canary chronicles

California Safe Cosmetics Act of 2005

2005-11-22T17:36:00.000-08:00

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill Saturday that will require cosmetics manufacturers to disclose which of their products contain chemicals linked to cancer, reproductive harm or developmental toxicity — a first-ever accounting of companies using potentially damaging ingredients, and a first-line protection for consumers. The newly passed bill, the California Safe Cosmetics Act of 2005, was vigorously opposed by an industry accustomed to free rein when it comes to ingredient safety."

Travel at Your Own risk

2005-11-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

When Everyday Chemicals Cause Illness - New York Times:

"Last year, Mary Lamielle, of Voorhees, N.J., traveled to Washington for a business meeting. Her room, at the Grand Hyatt, 'was perfect,' she recalled. But when she ventured into the conference area, she experienced vertigo and breathing problems, which she believed were caused by chlorinated water in the hotel's decorative pools. Within a day, she was so sick, she said, that she couldn't attend the session she had organized on healthy housing for people with disabilities.

Ms. Lamielle, the executive director of the National Center for Environmental Health Strategies, an advocacy group, suffers from what doctors variously label multiple chemical sensitivities or environmental illness, an elusive malady that can make exposure to household and industrial chemicals debilitating. Sufferers tend to purge their environments of products that cause them distress. But it's almost impossible to do that in hotels. For those with the symptoms, Ms. Lamielle said, traveling for pleasure is an oxymoron."

DuPont Hates You

2005-11-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

There's a reason big corporations need strict regulation and supervision: they are not corporeal beings (though they have first amendment protection), they do not have moral reflection (though their administrator's craft soulful Mission Statements suggesting otherwise) and they are beholden to nobody (except the corporate share-holders who are given the same 'data' as those consuming the product).

We need to dump all the legislators--Republican and Democrat alike who are in the pockets of these liars--NOW would be a good time to start:

DuPont Co. hid studies showing the risks of a Teflon-related chemical used to line candy wrappers, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags and hundreds of other food containers, according to internal company documents and a former employee.

The chemical Zonyl can rub off the liner and get into food. Once in a person's body, it can break down into perfluorooctanoic acid and its salts, known as PFOA, a related chemical used in the making of Teflon-coated cookware.

The Environmental Protection Agency has been trying to decide whether to classify PFOA as a 'likely' human carcinogen. The Food and Drug Administration, in a letter released Wednesday evening by DuPont, said it was continuing to monitor the safety of PFOA chemicals in food.

The DuPont documents were made public Wednesday by the Environmental Working Group, a research and advocacy organization.

At the same time, a former DuPont chemical engineer, Glenn Evers, told reporters at a news conference at EWG's office that the company long suppressed its studies on the chemical.

'They are toxic,' Evers said of the PFOA chemicals. 'They get into human blood. And they are also in every one of you. Your loved ones, your fellow citizens.'

From 1981 to 2002, Evers helped DuPont develop new products. He lost his job in 2002 in what DuPont described as a company restructuring."

Avoiding Everyday Toxins

2005-11-13T11:11:00.000-08:00

This is important.

AlterNet: EnviroHealth: Avoiding Everyday Toxins: "Without knowing it, 35-year-old Jeremiah Holland lost a lot more than weight when he decided to start seriously exercising two years ago. His racing bike helped him trim down from 118 to 90 kilos (260 to 200 pounds). What Holland could never have suspected was that during that period, he was also ridding his body of something else -- something he never knew was there: polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT), perfluoroctane sulfonates (PFOS), phthalates and a host of other unpronounceable chemical substances that are stored in fat -- and that remain in our bodies for a long, long time. Holland would never have been the wiser if he hadn't been chosen as a test subject in a project conducted by the Oakland Tribune, which studied the effect of toxic chemicals in the human body."

New Orlean's Flooded Superfund Site...Can We Clean Others Up Faster NOW?

2005-09-15T10:33:00.000-07:00

Among the first thoughts I had regarding Katrina was the toxic waste being released into the flood waters. Not human waste. The toxic waste from millions of gallons of herbicides, pesticides and common household poisons stored in basements, garages, under sinks, in small businesses and yard and garden suypply centers. Tons of it, combined and then flowing into rivers and eventually the ocean.

Though not from the source I was thinking about, at least some agencies are talking about Katrina's toxic waste water. Who is going to clean it up and worse, live on the land that will absorb it...the poorest of the poor, again?

From The American Progress Action Fund:

KATRINA -- FLOODED SUPERFUND SITES POSE LONG-TERM HEALTH RISK: "Overlooked in many news reports about the unfolding storm disaster in the southern United States, especially in the City of New Orleans, in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, is a potentially dramatic pollution issue related to a toxic landfill that sits under the flood waters right in the city's downtown." The Agriculture Street Landfill is one of three Superfund toxic waste sites in the Gulf Coast region that is posing a significant long-term health threat. "The flooded Superfund sites in Louisiana and Mississippi contain a range of contaminants that include heavy metals linked to increased cancer risk and developmental problems and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are carcinogens." So far, tests conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency have found "raw sewage, traces of weed killers and toxic lead taint the floodwaters inundating New Orleans."

And this:

KATRINA -- EPA COVERING UP THE PUBLIC HEALTH DANGER OF NEW ORLEANS' TOXIC WATERS: The Independent reports that an EPA official believes "toxic chemicals in the New Orleans flood waters will make the city unsafe for full human habitation for a decade." Worse yet, the Bush administration is covering up the danger, according to Hugh Kaufman, an expert on toxic waste who has been at the EPA since its inception 35 years ago. Kaufman believes the way the polluted water was being pumped out of the city was increasing the danger to public health, and the administration is failing to report the damage by taking too few water samples and refusing to disclose the results of those it has analyzed.

Personality Disorders in Doctors

2005-05-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

Patients expressing unfamiliar complaints to their physicians
often induce the "It's All In Your Head" (AIYH) or the "That's
Impossible" response in doctors suffering from these behavioral
problems and personality disorders.

Physicians who manifest the metaphysical belief system of "If we
don't know about it, then it doesn't exist" are suffering from a
mental defect or psychological condition known as "Doctors with
Unexplained Medical Beliefs" or D.U.M.B.

DUMB doctors are comprised of two categories that are
characterized by those who are feigning to be DUMB for
monetary gain: "Medicalingering" and those who are not in
possession of sufficient information to render intelligent
diagnoses: "Factlessitious Disorder".

Physicians who are predisposed to this condition place an
inordinate emphasis on theories of psychological causality for
virtually any unfamiliar complaints that are presented to them.
This somatiform obsession with psychological etiology,
"Psychosomatization Disorder" or "Psychologizing" is a
distinctive characteristic of the mental illness and should be
considered a warning sign that the individual is not rational and
may in fact be DUMB.

DUMB disorder may be concomitant but should not be confused
with Signs of Thoroughly Unmistakable Physician Intelligence
Deficiency or "S.T.U.P.I.D." Since a STUPID physician is
uniformly incompetent while a DUMB doctor is only mentally
paralyzed into "psychologizing" by unfamiliar symptoms and
complaints.

An immediate investigation is warranted to ascertain the
prevalence of DUMB and STUPID doctors and assess the
impact that physicians suffering from these mental defects and
behavioral disorders have on the health care system and patients.

--ANON

Quackbusters Horse-Whipped in Missouri Supreme Court

2005-03-28T08:09:00.000-08:00

Among the many things that suck about being a victim of chemical injury, in the Top 10 list (at about 1 or 2) is chemical industry efforts--and the 'doctors' they use--to ridicule, deride and provide 'tobacco science' defenses aginst our legal cases for justice.

Recently chemical injury patients (and their doctors) received a dose of justice (for a change) through a case involving chelation for heart disease patients. From Quackpot Watch's Tim Bolen we have this story on a Missouri Supreme Court's ruling FOR alternative treatment.

"I just received word about a new Supreme Court Case Decision involving an attack on an innovative health practitioner, Edward W. McDonagh, D.O., from Missouri, who had the common sense to use chelation therapy on his heart patients.

Of course his patients got better, and of course the State, blindly following the recommendations, and the nonsensical statements, found on delicensed MD Stephen Barrett's ludicrous 'quackwatch.com' website, tried to take this dedicated healer's license to practice medicine away from him.

They failed.

Not only did they fail, but the resulting Supreme Court Decision has become a landmark, and will be used across the land, as 'case law' whenever any State agency is dumb enough, or sleazy enough, to use the 'quackbusters' or 'quackbuster' dogma, asa resource. The case decision had a lot to say about a lot of issues."

Seems the state was "...using the nonsensical statements, found on delicensed MD Stephen Barrett's ludicrous "quackwatch.com" website". If you have any chemical injury you have had to run across those who will fight your claims basing their position that you are 'crazy' on having read his (yes, truly ludicrous) site...

Tim adds, "The self-styled National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF), the "quackbuster's" flagship, has sunk - it is financially insolvent, legally defunct, and its members owe the homeopathic world over $100,000 in legal fees it can't pay. The NCAHF president, Bobbie Baratz, has been ripped apart in the Courtroom, and his "testifying" income has been curtailed."

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...happy (soooo happy) to see that A-hole get slapped!

And best of all, this sets precedent folks--case law--in our favor! Woo-hoo, I'm doin' the happy dance...!

Safe Houses

2005-03-24T07:44:00.000-08:00

'Neurotic,' I would have said:

If someone had explained the details of their multiple chemical sensitivities to me 15 years ago, I, would have simply considered them neurotic. If someone had told me they'd have to have a whole-house reverse-osmosis water purifier to avoid being felled by the minute amounts of chlorine volatilizing into the air and absorbed through the skin while showering, I'd have said: "no way!"

If someone had told me that they had to cover the insides of every closet in their home with aluminum foil and tape it airtight, lest the residual mothball fumes (imperceptible to me) from a previous occupant cause them chronic pain, I'd have said "yeah, right!"

If someone had told me that in 15 years I would find myself washing my bedding daily, rinsing each load with vinegar because the low level of air-borne chemicals that were deposited on them during the day were enough to prevent me from sleeping, I likely would have thought, "I'd rather be dead."

If they had warned me that I'd be washing my hair three times a day to remove perfume I picked up in heavily perfumed public spaces, I think I'd have laughed.

EPA and Human Testing: What is CHEERS?

2005-03-23T23:32:00.000-08:00

You need to know about this:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is paying Florida families who “spray or have pesticides sprayed inside your home routinely” to study their infant children. When agency scientists started to question the ethics of the study, EPA removed the protocol from its website.

and...

PEER has learned that there is a stunning corporate agenda behind EPA’s use and now dogged defense of this study:

* Pesticide companies want infant exposure levels so that EPA will be forced to drop its rules requiring that pesticide exposures to small children be nearly ten times more protective;

* EPA wants to use CHEERS as the opening for a new policy on accepting testing on humans to determine pesticide toxicity. The Bush Administration will soon announce a repeal of the Clinton-era rules against testing pesticides on humans.

* Through direct contributions, corporations are now influencing EPA research. The American Chemistry Council, which contributed $2 million to CHEERS, also successfully lobbied to include exposure to flame retardants and other household chemicals in the study. EPA now has 80 similar research agreements with industries, universities and local governments.

If CHEERS is allowed to go forward it is only a matter of time before the levels of chemicals already too high for those of us who can detect toxins at parts per BILLION, let alone parts per million, will be forced out of our already peripheral fingerhold in society to isolated satellites spinning further and further into an isolated space.

WTO: Could using Vitamin C send you to jail?

2005-03-12T16:36:00.001-08:00

From my own post on dKos WTO: Could using Vitamin C send you to jail?:

CODEX now applies to Norway and Germany, among others, where zinc tablets rose from $4 per bottle to $52. Echinacea rose from $14 to $153 (both examples are now allowed by prescription only). They are now 'drugs'. Vitamin C above 200 mg, niacin above 32 mg, vitamin B6 above 4 mg; all are banned over-the-counter and are classified as drugs. No amino acids, essential fatty acids (omegas 3, 6, 9, etc.), or other essential supplements such as DMEA, DHEA, CoQ10, MSM, beta-carotene, etc. are allowed.

For those of us whose lives literally depend on supplements, this is a death sentence.

Canary Chortles 2-17-05

2005-02-17T17:14:00.000-08:00

Whose Rights to Liberty, Whose Rights to Life, Anyway?

2004-12-29T14:45:00.000-08:00

So what's wrong with this picture?

It is a wintery day in an average apartment building, somewhere in America. An upstairs neighbor (let's call her Sally) has a debilitating, chronic physical ailment. The downstairs neighbor (we'll call her Diane) knows what it is. They've discussed it with each other. The upstairs neighbor has chemically-induced environmental illness. The downstairs neighbor does not, but her life-partner does. Since the airways of the two residences are connected, the healthy party has verbally agreed to avoid exascerbating the upstairs neighbor's condition by using cleaning products that are low in toxic chemicals, especiallly fragrance, that not only benefit her own household's health, but the upstairs neighbor's as well.

Then, the upstairs neighbor notices a change in the air, coming from the HVAC vents in particular. Sally fits her vents with one-inch charcoal filters, buys another air purifier and then realizes the problem is worse when the HVAC is running. So she stops running her heat and AC system, discontinuing use altogether unless the weather is freezing cold. Sally even resorts to covering the vents with a material that will stop air-flow completely - tin-foil (and since this is embarassing, she stops inviting guests into her home too). Finally, realizing that even these steps are not stopping nausea and dizziness (syptoms she knows are related to chemical exposure) the upstairs neighbor gives in and calls her downstairs neighbor, Diane.

Diane's response is that well, she's been busy with the Holiday season and unable to go out of her way to get to a store that has the product they both agreed she'd use. She's so sorry. Trying to accomodate Diane, Sally offers to purchase a replacement product and deliver it to her, free. 'No, thanks,' is Diane's reply; that too, is inconvenient.

Inconvenient?

Who is more inconvenienced; the disabled person sleeping with windows open in the cold winter? Thousands of dollars spent specifically on detoxifying and desensitizing procedures and equipment for the exposure to the product? The ongoing attack on a body that, already damaged, is increasingly weakened and all in the one safe place this person had, her own home?

Or Diane, choosing to accept a product she's routinely used, supplied free of charge, to her door?

Did I mention that Sally is an activist Democrat and Diane an activist Republican, and that until the 2004 election, their relationship had been nearly friendly? And that since the election, Diane had stopped greeting her neighbor Sally, altogether?

The sad part is, that although Diane is being intentionally abusive of Sally, both parties are victims. The culprits here are chemical companies (who expand their market by differentiating the otherwise uncomplicated, ancient product in question here - soap - by adding fragrance), and legislators, for lax corporate product regulation.

And if it is partisan politics driving this Republican's abuse of her upstairs neighbor through her medical disability, then legislators (and specifically Republicans) have succeeded in enabling the needs of one of the largest Republican donors, the agro-chemical industry, in a most spectaular, and perverted, process of cost-shifting.

Home-by-home, the actual expense of necessary regulation of chemicals added to consumer products from the chemical industry to consumers is thrice lining agro-chemical industry's pockets in this cost-shifting process; once for the high prices charged for an unnecessary chemical addition to an otherwise fit product, once again to the consumer for becoming the lab guinea pig (and human test subjects are impossible to secure, legally) and a third time in health-related pharmaceutical bills ensuing from chemical injuries to an otherwise healthy population, in the form of cancers, asthma, lung disease and neurological disorders - never mind the often-derided chemically injured. Not bad...and to have accomplished it by deepening partisan divides between neighbors? Priceless.

And while this may seem an interesting case study for sociologists, the reality is that Sally will not only sleep in a cold room, dizzy and naseaus, depressed and without legal recourse (while Diane sleeps warm and self-righteously smug) Sally, the weakest in the scenario - is the least able to afford the cost-shifting and in the end will likely pay with the entire forfeit of her health - perhaps even her life.

Same scene (the haves and have-nots), different players (healthy and disabled), in the Republican-stoked saga of the culture wars, played out on the stages of our homes.

If Americans don't learn to fight the correct political enemies, we will all lose the war.