Do You Realize We are Also in a Chemical Ice Age?
Posted on February 3rd, 2016In 2004, I published a paper in the Journal of Toxicology, called Adrenal Toxicity and Hormonal and Immune Deregulation in Animals.
Since then and even before then, many articles have been published on the dangers to humans and animals when exposed to manmade chemicals.
We realize today that these chemicals can cause unhealthy genetic alterations, excessive oxidation, damaging free radicals and inflammation.
In my article, I wrote about the horrible destruction that manmade chemicals have done to whales, polar bears and seals.
The numbers of these tragedies are climbing everyday, not only for ourselves, but for our families, our animals and for our world.
These manmade chemicals that come from different products and in different forms are threatening our actual existence here on earth for ourselves, our families and our plants and animals.
For many years these toxic manmade chemicals, have been dumped into our rivers and streams as a convenient way to get rid of these toxic waste chemicals, which eventually end up in our oceans and in the inhabitants that call the ocean their home.
Dumping manmade chemicals into remote areas and landfills often has ended up eventually in our water supply.
The day is here when manmade chemicals that need to be disposed of, need to be regulated like nuclear waste material. But with politics, lobbying and big business, their ethics are definitely questionable and seem only to be here to make money, even though it is killing us, our families, our animals, plants, and our planet! Note: Please realize, I wrote this article 11 years ago! Look what is happening today!
Apparently many manufacturers do not care about the toxic environment they have created for our children, their children and all of our grandchildren. This is not to say all manufacturers do not care, because many manufacturers do care.
It is just that we all need to join each other, due to the few that are polluting our world. Unfortunately, it is easier said, than done.
It is much more than a scary legacy, because it may lead to the end of mankind and our world as we know it.
The purpose of this article is not to frighten you, but to merely educate you about the various types of toxic and manmade chemicals you, your family and animals, are being exposed to and how to hopefully avoid them and at the same time be aware of legislation that might further, as opposed to curtail this Chemical Ice Age we live in.
Actual names, classifications and abbreviations will be listed for your benefit, so when you read future articles relating to manmade chemical facts, it hopefully will be easier for you to understand and avoid.
Let’s begin with Polyaromatic Hydrocarbons (PAH)
These are damaging chemicals found in petroleum products or are created through incomplete burning of many carbon containing materials, ranging from gasoline to hamburgers on you outdoor grill.
Researchers have found very high levels of PAH in fish dying from cancer.
What about those fish that may not be dying, but end up on our dining room table for our families to consume?
We all are slowly becoming aware of the damage that excess estrogen can do to our health and our pet’s health, but do we realize how many of these manmade chemicals provide a form of excess estrogen in their own way?
The following are manmade estrogenic chemicals.
They begin with the common DDT, and when there is a DDT breakdown, it forms another estrogenic chemical called DDE.
Many more exist, like Methoxychlor along with many feminizing synthetic pesticides like Roundup.
Another chemical offender is Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB).
PCB is found in a family of chemicals that encompasses more than 209 offenders.
This is found in electrical equipment and many electrical products.
Of interest, in 1928, much of these products were buried in a telephone dump next to the “mile high” city of Denver.
The incidence of lymphoma in people there is thought to be three times higher than any other city in the country.
The Canadian Health Officials have reported that many of the children in the Inuit village were plagued with chronic ear infections due to exposure to PCB, and the chemical so depressed their immune systems that children were unable to respond properly to protective vaccines.
It has been shown that pregnant woman eating fish containing PCB, may sustain damaging reproductive effects, tissue wasting, cancer, immune suppression and behavioral changes. This is one of the reasons the researchers believe that we are heading for a population decline.
Following this same reasoning, the researchers with their experiments, show that genetic modifications of food (GMO) will add to this population decline also.
It has also been shown that pregnant women who eat fish containing PCB, may have premature babies with less weight, and smaller skulls with slower mental development.
But how do you know if the fish are safe or not?
Why are there no regulations and labels to tell us this fish may be contaminated or not?
I remember as far back as 1962 when I was a veterinary student at the University of California at Davis, and there were signs on every bridge crossing the Sacramento River, warning pregnant women not to eat the fish.
Who knows what was contained in the fish at that time, however someone knew that a pregnant woman eating fish out of the Sacramento River, could hurt she and her fetus.
However our pollution with toxic chemicals continues!
Tufts University researcherm Shuk Mei Ho, found that long term exposure to estrogen can cause prostate cancer in men.
But please remember, TOTAL ESTROGEN is not usually tested for in men, women, dogs, cats and horses.
WHY NOT???
The incidence of prostate cancer in men has definitely increased, but unfortunately, only estradiol is measured and not total estrogen. I was privileged many years ago to work with two male prostate cancer patients that had normal estradiol and high elevated amounts of total estrogen.
The medical profession seems to have no clue that a cortisol imbalance will cause the production of huge amounts of adrenal estrogen to be produced. The medical profession knows that if you drop estrogen onto normal tissue, it will grow!
The human sperm count seems to also be decreasing from both toxic feminizing chemicals, but also from chemicals that actually block the development of testosterone and androgen referred to as Androgen Blockers.
Today’s exposure for all of us is much greater, not only due to manmade feminizing chemicals, but also plants containing estrogen called phytoestrogens, and plastics that leach out xenoestrogens.
There is an overall increase in cancer in this country, and I have always wondered, because the building industry replaced metal water pipes with plastic pipes, if we have not experienced a greater exposure to xenoestrogens.
Along those same lines, the pipes leading away from the house and into the sewer, are also plastic (ABS) and their xenoestrogens may be coming back to us, in processed municipal drinking water.
Many years ago, I tried to get the LA Municipal Water district to check their municipal water for estrogen, to no avail.
Now many of the municipal water districts around the United States are finding all kinds of antibiotics etc. that are often flushed down the toilet.
What about birth control pills that contain estrogen?
It has been proven by Sonnenschein and Sofa in their studies, that when estrogen is exposed to normal cells, it causes increased cellular growth. (Cancer?)
This is why there is such a concern about different forms of excess estrogen, because this is probably the basis of why cancer occurs.
With my own clinical studies in animals and their owners, every cancer patient that I checked and did blood tests, all had elevated estrogen, of which it mainly came from the inner layer adrenal cortex, because these were all spayed females and males.
It is a huge misconception that only females produce estrogen.
One main reason for even missing the cause of cancer in people and animals is that TOTAL ESTROGEN IS NOT BEING MEASURED IN PATIENTS!
Apparently, the huge amounts of estrogen that comes out of the inner layer adrenal cortex, is not realized or measured.
The next time you or your pet have a physical done, please insist on having a total estrogen included in the general blood test.
Certain plants contain chemicals that can also cause sterility.
Wild carrot is one of these plants that can be offensive, but what I find of real interest is that Hippocrates, in the 4th century B.C., described Queen Anne’s lace as one of those plants that caused sterility, based upon the chemical the plant contained, which blocked the progesterone receptor sites, which were necessary for establishing and maintaining a pregnancy.
Vinclozolin will mimic estrogen, but will work in a different way.
It will disrupt testosterone and in doing so in the developing embryo, it will cause the embryo to be born as a hermaphrodite with both male and female genitalia.
There seems to be a myriad number of ways chemicals can affect the sex hormones and offset the ability to create normal health.
Michael Baker, an enzymologist from the University of California at San Diego, found that some of these toxic manmade chemicals can interfere with the actual breakdown of estrogen, which in turn will allow for a build up of excess estrogen that can be damaging to the body.
What are some of the medical effects that these manmade chemicals are causing our wildlife?
As I had reported in 2004, chemicals were killing our St. Laurence River Beluga whales and Polar bears were dying in Scandinavian countries, because they had been critically damaged by an overload of chemicals, probably occurring in their diet.
Thousands of seals were dying at this time also.
There are now reports from South Oslo, that the fat samples taken from ailing polar bears, were very high in PCB, DDT, and several other manmade chemicals that are also disrupting the reproduction of many species of wildlife.
There are further reports of Beluga whales washing up dead on the shores of the St. Laurence River containing high levels of DDT, PCB and mercury.
Many of these whales had various types of cancer spread throughout their bodies, including ulcerated mouth and digestive tract with evident hormone disorders affecting their thyroid glands.
The milk that was present in the mammary tissue of these whales was a combination of milk, pus and bacteria.
One of the whales was a hermaphrodite.
Another very sad example of chemicals and contaminants leading our wildlife towards extinction, is the plight of the Southern Florida panther.
These panthers had a wide range they traveled at one time, but not any longer.
In 1989, a dead female panther was found in the Everglades National Park.
She had died after eating raccoons that ate fish and amphibians that contained high levels of mercury.
The panther’s further exposure to other toxic, manmade chemicals also caused non descended testicles in the male that can lead to sterility, impaired immune systems, malfunctioning thyroids, and a lack of genetic diversity.
These chemical exposures have led the Florida panther to near extinction.
What other tragedies have occurred when our wildlife are exposed to these adverse chemicals?
In 1982, a distemper virus claimed the lives of 10,000 seals that lived in Lake Baikal in Siberia. Was this due to a damaged immune system?
That same year, 700 bottlenose dolphins washed up on shores from New Jersey to Florida.
Also in 1982, 20,000 seals died in the North Sea, which amounted to 60% of their population.
Between 1990 and 1993, 1,000 striped dolphin, washed up on to the shores of the Mediterranean.
Virologist Albert Osterhaus and his team of Dutch researchers found depressed immune systems in seals and porpoise when they were fed herring from the Baltic Sea.
The chemicals they found in these species of animals were PCB and DDT.
Hopefully we can learn from all those animals that have perished due to exposure to toxic manmade chemicals.
We still have a chance to survive and make this a better place for our children, grandchildren and our animals.
If you care at all, you need to get involved.
We need to push for more information about what is contained in products and foods, and what was their origin.
We are already aware of Genetically Modified agriculture products, but do you realize that many of the fruits and vegetables you are eating and feeding to your family, may contain large amounts, of harmful pesticides?
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has accumulated a large list of fruits and vegetables to access for pesticides, with the worst being first on the harmful list, and the first being the best on their harmless list. Their list is as follows:
HARMFUL
- Apples
- Celery
- Strawberries
- Peaches
- Spinach
- Nectarines (imported)
- Grapes (imported)
- Sweet Bell Peppers
- Potatoes
- Blueberries (domestic)
- Lettuce
- Kale/Collard Greens
NOTE: Even though Cilantro was not listed here, the EWG found Cilantro to contain the highest percentage of unapproved pesticides.
The EWG list of the best fruits and vegetables to eat in order to avoid many pesticides is as follows:
- Onions
- Sweet Corn
- Pineapple
- Avocado
- Asparagus
- Sweet Peas
- Mangos
- Eggplant
- Cantaloupe (domestic)
- Kiwi
- Cabbage
- Watermelon
- Sweet Potatoes
- Grapefruit
- Mushrooms
Just asking questions is a beginning.
Just remember there is more to life than just living.
Try to leave more than you take during your lifetime, but please do not let this Chemical Ice Age take that right away!
Hopefully, this article will help you, your family, and your pets, live a longer, happier, healthier life.
Sincerely,
Dr. Al Plechner
