro bono representation to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay. Holder's politicization of the Justice Department makes one long for the days of Alberto Gonzales.
6. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL)/ Senator Roland Burris (D-IL): One of the most serious scandals of 2009 involved a scheme by former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to sell President Obama's then-vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder. Two men caught smack dab in the middle of the scandal: Senator Roland Burris, who ultimately got the job, and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, emissaries for Jesse Jackson Jr., named "Senate Candidate A" in the Blagojevich indictment, reportedly offered $1.5 million to Blagojevich during a fundraiser if he named Jackson Jr. to Obama's seat. Three days later federal authorities arrested Blagojevich. Burris, for his part, apparently lied about his contacts with Blagojevich, who was arrested in December 2008 for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat. According to Reuters: "Roland Burris came under fresh scrutiny…after disclosing he tried to raise money for the disgraced former Illinois governor who named him to the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama…In the latest of those admissions, Burris said he looked into mounting a fundraiser for Rod Blagojevich -- later charged with trying to sell Obama's Senate seat -- at the same time he was expressing interest to the then-governor's aides about his desire to be appointed." Burris changed his story five times regarding his contacts with Blagojevich prior to the Illinois governor appointing him to the U.S. Senate. Three of those changing explanations came under oath.
7. President Barack Obama: During his presidential campaign, President Obama promised to run an ethical and transparent administration. However, in his first year in office, the President has delivered corruption and secrecy, bringing Chicago-style political corruption to the White House. Consider just a few Obama administration "lowlights" from year one: Even before President Obama was sworn into office, he was interviewed by the FBI for a criminal investigation of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's scheme to sell the President's former Senate seat to the highest bidder. (Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and slumlord Valerie Jarrett, both from Chicago, are also tangled up in the Blagojevich scandal.) Moreover, the Obama administration made the startling claim that the Privacy Act does not apply to the White House. The Obama White House believes it can violate the privacy rights of American citizens without any legal consequences or accountability. President Obama boldly proclaimed that "transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency," but his administration is addicted to secrecy, stonewalling far too many of Judicial Watch's Freedom of Information Act requests and is refusing to make public White House visitor logs as federal law requires. The Obama administration turned the National Endowment of the Arts (as well as the agency that runs the AmeriCorps program) into propaganda machines, using tax dollars to persuade "artists" to promote the Obama agenda. According to documents uncovered by Judicial Watch, the idea emerged as a direct result of the Obama campaign and enjoyed White House approval and participation. President Obama has installed a record number of "czars" in positions of power. Too many of these individuals are leftist radicals who answer to no one but the president. And too many of the czars are not subject to Senate confirmation (which raises serious constitutional questions). Under the President's bailout schemes, the federal government continues to appropriate or control — through fiat and threats — large sectors of the private economy, prompting conservative columnist George Will to write: "The administration's central activity — the political allocation of wealth and opportunity — is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption." Government-run healthcare and car companies, White House coercion, uninvestigated ACORN corruption, debasing his office to help Chicago cronies, attacks on conservative media and the private sector, unprecedented and dangerous new rights for terrorists, perks for campaign donors — this is Obama's "ethics" record — and we haven't even gotten through the first year of his presidency.
8. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): At the heart of the corruption problem in Washington is a sense of entitlement. Politicians believe laws and rules (even the U.S. Constitution) apply to the rest of us but not to them. Case in point: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her excessive and boorish demands for military travel. Judicial Watch obtained documents from the Pentagon in 2009 that suggest Pelosi has been treating the Air Force like her own personal airline. These documents, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, include internal Pentagon email correspondence detailing attempts by Pentagon staff to accommodate Pelosi's numerous requests for military escorts and military aircraft as well as the speaker's 11th hour cancellations and changes. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also came under fire in April 2009, when she claimed she was never briefed about the CIA's use of the waterboarding technique during terrorism investigations. The CIA produced a report documenting a briefing with Pelosi on September 4, 2002, that suggests otherwise. Judicial Watch also obtained documents, including a CIA Inspector General report, which further confirmed that Congress was fully briefed on the enhanced interrogation techniques. Aside from her own personal transgressions, Nancy Pelosi has ignored serious incidents of corruption within her own party, including many of the individuals on this list. (See Rangel, Murtha, Jesse Jackson, Jr., etc.)
9. Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and the rest of the PMA Seven: Rep. John Murtha made headlines in 2009 for all the wrong reasons. The Pennsylvania congressman is under federal investigation for his corrupt relationship with the now-defunct defense lobbyist PMA Group. PMA, founded by a former Murtha associate, has been the congressman's largest campaign contributor. Since 2002, Murtha has raised $1.7 million from PMA and its clients. And what did PMA and its clients receive from Murtha in return for their generosity? Earmarks -- tens of millions of dollars in earmarks. In fact, even with all of the attention surrounding his alleged influence peddling, Murtha kept at it. Following an FBI raid of PMA's offices earlier in 2009, Murtha continued to seek congressional earmarks for PMA clients, while also hitting them up for campaign contributions. According to The Hill, in April, "Murtha reported receiving contributions from three former PMA clients for whom he requested earmarks in the pending appropriations bills." When it comes to the PMA scandal, Murtha is not alone. As many as six other Members of Congress are currently under scrutiny according to The Washington Post. They include: Peter J. Visclosky (D-IN.), James P. Moran Jr. (D-VA), Norm Dicks (D-WA.), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), C.W. Bill Young (R-FL.) and Todd Tiahrt (R-KS.). Of course rather than investigate this serious scandal, according to Roll Call House Democrats circled the wagons, "cobbling together a defense to offer political cover to their rank and file." The Washington Post also reported in 2009 that Murtha's nephew received $4 million in Defense Department no-bid contracts: "Newly obtained documents…show Robert Murtha mentioning his influential family connection as leverage in his business dealings and holding unusual power with the military."
10. Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): Rangel, the man in charge of writing tax policy for the entire country, has yet to adequately explain how he could possibly "forget" to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income he earned from his off-shore rental property. He also faces allegations that he improperly used his influence to maintain ownership of highly coveted rent-controlled apartments in Harlem, and misused his congressional office to fundraise for his private Rangel Center by preserving a tax loophole for an oil drilling company in exchange for funding. On top of all that, Rangel recently amended his financial disclosure reports, which doubled his reported wealth. (He somehow "forgot" about $1 million in assets.) And what did he do when the House Ethics Committee started looking into all of this? He apparently resorted to making "campaign contributions" to dig his way out of trouble. According to WCBS TV, a New York CBS affiliate: "The reigning member of Congress' top tax committee is apparently 'wrangling' other politicos to get him out of his own financial and tax troubles...Since ethics probes began last year the 79-year-old congressman has given campaign donations to 119 members of Congress, including three of the five Democrats on the House Ethics Committee who are charged with investigating him." Charlie Rangel should not be allowed to remain in Congress, let alone serve as Chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, and he knows it. That's why he felt the need to disburse campaign contributions to Ethics Committee members and other congressional

Bill Gates funds covert vaccine nanotechnology

Bill Gates funds covert vaccine nanotechnology Friday, May 28, 2010 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...)

NaturalNews) The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is gaining a reputation for funding technologies designed to roll out mass sterilization and vaccination programs around the world. One of the programs recently funded by the foundation is a sterilization program that would use sharp blasts of ultrasound directed against a man's scrotum to render him infertile for six months. It might accurately be called a "temporary castration" technology. Read more about it here: http://www.naturalnews.com/028853_u...

Now, the foundation has funded a new "sweat-triggered vaccine delivery" program based on nanoparticles penetrating human skin. The technology is describes as a way to "...develop nanoparticles that penetrate the skin through hair follicles and burst upon contact with human sweat to release vaccines."

The research grant money is going to Carlos Alberto Guzman of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Germany and Claus-Michael Lehr and Steffi Hansen of the Helmholtz-Institute for Pharmaceutical Research.

These are both part of the Gates Foundation's involvement in the "Grand Challenges Explorations" program which claims to be working to "achieve major breakthroughs in global health."

...breakthroughs like mass sterilization and nanoparticle vaccines that could be covertly administered even without your knowledge, it turns out. These nanoparticles could be used in a spray mist that's sprayed on to every person who walks through an airport security checkpoint, for example. Or it could be unleashed through the ventilation systems of corporate office buildings or public schools to vaccinate the masses. You wouldn't even know you were being vaccinated.

This technology is potentially very dangerous to your health freedom. Using it, governments or drug companies (which are all the same thing these days) could create a vaccine skin cream that's handed out and described as "sunscreen." But when you put it on, you're actually vaccinating yourself as the nanoparticles burrow underneath your skin and burst, releasing foreign DNA inside your body.

A history of covert mass medication

But why would the government medicate people without their knowledge or consent, you ask? They already do it with water fluoridation. Fluoride is a drug, and regional and national governments all over the world are using the water supply as a way to deliver the fluoride drug to people whether they need it or not -- and without any proper medical diagnosis or prescription.

So if governments are already covertly medicating people with fluoride in the water supply, they've set the stage mass-vaccinating people through similar channels, such as the air supply in buildings. And thanks to Bill Gates, this nanotechnology needed to pull this off is now being funded.

Is this really a "major breakthrough in global health?"

I suppose it is if you believe in covert medicine where you dose people with drugs or vaccines without their knowledge. Western medicine is so offensive to rational people that it can't even operate out in the open. That's why it resorts to covert contamination of the water supply in order to force the public to swallow its drugs.

Fluoride and covert medicine

Oh, by the way, to anyone who argues that fluoride is not a drug, remember this: According to the FDA, any chemical substance that has a biological effect on the human body is, by definition, a drug. Therefore fluoride is a drug, too.

Even more, fluoride is promoted with outlandish claims about "preventing cavities" by swallowing it, making it an "unapproved drug" according to the FDA. So how is it that this unapproved drug can be dripped into the water supply and forced upon hundreds of millions of people without a single diagnosis of fluoride deficiency or even a single prescription from a doctor?

The answer is that western medicine is so arrogant that it does not believe it needs to follow any rules, regulations or laws. It is a system of "bully" medicine where drugs are shoved down your throat by being covertly dripped into the water supply without your consent. So why should we believe vaccines will be any different? If mainstream medicine can find a way to force every person to unknowingly be injected with vaccines, make no mistake they will pursue it!

And such efforts will no doubt have the continued financial support of Bill Gates.

Be Your Own Doctor, Part II (Opinion)

Be Your Own Doctor, Part II (Opinion)
To be our own doctor, we must see that our undesirable eating habits as well as our generally poor health habits due to ignorance, confusion and conditioning deprive our bodies of their strength and vitality. This tends to provoke a mental and spiritual drain as well.

Nature is capable of eliminating body poisoning or putrefaction from itself, regardless of whether the cause of the problem is physical, mental or spiritual. All that's required is giving Nature the help it needs by living a rational life and developing desirable habits of good health.

Most all disease is one disease - toxemia (body poisoning). It is a different name in different parts of the body, but actually the cause of most all disease is the same - self pollution and vitality drain.

Unless a body part has been destroyed by chronic self-pollution, most all disease can be healed by the body itself. Chemical imbalance starts with an irritation that becomes inflamed. Then, self-pollution of the blood stream's circulatory system degenerates into chronic putrefaction of the entire "plumbing" system.

Our minds have been intensively indoctrinated into accepting efficient treatment of disease; we have the trite assumption that the treating of a symptom is not only adequate, but also the only medically acceptable method of treatment. Talk about "theater of the absurd"!

The fact that a medically trained doctor, sworn to uphold the Hippocratic Oath, continues to haphazardly over-drug, promiscuously mutilates with a scalpel, senselessly over-stabs with the needle, poisons with chemicals and overkills live cells with x-ray is abominable. Yet, the unsuspecting public has been taught to respect, honor and obey the physician as a father figure, licensed for manslaughter, equal to God.

Labeled as "curing the patient", the medical world makes the mistake of treating effects (symptoms) believing them to be the cause of bodily disturbance. For example: a vital organ develops a symptom. The doctor hurriedly removes the organ by surgery. The result: Cure! Yet, the real problem, toxemia poisoning, is still there.

Because the members of the American Medical Profession lack training in nutrition and biological hygiene training, removal of the part seems to justify the whole. Given the proper conditions, nutrition and adequate elimination, the human body will eliminate its own wastes and impurities by the process of autolysis (self-dissolving) if given the chance.

Again, most all disease is one disease - body pollution and poisoning. Yet, we accept incompetent medical training as perfectly normal even if the treatment proves fatal. All symptoms of disease, regardless of their label by medical science, are all diagnosed in the same senseless manner - ignorance of the cause.

Is the question ever asked, "Can the tissue or organ be restored to normalcy"? Why hasn't medical science discovered the reason the human body fails to function normally? Could it be that they are too busy in the mad pursuit of "miracle drugs"? Why is such a preponderance of surgery necessary today, when people can be taught how to live healthy lives to avoid chronic illness and needless operations?

Our medical profession, along with the medical-hospital-Big Pharma-health insurance industry complex, is the largest licensed pusher of drugs in the world. The wanton maiming and destruction of human life due to premeditated, irresponsible, over-prescribed poison drugs are unbelievable. Drugs have never cured the sick and the relief they are supposed to give is questionable and temporary. Millions are dead from the over-prescription of drugs by the legal drug pushers (doctors) and the side effects of the drugs are much worse than the symptoms they are supposed to relieve.

Aloha!

Be Your Own Doctor, Part I (Opinion)

Be Your Own Doctor, Part I (Opinion)
Regarding health, you are your own worst enemy. There are no miracle cures. There are no pills that will make you well overnight. Good health takes discipline. To be your own doctor you do not have to go to medical school. You just have to know your body and tune into it.

There is a way to live so as not to develop a diseased body by creating toxic conditions. There is also a way to detoxify your body of all toxic matter allowing Mother Nature's healing power to restore vibrant health.

It is well known that Mother Nature is uncompromising and a strict disciplinarian. This is especially true for those persons who will not make the effort to reform, revitalize, and renew their bodies through proper disciplinary actions of good health, which would guarantee perfect health.

Today, the procedures of biological hygiene (the science of natural healing) have been developed to the high level of being able to eliminate most disease from the human body. Mankind yearns for a cure. Little do they realize that each is his or her own answer and that there are no other cures. Human beings develop their own diseases. Therefore, they should be their own doctors.

The medical profession, from the beginning of time, has not brought about a single cure nor added, in any way, to the saving of the suffering of mankind in the elimination of the causes of innumerable agonizing diseases.

We slowly poison our bodies by putrefaction (excessive food poisoning) and then finally murder ourselves by involuntary suicide. Killing ourselves with toxemia is just as thorough as by a knife or a gun. It is a much more lingering, slow-suffering way to die and much more painful.

This involuntary suicide of human beings is being aided and abetted by a money-hungry, incompetent medical profession: A medical profession of which over 80% of its physicians are either guilty of overcharge, care little for their patients, are unknowledgeable about true healing, incompetent or fraudulent, perform unnecessary operations, cannot be reached for emergencies, treat people like cattle in production-line medical factories, are a party to needless infection, crippling and untold suffering, over-prescribe drugs and generally help cause diseases which they have taken an oath to cure.

How can we, the American public, be blamed for our confusion concerning health matters? Our self-imposed Gods, the American Medical Profession, have brainwashed us for ages into believing that "drugs and the knife" are next to godliness. They confuse, they bewilder, and they add insult to injury by performing the role of public executioner, all within the law.

How can doctors cure the human body when they know so little about it? Our physicians' trade is in relief, not in the elimination of disease. Treating symptoms endlessly with needles, x-rays, surgery, drugs and chemicals has never brought about a cure, let alone addressed a cause. The American people are getting more and more disenchanted with this kind of treatment and are beginning to demand that the cause of disease finally be addressed and eliminated.

Many medical doctors would be confounded by good health if they, by chance, ever met anyone who had it. Claiming a healing if a symptom "runs its course" is illusionary. In truth, the body healed itself by reducing its putrefaction and toxemia level to an endurable condition. Then, tolerable health returned temporarily until another crisis appears due to the fact that the toxemia had not been eliminated. It's an endless dilemma.

Stay tuned for Part 2

Environmental Health Perspectives: Exploring a Potential Link between BPA and Heart Disease

Environmental Health Perspectives: Exploring a Potential Link between BPA and Heart Disease

Most people in the United States are exposed to the plastic monomer bisphenol A (BPA), whether in plastic linings in food cans, containers made of hard plastic, or other plastics and foods containing BPA. Exposure to this suspected endocrine disruptor is illustrated by urine samples collected for NHANES (the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey), for which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveys thousands of adults and children. A new analysis of NHANES data published 13 January 2010 in PLoS ONE adds more evidence for an association between heart disease and higher exposures to BPA, even at the relatively low levels seen in the general population.

David Melzer, an epidemiologist at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom, and his colleagues first looked at NHANES data collected from 2003 and 2004; their results, published in the 17 September 2008 issue of JAMA, were the first to show an association between higher levels of BPA metabolites in urine and adverse adult health outcomes, including heart disease. The current analysis considered NHANES data from 2005 and 2006. Although the BPA levels in urine samples from this new group of people were lower by almost a third, the association remained between coronary heart disease and higher urinary BPA.

While this study may help inform future research, such cross-sectional studies “should not be used to demonstrate that a particular chemical can cause a particular effect,” said Steven G. Hentges of the Polycarbonate/BPA Global Group of the American Chemistry Council in a 13 January 2010 press release. And indeed, Melzer and his colleagues emphasize that because this study is cross-sectional—a snapshot in time instead of a long-term observational investigation—they cannot say whether BPA contributes to heart disease or if heart disease changes the exposure to or metabolism of BPA in adults. “What would really help is if industry and regulators could support independent studies [to examine] whether high BPA levels are present before any disease started,” Melzer says.

“Chasing human [data] is the way forward,” says Richard Sharpe, an endocrinologist from The Queen’s Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh who did not participate in the research. NHANES provides a robust data set, he says, and the repeatability of the association with a second survey group is positive. However, that replication is somewhat incomplete because not all of the associations found with BPA in the first study were found in the second.

“The more logical interpretation of the results as they stand at the moment is that they are looking at two variables that are associated with something else,” Sharpe says. Diet, for instance, is a major contributor to heart disease in the United States and also a major source of BPA exposure. “We should remember that heart disease develops over a long period of time,” Sharpe says, “so if BPA is involved causally, a cross-sectional study such as this [PLoS ONE report] cannot show this.”

Scott Belcher, a scientist at the University of Cincinnati, says the association in humans is “not super surprising in light of our animal studies and because we already know estrogens are related to various cardiovascular end points.” Belcher’s team reported at the June 2009 Endocrine Society annual meeting that BPA exposure in vitro in muscle cells and in whole hearts from female rodents leads to arrhythmias, and they recently received American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds from the NIEHS to conduct further research on BPA in mice. Meanwhile, pending the release of an updated toxicology review for BPA, the Food and Drug Administration announced in January 2010 it is “taking reasonable steps to reduce human exposure to BPA in the food supply.”

Environmental Health Perspectives: Drugs in the Environment: Do Pharmaceutical Take-Back Programs Make a Difference?

Environmental Health Perspectives: Drugs in the Environment: Do Pharmaceutical Take-Back Programs Make a Difference?

Drugs in the Environment: Do Pharmaceutical Take-Back Programs Make a Difference?

Naomi Lubick

Naomi Lubick is a freelance science writer based in Zürich, Switzerland, and Folsom, CA. She has written for Environmental Science & Technology, Nature, and Earth.

Citation: Lubick N 2010. Drugs in the Environment: Do Pharmaceutical Take-Back Programs Make a Difference? Environ Health Perspect 118:a210-a214. doi:10.1289/ehp.118-a210

Online: 01 May 2010

The state of Maine experimented with drugs last year. The state had already tested several methods
for collecting unused pharmaceuticals, with varying degrees of success. After tracking surprisingly high concentrations of pharmaceuticals in landfill leachate —raising the potential for eventual ground and surface water contamination—the state decided to pursue a new tool to keep drugs out of the waste stream. Maine wanted to establish statewide collection programs, mandated 
by legislation and paid for by manufacturers, that would intercept unwanted pharmaceutical products before they got to the trash.

Although the state legislation bogged down earlier this year, other states have introduced bills similar to Maine’s, with some success. Meanwhile, Europe and Canada have had systems for pharmaceutical take-back programs in place for a decade or so. At the same time, an increasing number of reports from across the world have tracked active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in surface waters and even tap water, leading environmental scientists and water utilities to look for ways to limit the amount of drugs entering the environment.

The bulk of human pharmaceuticals found in waterways most likely got there by way of sewage. Taking unused pharmaceuticals out of landfills may make only a small difference in the concentrations of APIs found in water, say critics and supporters alike of such programs. But take-back programs may help prevent leftover pharmaceuticals from being misused. For that reason and others, utilities and local governments are moving forward with a variety of pharmaceutical take-back efforts in the absence of regulations—or data indicating such programs actually work.

Digging into the Trash Top

The most damning evidence yet of human drugs’ impacts on wildlife comes from studies of fish. A study by Karen Kidd et al., in the 22 May 2007 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed the collapse of a population of fish in an isolated lake spiked with relatively high levels of the synthetic estrogen 17α-ethinylestradiol. Other studies on aquatic populations in a waste-impacted stream in Boulder, Colorado, showed reproductive effects from estrogenic wastewater effluent, according to Alan M. Vajda et al., writing in the 1 May 2008 issue of Environmental Science & Technology.

Save a Flush

Only certain drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration should be flushed down the toilet or drain. These include drugs deemed to be "especially harmful to a child, pet, or anyone else if taken accidentally," according to the agency’s "Information for Consumers (Drugs)" webpage. Once APIs reach the bacteria that clean up wastewater in treatment plants, drugs may degrade into daughter compounds that may be more or less toxic than the parent drug, or they may even return to their original forms. Some will flush out with treated effluent into streams, and some will be captured in biosolids—the sludge left over after water treatment—that might end up incinerated, spread over agricultural lands, or placed in landfills. A study by Dana Kolpin and colleagues in the 15 March 2008 issue of Environmental Science & Technology found that earthworms from fields where biosolids had been spread as fertilizer had measurable amounts of pharmaceuticals in their bodies. Pharmaceuticals flushed into septic systems may pose even more of a threat to waterways than those put into municiple systems, according to some of the few studies on the topic. Conversely, study findings published in the February 2010 issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry suggest that septic tanks may remove organic contaminants as effectively as wastewater treatment plants, although there are no data yet on specific drugs.

© Images.com/Corbis

Aside from any environmental implications, discarded pharmaceuticals pose the threat of misuse. “People will go to great lengths to reclaim a drug,” says Christian Daughton of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. He cites reports of “pee labs,” where a dealer might reclaim methamphetamine from a user’s urine and reconstitute it for resale. But it’s not only drug users who go through the garbage for pharmaceuticals, says Ann Pistell, an environmental specialist at the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP): “It’s accidental poisonings by children, pets, or wildlife who pluck them out.”

In January 2010, the Maine DEP measured the concentrations of drugs in samples of leachate collected at three landfills, selected because they were receiving only household waste and not biosolids that might contain human-excreted drugs. DEP scientists were surprised to find what could amount to yearly leachate emissions of hundreds of pounds of APIs from over-the-counter and prescription drugs. “The fact that we found pharmaceuticals wasn’t a huge surprise, but the high levels were,” says Pistell. The pain reliever acetaminophen, for example, was present in samples from one landfill at concentrations of 117,000 ng/L, the highest level of any drug measured in the study.

The prescription antibiotic ciprofloxacin was present at concentrations of 269 ng/L, and lab tests even found cocaine—at 57 ng/L—in one landfill, according to the DEP’s unpublished findings. Other drugs found in all three landfills included low concentrations of estrone (from hormone replacement therapy), albuterol (an asthma drug), and the antibiotic penicillin in the range of tens to hundreds parts per billion.

The findings led the DEP to decide that disposing of unused pharmaceutical products in landfills—the current recommendation of U.S. industry and government to consumers wanting to clean out their medicine cabinets—is not a prudent or sustainable method of disposal.

According to the SMARxT Disposal™ partnership, however, landfills are fine for disposal of pharmaceuticals. This partnership of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the American Pharmacists Association, and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America recommends that medications be crushed and/or dissolved, mixed with kitty litter or other unappealing material (to discourage consumption), then enclosed in a container or sealable baggie before disposal in the trash. The U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, in its 2009 “Proper Disposal of Prescription Drugs” factsheet, agrees with this advice where take-back programs are not available. Unused controlled drugs collected by law enforcement typically are incinerated—considered the most effective way to destroy APIs—through licensed medical waste collectors.

Susan Boehme, who studies contaminated coastal sediments with the Illinois–Indiana Sea Grant program, says life-cycle analyses of drug disposal methods are not yet complete. As someone who spends a lot of time helping communities set up and operate pharmaceutical take-back programs, Boehme says she cautions stakeholders that the impacts of a local take-back program on pollution prevention often will be unclear and that such programs are “definitely a precautionary approach.”

Few studies have been conducted on pharmaceuticals in landfills and leachate, says Dana Kolpin of the U.S. Geological Survey, lead author of a landmark paper published 15 March 2002 in Environmental Science & Technology that showed the widespread presence of pharmaceuticals in U.S. surface waters. Kolpin and his colleagues previously examined pharmaceuticals present in groundwater leachate plumes, and the team currently is attempting to organize a national survey of landfill leachate to better understand the levels of pharmaceuticals that may be present. Many landfill operations actually collect leachate for further treatment at a wastewater treatment plant, which may make this a slower pathway for drugs to travel into the environment, Kolpin says, “but it’s still a potential pathway.”

Kolpin adds, “At some point, somebody has to look and find the mass balance, so to speak.” How much of the pharmaceuticals in the environment, whether excreted or unused, come from residential waste versus hospitals versus farms? What sources are the biggest contributors? Not many answers exist to these questions at the moment, most researchers say.

Filling in the Blanks Top

Currently, says Ilene Ruhoy of Touro University Nevada, take-back programs are “not standardized in any way.” Data collection from people turning in drugs may differ from event to event, as might methods used to classify them by type and measure the amount of drugs collected—for example, whether that amount reflects the mass of the medication in its packaging, the mass of the complete formulated product (APIs plus excipients), or the mass of just the APIs. These differences make extrapolating data from an event to figure out its impact “really complicated,” she says, without even adding the complexities of the potential ecological effects of each drug.

Duane Huggett of the University of North Texas hopes to fill in some of the blanks on the exact benefits of take-back programs. For the City of Denton’s collection in late April 2010, Huggett and his colleagues established a protocol for collecting drugs while logging statistically valid data for later evaluation. They hope to repeat this pilot program at future events across the United States.

As more states roll out take-back legislation and programs, the country could end up with 50 different state programs, Huggett says, and standardization, at least in data collection, would certainly help in assessing the impacts of these programs, if not their establishment and implementation. Moreover, without regulation, some of these programs may not even be legal, according to Jen Jackson of East Bay Municipal Utility District, the public utility serving San Francisco’s East Bay. For example, she says, until California set up its own guidance for water utilities and pharmacies to collect unused pharmaceuticals, the state’s many take-back programs were operating in a legal gray zone.

That’s in large part because pharmaceutical take-back programs are subject to the same rules that are meant to keep controlled substances from reentering the supply chain either legally or illegally: under the federal Controlled Substances Act, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration requires controlled substances to be turned in to the proper law enforcement officials. Any collection program must be carefully monitored by law enforcement, Jackson says, so nothing is diverted from a collection box, for example. The additional monitoring needed for these events can increase event expenses.

Jackson says pharmacies must be very careful to involve as few hands as possible in take-back programs. For instance, in California the public can deposit unused pharmaceuticals in one-way bins with two-key systems. Collections of full bins might take place with a licensed medical waste hauler and a pharmacist present as witnesses to ensure drugs in high demand on the street (such as the neurostimulant Ritalin and the analgesic Vicodin) are not diverted from their path to destruction.

LD 821, the Maine bill introduced in March 2009 by Representative Anne Perry, would have required industry to assist in establishing take-back programs for unused pharmaceuticals in that state. The bill called for manufacturers to demonstrate to the Maine DEP that they were taking part in or running their own take-back programs, with proper disposal of their products through hazardous waste incinerators. The bill also called for pharmacies to provide prepaid envelopes so customers could mail unused pharmaceuticals back to the manufacturer. The bill passed Maine’s House of Representatives by a wide margin but was tabled in the state Senate in March 2010.

In contrast to the United States, Europe has widespread standardized take-back programs. In the 2010 report Pharmaceuticals in the Environment: Results of an EEA Workshop, the European Environment Agency (EEA) stated most countries there collect unused drugs separately from household waste, usually at pharmacies (a handful also have separate collection sites alongside pharmacies). But even in Europe, not all unused pharmaceuticals are diverted from the waste stream. A survey from Germany’s Management Strategies for Pharmaceutical Residues in Drinking Water (start) research program showed that consumers discarded 23% of liquid pharmaceuticals prescribed and 7% of tablets. While some went into household trash, the proportion that went down the drain amounted to 364 tons of APIs flushed away every year. Only about a third of the population surveyed by the start program reported always returning their drugs to a pharmacy.

End of the Line Top

Daughton and Ruhoy have developed a methodology that could be used to quantify unused pharmaceuticals that end up in the waste stream in the United States, using coroners’ records and other data sources. In the 15 December 2007 issue of Science of the Total Environment, they note that medical investigators from coroners’ offices routinely search decedents’ homes for drugs in case they played a role in a death, and the coroner often maintains detailed records of the pharmaceuticals found and their method of disposal. Creating a unified network of coroners’ databases from around the country could yield valuable insight into the types and amounts of pharmaceuticals consumers tend to accumulate.

Researchers have also examined how to diminish environmental impacts of pharmaceuticals using the principles of green chemistry: Ruhoy says more manufacturers have found ways to use less water or solvents and thereby lessen the environmental impacts of pharmaceutical production. Still, few have rolled out products that might easily biodegrade in the environment. In the May 2003 issue of EHP, Daughton suggested expanding the use of “optically pure chiral drugs” to reduce by half—or sometimes more—the amount of API required in a medication. A chiral (or “handed”) molecule may have mirror-image configurations that are not quite identical; one form may be more effective by fitting into certain receptors, whereas another may be ineffective or even harmful because of its different form. Focusing on the optimal configuration of a molecule selects for materials that can be used more efficiently by the human body while cutting down on pharmaceutical bulk.

Another possibility for reducing the impact of APIs in the environment involves advising medical professionals about drugs that are less environmentally harmful. In Sweden the pharmaceutical industry has assisted the government in putting together a database of the possible environmental effects of various medications. A patient could select a less environmentally persistent painkiller, for example, by avoiding off-label use of the anticonvulsant carbamazepine. Europe is currently examining how to expand this Swedish Environmental Classification of Pharmaceuticals database to the international level.

Daughton points out that reduced usage, lower dosages for personalized medicines tailored to an individual’s genome, and other approaches could cut down on human excretion of drugs to the environment—and the need to dispose of unused pharmaceuticals—while perhaps achieving better health care outcomes. “One of the downsides of focusing on drug disposal is that it serves to distract from the issues that could potentially have much more impact on the occurrence of APIs in the environment,” he comments. “This is especially true given that we don’t even know the relative contributions of APIs in the environment that result from disposal versus intended usage.”

Although the question of whether pharmaceutical take-back programs make a difference does not yet have a clear answer, Kolpin remains optimistic about the possibilities for keeping pharmaceuticals out of the environment, observing that “more and more people [are] working on the issue . . . and providing results that advance the science.” He says that although it may be unrealistic to eliminate every contaminant from waste, perhaps researchers and regulators could focus on the “bad actors,” those compounds known to be the most common or most harmful. Some argue that consumers could have the most impact on the amount of pharmaceuticals in the environment, for example in choosing to buy fewer or “greener” pharmaceuticals.

Meanwhile, Maine’s LD 821 bill may yet see another day. Pistell says the bill will be reintroduced in January 2011 by a new sponsor, and that it will go to a natural resources committee—which is more familiar with product stewardship issues—instead of one on public health. The state already has refined the bill after hearing legislators’ concerns, according to Pistell, who explains, “lots of bills take several years to get through.” She adds, “Those who have greatest influence over a product—usually manufacturers—certainly should have a role in dealing responsibly with a product at the end of its life.”

For More Information Top

National Programs and Institutes (a list of take-back programs and other resources in various states)—Teleosis Institute

The Drug Take-Back Network News (recent news about drug take-back issues)—Product Stewardship Institute

Swedish Environmental Classification of Pharmaceuticals—Swedish Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry

Ayurveda and Aloe Vera

Aloe Vera is often referred to as a "miracle plant" in Ayurveda.  Aloe Vera is a succulent, and it's leaves contain a liquid that is made up of 96% water and the rest is a combination of amazing healing ingredients like Vitamins A, B, C, E, calcium, amino acids and enzymes.  The Aloe Vera gel can be applied to the skin to help heal cuts, insects ites, bruises, and skin conditions such as eczema and poison ivy.  Aloe Vera has both antibacterial and antifungal properties.  It can help the skin manufacture collagen, and it is absorbed into the skin four times faster than water making it extremely moisturizing.  Aloe Vera can also be taken internally.  Drinking Aloe Vera juice aids digestion and the absorption of nutrients.  It can also helps to control blood sugar, increase energy, improve heart and liver health and boost the immune system.  Children under the age of five and women who are pregnant should not take Aloe Vera internally.