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 has 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>.
