A Dirty World - Air Pollution

Environmental Medicine
A Dirty World - Air Pollution
International Medical Veritas Association


As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma. [i]

If you are sick and are living in a city where you can literally see the air when looking from a distance you need not wonder so much about the cause of your illness. It is right there in the air you breathe. It might not be the only source of your disease but it is a cause, part of the etiology. Every human being on the planet is being poisoned but in some places it is like a low intensity gas chamber, slowly forcing poisons into our bodies until we get sick and then die.

As adults we make certain decisions as to where we work and live and that is just a fact of life. It is sad though, tragically so, that our young ones have neither choice nor option in this regard. They are much more vulnerable to environmental threats and the statistics are showing that. Researchers from all over the globe are posting information about the chemical hazard that sits like a background radiation cloud across our once pristine planet. Chemical radioactivity is an appropriate phrase to describe what the situation is with mercury and other chemicals that are causing disease rates and cancer to sore through the stratosphere.

For every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%.

Researchers at The University of Southern California have found that for every 10ug/m3 increase in pollution, the thickness of the lining of the neck artery increased by between 3.9% and 4.3%. Professor Nino Kuenzli, author of this study said the public health implications of the findings "could be immense." Scores of new studies each year demonstrate that air pollution can be harmful to human health and that children are the most susceptible. Fine particle pollution cuts the average life expectancy by about the same amount as road accidents reported the U.N. Economic Commission for Europe in 2004 saying, "It is relatively recently that scientific studies have begun to show the extent of the health effects and how these can be linked to the concentrations of fine particles in the air." [ii]

Business has virtually free rein in its use of deadly toxins. US industries manufacture and import about 75,000 chemicals, using 3,000 of them at the rate of more than a million pounds a year.

According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) about 100 million Americans, more than one-third of the population, suffer from some form of chronic disease like asthma, diabetes, cancer, heart and kidney disease or arthritis.

EPA experts acknowledge that there are tools available today that can measure the toxic dangers in any locality, which can dramatically improve decisions on where people can safely live, work, and go to school or play. What no one has communicated bluntly is that those safe places have become virtually extinct leaving us and our children with no safe place, no haven from a chemical onslaught that will only get worse with each passing year.

The first principle of detoxification and chelation (the removal of heavy metals) is the directive to avoid exposure in the first place. Absolute avoidance of exposure is virtually impossible today but that does not mean we should not try. Eating organic food is the obvious first step but for many moving out of ones city and even country would be required. Utterly reject mercury fillings in the mouth and a pledge to never take mercury preserved vaccines, or any vaccines for that matter, would be logical second steps.

As our knowledge about the etiology of disease progresses, the evidence for environmental contributions to disease grows.

Most of the world's urban dwellers are exposed to intense pollution and entire countries like China and certain parts of the United States are like vast poison fields. Most cities are toxic traps for all who lives within. It's much worse than you can imagine for you are not imagining the mercury problem the entire globe, but especially certain parts, are having. (Survival Medicine will have a two hundred page section called The Rising Tide of Mercury. Everyone needs to understand the mercury issue deeply if they want to survive what is happening just with this issue alone.)

It's not only in the huge cities that citizens are at risk.

Dr. Palmer from the University of Texas informed us a while ago that t here is a significant increase in the rates of special education students and autism rates associated with increases in environmentally released mercury. On average, for each 1,000 lb of environmentally released mercury, there was a 43% increase in the rate of special education services and a 61% increase in the rate of autism.[iii]

And a new study estimated that 1 in 58 children in the UK has autism with similar numbers feared in Ireland.

The Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control, California Department of Health Services, explored associations between autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and environmental exposures, by linking the California autism surveillance system to estimated hazardous air pollutant (HAP) concentrations compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The adjusted odds ratios (AORs) were elevated by 50% in the top quartile of chlorinated solvents and heavy metals [95% confidence intervals confirming Dr. Palmer and his alarming assertions.

States that are reporting the highest levels of mercury emissions also have the highest rates of developmental disorders including autism. (Dr. John Palmer)

A two-year study of mercury accumulation in the town of Steubenville, Ohio, by federal EPA researcher Matt Landis and the University of Michigan disputes the basic EPA policy on mercury; showing emissions to be much more concentrated in local areas around power plants than thought before. The EPA contends only about 8% of the mercury from coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers settles to the ground locally. The Steubenville study contends nearly 70% of the mercury found in the Steubenville area came from local sources [iv]
The astounding array of pollutants in the newborn and unborn should be a wake up call that the existing material frameworks of the world should be changed.

What this means is that it is dangerous to live anywhere near coal-burning plants, incinerators and boilers. If mercury spreads widely, as presumed by the model commonly used by the EPA, communities near coal-fired plants face no greater risk than those elsewhere. If large amounts of mercury from those plants settle within 60 to 120 miles of a plant, then local communities face a much larger risk. You have to decide who or what to trust in this regard.

Actually we lose in either direction for what it means is that if the mercury falls far from the source it means that the high winds are taking it all over the world, to every square inch of the planet, though like with radiation patterns, certain places would be much hotter than others.

It is now accurate, scientific and medically sound to state that we are poisoning every man, woman and child on earth.

To get a birds eye view of the hurricanes of toxicity we face on the parts per billion and million level it is helpful to know that air pollution in major cities is now being seen as dangerous to health as radiation exposure suffered by survivors of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. A recent study suggests high levels of urban air pollution cut short life expectancy more than the radiation exposure of emergency workers who were sent into the 19-mile exclusion zone around Chernobyl straight after the accident. [v]

Women living in areas of high air pollution were at greater risk of heart disease and death, while children living within 500m of motorways suffered more permanent lung damage and lower life expectancy.

Jim Smith, a scientist at the government's Centre for Ecology and Hydrology in Dorchester, assessed the health risks faced by emergency workers at Chernobyl directly after the explosion and those who unofficially set up home in the exclusion zone afterwards. He compared them with the more familiar risks of air pollution, obesity, and passive and active smoking. "The immediate effects of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs led to approximately 210,000 deaths in the two cities. However, radiation exposures experienced by the most exposed group of survivors led to an average loss of life expectancy significantly lower than that caused by severe obesity or active smoking," the report states.

This is not to diminish the threat of radiation from medical tests, nuclear reactors and the totally insane use of depleted uranium weapons and the intentional injecting of mercury into children's bodies and teeth. What this is telling us specifically is that we are in huge danger from the air we breathe, and that is only one part of our exposure. The water we drink is compromised as are the foods we eat. We are talking about nightmares of the worst kind, chemical and radioactive ones that are accumulating, building up in intensity everywhere including in our very own bodies.

Mercury is not an ordinary air pollutant nor is it classified as such. Because it is a neurotoxin that causes neurological problems, it is considered a hazardous air pollutant, which gives it a different legal status. This is a very polite way of saying that mercury is a nerve poison, which even at the lowest concentrations imaginable causes problems for the young. We are only in the beginning phases of becoming aware of the tremendous problem with thousands of tons of mercury being poured into the air each year. If one gram of mercury can pollute a 20-acre lake, or anything near that size, or kill a child, imagine what 8 to ten billion grams of it would do. [vi]
Lead and mercury are highly toxic to the brain, nervous system, kidneys, reproductive system, and immune system.

Power plants in the US put 48 tons of mercury a year into the atmosphere through burning coal. [vii] China spews 600 tons of mercury into the air each year, accounting for a great part of the world's non-natural emissions. And the volume is rising quickly with more coal fired energy plants now under construction in China than exists in the entire country of England. China all by itself is bringing on a mercury crisis. By 2020, China will have nearly 1,000 gigawatts of total electricity-generating capacity, more than twice the current amount, according to the State Power Economic Research Center.

We have reached a milestone in human history. Awaiting each and every child born on the planet is a life doomed to being poisoned.

China will this year burn about 1.9 billion tons of coal, a 12% increase from last year, and consumption is expected to keep rising. In fifteen years we can expect China to be pumping 1,400 tons of mercury into the air or approximately 60 additional tons a year as new capacity comes online. [viii] This is a huge number and will join the already enormous amount of mercury bellowing up from China's more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants.

This mercury soars high into the atmosphere and then around the globe on what has become a transcontinental conveyor belt of mercury polluted air. On Mount Bachelor, in Oregon, considered one of the cleanest sites in the Northwest, scientists from the University of Washington have been sampling the air on the 9,065 foot mountain top since 2004.

They are monitoring for pollutants such as mercury as well as gases, including carbon monoxide, ozone and nitrogen oxides. This site is also used by Staci Simonich's lab at OSU to look at long-distance travels of pesticides and other pollutants. "It's sort of ironic that we have to go to one of the cleanest locations to look for pollutants," said Daniel Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric and environmental chemistry at the University of Washington, Bothell. Some of what they are finding comes from China. [ix] The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that on certain days nearly 25 percent of the particulate matter in the skies above Los Angeles can be traced to China. Some experts predict China could one day account for a third of all California's air pollution.

According to the observations made by the internationally recognized medical researcher, Dr. Yoshiaki Omura, all cancer cells have mercury in them. Since mercury is the second most toxic substance on this planet, its presence provides a strong initiating factor for disrupting cell function. Support for this idea comes from Dr. Hans Nolte who states that, "The wave spectrum of mercury contains more than thirteen wavelengths, whereas only one or two frequencies or wavelengths are usually observed for the other heavy or noble metals." It is Dr. Nolte's belief that the many harmful effects of mercury could be explained to some degree on the basis of this great variety of wavelengths. Dr. Omura's clinical observation concludes that one of the primary reasons cancer returns is because residual mercury reignites a pathological environment even after surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and alternative therapies report a positive effect. [x]

Meanwhile Beijing recently persuaded the World Bank to cut from a report finding that p ollution causes about 750,000 premature deaths in China each year. The Financial Times reported saying that, "The World Bank was told that it could not publish this information. It was too sensitive and could cause social unrest," one unnamed adviser told the Financial Times. [xi] Capitalists on the other hand would use a different rational excuse but clearly governments and corporations on both sides of the great political divide are not concerned that they are the ones who are driving up cancer rates through the stratosphere.

The brains of our children are our most precious economic resource, and we haven't recognized how vulnerable they are. We must make protection of the young brain a paramount goal of public healthprotection. You have only one chance to develop a brain. (Philippe Grandjean - Harvard School of Public Health)

Children's brain development is being impaired by some of the more than 70,000 human-made chemicals on the market, according to the WWF. [i] [xii] The report, which surveyed current research in the field, charges chemicals with such neurological effects as poor memory, reduced visual recognition and motor skills, and lower IQ, and cites other U.S. research that already ties 10 percent of all neurobehavioral disorders to chemical exposure. While it singles out some chemicals by name -- particularly brominated flame-retardants, PCBs, and dioxins -- the report laments that there is little to no safety information available on most chemicals floating about in the environment and in households.

"In effect, we are all living in a global chemical experiment of which we don't know the outcome," said WWF's Helen McDade. Environmental contaminants are suspected to cause cancer, birth defects, immune system defects, reduced IQ, behavioral abnormalities, decreased fertility, altered sex hormone balance, altered metabolism and specific organ dysfunctions. Every day children are exposed to chemicals that have not been tested for safety.

Exposure (particularly prenatal exposure) to certain endocrine disrupting chemicals (e.g. PCBs) can have adverse effects on neurological development ... and behavior... delays in...cognitive development has been found to be associated with neonatal PCB exposure. (World Health Organization)

Also according to the WWF in 1929 the world was producing 1 million tons of chemicals and pharmaceuticals a year. Today that number has climbed to 400 million tons. That means that we pollute the earth at a rate that until only recently took decades to accomplish. Easily in one year we now do the damage it took from 1930 to 1960 to effect. In the next ten years we will collectively produce 4 billion tons of chemicals, which in one way or another eventually end up as toxic pollutants in the environment.

Mark Sircus Ac., OMDDirector International Medical Veritas Association http://www.imva.infohttp://www.magnesiumforlife.com

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Getting Serious with Survival Issues

Last night an old friend and one of the very first subscribers to my online communications (nine years ago) sent me this picture he had found on the Internet, which is a land – river – waterfall for sale in the interior of Brazil. I happened to recognize the place right away for it is right next to the place that brought me to Brazil 17 years ago. And it happens to be for sale but it is a huge land (meaning quite expensive) quite a distance from town. There are several large places for sale in the region some with structures built already to support a community.

Though my wife is much more comfortable here on the coast in a modern city (with clear air because the wind blows strongly from the relatively clean ocean air) I am anxious to bring my family to the kind of environment you see above. Fortunately I am building a cancer clinic there so I have something very practical and necessary driving me back to the interior.

I was just reading about the most recent CODEX meeting and this organization wants to make sure we cannot get the nutrition to defend ourselves from the poisons on earth. Meaning they are going to make it harder and harder to live healthy lives inside of society. There are many forces at work that are moving in ways that will hinder us, hurt our chances for living good lives.

Survival through the next ten years is not a sure thing for many of us but survival as health happy human beings is the subject of Survival Medicine, which advises us to get serious in a hurry about some important concerns. I am basically shouting out to people in this chapter; but it is as if most of the people I am addressing were in the middle of a street about to be hit by a passing truck but they cannot hear me because the noise is so loud. It seems like humanity is in God's hands now, is meeting a self created destiny that mirrors the worst tragic flaws in us.

Certainly the government and media are not going to help with anything since they are at the heart of the problem. Governments are much more prepared than the public and have been training police all over the world for years to take control using the most modern methods of crowd control. As many governments probably see it, the move toward fascism is a necessity, otherwise in their eyes it will be total anarchy.

In the end survival entails action and the consequences of inaction become intolerable.

Survival Medicine puts serious survival tools in ones medicine cabinet and even advises us finally to purchase survival foods like spirulina that can do double duty; used as a nutritional medicine it is without equal and used as a survival nutritional resource it is the same. There are certain basic medicines we have to have on hand, and we need enough of them to last us a while. In fact the core of Survival Medicine is built upon medicinal substances that the FDA and CODEX will have a harder time controlling.

Hardly a soul alive at this exact moment in time does not need to remove lead and mercury from their systems. Hardly anyone alive is not going to need some emergency medicines, secure clean water supplies and food. Survival Medicine's protocol for survival is almost the same as its protocol for illness and disease so there is no paranoia in stocking up on what we and our loved ones need anyway. Believe me it is more than comforting to have essential items like iodine, magnesium chloride, calcium bentonite clay, sodium bicarbonate, natural chelators and spirulina, among other things, safely stocked in the house.

Conclusion

In this three part series The Cruel Winds of Change we have talked about the poisons that threaten us, the climate/food and the mental-spiritual insanities we are facing. I did not pick the title of this chapter or the title of this book lightly. We the generations who have had it easiest in the history of humankind are going to have to face difficulties we are not prepared for. It's a harsh reality, a cruel one for the multitudes. Actually we know it has already been that way for billions who live on less than ten dollars a day. They say a billion or more live on less than a dollar a day.

In this book I do not talk much about the deeper issues behind survival and all that I propose to do about it. My deepest design in withstanding the cruel winds of change is the formation of a new form of human consciousness called group consciousness. United we stand divided we fall is a truth we need to pay attention to if we are interested in surviving with grace during the troubled times ahead. Modern man has been beaten like a dog into living with the feeling of separation. Even husbands and wives experience the feelings of separation (lack of pure or perfect love) all the time even without getting separated or divorced.

The trip back to Oneness is a long one and a difficult one. For most it's too difficult and the journey is never started and that is sad. I am of course talking about love and I do have some unusual definitions for love. Love is listening and love is communication to me. Intimacy is love and is something I love as my friends know. So are devotion and dedication and commitment. Truth is another principle ray of love as is responsibility and trust. Honesty I think we are going to need all of these qualities in our attempt to survive and certainly if we ever stand a chance of building something new upon the ashes of what we have done wrong.

If the above qualities are envisioned as great pillars we can see that they have crumbled in modern man to a great extent. Like the ancient pillars in the Acropolis turning to dust there is no support for the continued expansion of civilization based on industrialization. But that is exactly what is happening in China, India and Brazil, billions simultaneously reaching for things that have are having a great impact on everyone. Whatever we have done to harm ourselves and our earth is in higher gear at this exact moment of time than at any moment before, especially the poisoning and destruction of the earth and everyone on it. Could I have not picked a more appropriate concept and name than Sanctuary?

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For my readers interested in financial matters:

Our Economy is on an Artificial Life-support System
by Richard C. Cook
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6239

[i] As much as 40 per cent of children from certain heavily polluted areas suffer from asthma by the time they reach six years of age. Asthma rates among children have increased almost five-fold since the 1970s and more than doubled in the past decade, according to research published in England at the end of 2004. The proportion of under-16s diagnosed with asthma has jumped from 5.5 per cent in 1973 to 12 per cent in 1988, and to 27.3 per cent last year.ABC News. Half Perth six-year-olds suffer asthma Sunday, November 14, 2004.
[ii] Asscociated Press. Nov. 29, 2004
[iii] Palmer RF, Blanchard S, Stein Z, Mandell D, Miller C. University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Department of Family and Community Medicine, 7703 Floyd Curl Drive, San Antonio, Texas 78229-3900, USA. palmer@uthscsa.edu
[iv] http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13140004/
[v] Smith JT. Are passive smoking, air pollution and obesity a greater mortality risk than major radiation incidents? BMC Public Health. 2007 Apr 3;7:49. PMID: 17407581
[vi] The world is 510 million square kilometers and 71 percent of that is ocean. One gram of mercury poured into eighty million liters of water would be cause for concern under federal human health standards for drinking water, enough to contaminate a typical mid-western lake. Thus one gram pollutes a typical 20 acre lake and 20 acres equals .081 square kilometers. One ton of mercury contains 1 million grams which would thus pollute 81,000 square kilometers of lakes. One thousand tons would pollute 81 million square kilometers, so 7,000 tons of mercury would pollute a lake the size of the world. The world is not a lake, so the one gram rule does not quite work, but it offers us a good reference point. The oceans are quite deep and the atmosphere also holds a vast capacity to hold mercury, as does the soil. But over the last five hundred years we have dug up and used approximately 1 million tons of mercury. That is 1,000,000,000,000 grams (a trillion) or enough to blanket each 20 acres on earth with over 149 grams. It is these 149 grams that is responsible for mercury levels increasing by a factor of 20 times over the last 3 centuries.
[vii] DEP Commissioner Bradley Campbell statement about national emission levels. Associated Press. Fri, Nov. 05, 2004
[viii] Wall Street Journal. Invisible Export A Hidden Cost Of China's Growth: Mercury Migration
December 17, 2004
[ix] Scientists can use a computer model to find the wind origins for the last 10 days. If there is a big fire or dust storm across the globe, you can see the pollution crossing the ocean on satellite data. In lesser cases computers trace the path of Northwest winds to find origins. Nine years ago Jaffe's group first detected Chinese pollution on the Washington coast. Other scientists have since confirmed it, by identifying patterns of trace metals that are unique to Chinese pollution, much like a fingerprint, Jaffe said. Pollutants from China hitting Oregon Cascades; Associated Press; 8/27//06; oregonlive.com
[x] The Pathogenic Multi-potency of Mercury, Biological Therapy, Journal of Natural Medicine, Vol. VI, No. 3, June 1988
[xi] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070703/ap_on_re_as/china_pollution;_ylt=AhO
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