The other night
Mike and I were scrolling through Netflix taking our usual ten minutes to
dispute over what looks good or not and who is going to choose this time. Being
our oh so curious selves that prefer documentaries over the last sci-fi movie
that got 4 stars, we stumbled upon a documentary called The Human Experiment. Although this film doesn’t go into
intense detail of the thousands and thousands of chemicals that leech into our
unsuspecting bodies every day, it is definitely a starting point for those of
you who’d like to begin your journey of knowledge of the evil and corrupt of
big pharmaceutical, plastic, and any other big money corporations only out to
increase profit without the humanity to care about what damage is being done by
their products. This film lifts the curtain to the many known secrets of the
rich and ‘I don’t care if it causes cancer, sell it’s. You’ll be taken into
some individuals lives from different walks of life and how the everyday
products we use affect them in so many unnatural and unwelcoming ways; products
that maybe even you use or are around every single day.
I’d
like to start this hopefully multiple part essay with more information on one
of the chemicals that that have been
found in more products than you can imagine and the effects having it in your
life. BPA (Bisphenol-A) is one of the main components found today in a variety
of everyday lives. An insert from the article Use
of Polycarbonate Plastic Products and Human Health by R. K. Srivastava and Sushila Godara
gives an upfront statement about the dangers of BPA:
“Researchers found
links between abnormal liver enzymes in the people and Bisphenol-A (BPA).
Changes in insulin resistance, reproduction system, cardiovascular and brain
function are also reported. BPA is used in the production of epoxy resins,
polycarbonate resins, and polyester resins. BPA can leach out of certain
plastic products including variety of modern goods, reusable food storage
containers, eyeglass lenses, white dental fillings, sealants, medical
equipment’s etc. In the body, BPA behaves as an estrogen receptor agonist and
mimics estrogen hormone. Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a widespread endocrine-disrupting
chemical (EDC) used as the base compound in the manufacture of polycarbonate
plastics. Children and unborn and new born babies are at high risk of unwanted
effects of BPA. Children suffer from chronic exposure to bisphenol A with
manifestation of gastrointestinal problems, adrenal stress, immune dysfunction,
toxic over load and neurological disorders. (1)”
So
from the gist of this small excerpt, I hope you still don’t get the feeling
that consuming anything laced with BPA is a safe bet over time, for you, your
children, and even your unborn child. Did I say consume? Yes, I did. On
top of BPA leaching into your beverages and water from the plastic bottles,
canned foods being lined with it, and almost every other new plastic made that
mankind uses or holds on to at any point; it’s also in some of our foods. The
products and produce that we as humans hope would be safe on the shelves just
because other humans placed them there is a very sad statement to find false.
And if some of you won’t take this serious personally, and to be frank I tend
to not when it only comes to me (I still gorge on Pizza and drink too much pop
sometimes), lets place this devastation and danger on your children instead.
Let’s start with your babies that haven’t even left the womb yet.
According to the Environmental Working Group, “In the month leading up to
a baby's birth, the umbilical cord pulses with the equivalent of at least 300
quarts of blood each day, pumped back and forth from the nutrient- and
oxygen-rich placenta to the rapidly growing child cradled in a sack of amniotic
fluid. (2)” This is the life source that leads from mother to unborn infant;
the infant that depends on us for everything to be perfectly safe, secure, and
healthy. Once thought to be a safety net for all things harmful that went
through the mother to not be passed to the child, has been proven to be a
falsity. Everything, EVERYTHING, that the mother ingests, skin leeches in, and
air that she breathes takes effect on the fetus. From the variety of tests done
from other sources and here in, the Environmental Working Group also found that
“In a study
… in collaboration with Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found
an average of 200 industrial chemicals and pollutants in umbilical cord blood
from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in U.S. hospitals. Tests
revealed a total of 287 chemicals in the group (2)”.
Here is the basic overview of the
chemicals they found in the umbilical cords:
Gross,
right? The majority of these things we almost simply cannot get away from as a
common blue collar worker unless the stress and utmost desire is there.One
statement made in the movie went along the lines of:
If I were to give
you a glass of water to drink and told you that there was only a 4% chance that
the poison I placed in it would kill you, would you drink it? I most definitely
would not. But what if I told you that I was 94% sure that it wouldn’t kill
you, high chances right? Would you still drink it? I would still say no. How
about if there was a 1% chance that you would die, would you drink it?
Now
when we eat and drink the nasty things we do in our quick pace quick food lives
aside from all the extra chemical crap placed in it, we know that it’s bad for
us already, yet we alas do it anyways. Does that mean we should just say
whatever to these facts and carry on with our lives that we hope will be full,
healthy, and long? I suppose that is your decision, but to not fight for the
health of the common human and the generations to come is actually a very
selfish act.
1 in
88 kids now are born with autism compared just over a decade ago when it was 1
in 500. Do you really think things are going to get better just with that
statistic alone? Not to blame autism on BPA just yet without the proper
research, but with the multitude of other chemicals piled up on the 4% that may
provide a sarcastically wonderful dose of disease, cancer, and premature death,
wouldn’t you think there is something wrong with this industrialized life and
want to do something about it? If not for you, then for your children,
niblings, and younger cousins?
The
wee man in the right amount of numbers can be heard over the dollar of every
disgusting paying lobbyist from the corps. Not that this has to do much with
bill writing at the moment, but even because of it some are being put in
motion, but I’m sure you have heard of the Cecil the Lion situation and the
Dentist that killed him. Lions have been killed and shipped to the US forever
now, but because the people roared loud enough, Mahita Gajanan, a reporter for
The Guardian, stated that “New Jersey senator Bob Menendez announced on Friday
that he will be introducing an act to disincentive trophy killings, named for the
internationally mourned lion. The Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the
Importation of Large (Cecil) Animal Trophies Act will extend import and export
protections for species proposed to be listed under the Endangered Species Act
(3)”. Now the leads being involved in the hunt are in trial and the man that
paid for the hunt is being voted to be extradited.
The
power of numbers when we care about something is very strong. So if we should
care so much about one lion, why shouldn’t we care about our own well-being and
fight for that? Find something to care about. Do your research. Then fight for
it.
1) Srivastava, R.K., and Sushila Godara. "Use of Polycarbonate
Plastic Products and Human Health." Http://www.scopemed.org. IJBCP, Jan.
2013. Web. 05 Aug. 2015.
<http://www.scopemed.org/fulltextpdf.php?mno=32059>.
2) Environmental Working Group. "Body Burden: The Pollution in
Newborns." EWG. EWG, 14 July 2005. Web. 05 Aug. 2015.
<http://www.ewg.org/research/body-burden-pollution-newborns>.
3) Gajanan, Mahita. "Cecil the Lion Spurs US Lawmakers to Draft
Bills to Discourage Trophy Hunting." The Guardian. The Guardian, 31 July
2015. Web. 05 Aug. 2015.
<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/31/cecil-the-lion-legislation-trophy-hunting-bob-menendez>.
