TennesseeCitizenScienceWatch

The Toxic Chemical Experiment on Our Reproductive Systems – Women's Voices for the Earth

A great article by Cassidy Randall on how toxic chemicals impact women.

Women are the first environment for the next generation. Biologically, we can pass chemicals on to our children in the womb and through breastfeeding.

Read the whole article at www.womensvoices.org

You can also take action by asking your senator to co-sponsor the Safe Chemicals Act, which was recently re-introduced. This act would require that chemicals be evaluated for safety before they're placed in products like children's toys, cleaning products, and furniture. It would also take immediate action to phase out the most dangerous chemicals.

Rosner and Markowitz: Your Body Is a Corporate Test Tube | TomDispatch

Great article at Tom Dispatch by Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner, authors of Lead Wars: The Politics of Science and the Fate of America’s Children...

Today, we are all unwitting subjects in the largest set of drug trials ever. Without our knowledge or consent, we are testing thousands of suspected toxic chemicals and compounds, as well as new substances whose safety is largely unproven and whose effects on human beings are all but unknown. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) itself has begun monitoring our bodies for 151 potentially dangerous chemicals, detailing the variety of pollutants we store in our bones, muscle, blood, and fat.  None of the companies introducing these new chemicals has even bothered to tell us we’re part of their experiment.  None of them has asked us to sign consent forms or explained that they have little idea what the long-term side effects of the chemicals they’ve put in our environment -- and so our bodies -- could be.  Nor do they have any clue as to what the synergistic effects of combining so many novel chemicals inside a human body in unknown quantities might produce.

Read the whole story at www.tomdispatch.com

Related articles

The Lead Menace

Lead Industry & the Deck of Cards

Lead poisoning toll revised to 1 in 38 young kids

How a Doctor Discovered U.S. Walls Were Poisonous

Chemical Disasters, Agent Orange, and GMOs: Monsanto's Legacy Traced in Exposé | Common Dreams

Chemical disasters, Agent Orange, and the first genetically modified plant cell are among just some of the dark milestones belonging to the history of the biotech giant Monsanto highlighted in a new report released Wednesday by consumer advocacy group Food & Water Watch.

The in-depth historical analysis Monsanto: A Corporate Profile presents a corporation "steeped in heavy industrial chemical production," who only recently began marketing itself through an "environmentally friendly, feed-the-world image"—an image that is contradictory to a century of toxic chemical production and a food supply saturated with un-labeled GE crops, herbicides, and artificial growth hormones.

Monsanto, as FWW shows, now holds vast "undue influence over lawmakers, regulators, and our food supply," and has caused great devastation to farmers around the world through its global seed monopoly.

Read more at www.commondreams.org

Sandy Stirs Toxic-Site Worry - WSJ.com

Hurricane Sandy's environmental impact is still being assessed, but the worries for residents of New York and New Jersey are crystallized by one fact: Of the two states' 198 Superfund toxic-waste sites, 45 are within a half-mile of coastal areas vulnerable to storm surge.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees cleanup of those sites, was unable to say how many of them flooded on the night of Oct. 29. But the agency said its initial appraisals show that several "were impacted by the storm," including a site contaminated by lead near Sayreville, N.J., and the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek sites in New York City.

 

via online.wsj.com

Russ Maddox: Citizens’ Petitions for Protection from Toxic Contamination | PSR

Important information from Physicians for Social Responsibility for citizens who think their property may have been contaminated:

As citizens of the United States, we all sleep better knowing that if our property or health is threatened by others, we can seek assistance from our government.  However, sometimes local and state government can prove unresponsive to our concerns. In situations where contamination is documented and local and state agencies prove ineffective in addressing concerns, we can petition the federal government to assess the situation. If our petition is approved, the government will hire a contractor to quantify any contamination and identify potential sources and responsible parties.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) accepts citizen’s petitions for preliminary assessments of properties that are known to be contaminated but need to be quantified. Anyone with evidence of contamination on their property and concerns for their personal safety and health because of possible exposure to harmful substances may request a preliminary assessment (PA). There are ten EPA regions so your petition will need to go to your specific region’s office. If the EPA agrees with your concerns, they will hire an environmental contractor to collect samples for analysis and will investigate potential sources of any contamination they may find. If the PA exposes contaminants whose levels and volume meet a specified Hazard Risk Score (HRS), the EPA will conduct a Full Site Inspection to clearly define any areas that may need to be cleaned up. The reports that the EPA generates may provide the evidence necessary to prompt a clean-up or to recover damages from the responsible party or source of contamination. The EPA’s scrutiny alone will often compel the responsible parties to clean up or even eliminate the source of the contamination.

Read the full article at www.psr.org

Tennessee is in EPA Region 4.

Are we at risk from pharmaceuticals in drinking water?

Interesting article published in February of this year looks at problem of prescription drugs in water supplies.

The available data indicate that there is a substantial margin of safety between the very low concentrations of pharmaceuticals in drinking-water and the minimum therapeutic doses. Based on this finding, the World Health Organization (WHO) deems it unnecessary to develop formal contamination standard values for pharmaceuticals in its Guidelines for drinking-water quality;  and concerns over pharmaceuticals in drinking-water should not divert water suppliers and regulators from other priorities for drinking-water safety, most notably microbial risks such as bacterial, viral and protozoan pathogens, and other chemical risks such as naturally occurring arsenic and excessive levels of fluoride [1, 2].

I will take issue with the WHO conclusion that drugs and their breakdown products are too low to impact human health. The drugs most frequently appear in drinking water as mixtures whose combined effect have not been considered by health authorities even though such mixtures have been shown to be biologically active in aquatic organisms as discussed  in this article. (Synergistic effects due to mixtures of low concentrations of environmental pollutants are already well recognized, see [3] Super-Toxic Cocktails, SiS 43).

Among the drugs identified in water supplies are antibiotics, analgesics and anti-inflammatories, beta-blockers, hormones, statins, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitorsantiepileptic, diuretics, anti-asthmatics, antidepressants, antineoplastics, antipsychotics, stimulants, sedatives, and anticoagulants [4, 5]. 

Read more at www.i-sis.org.uk

See also:

Antidepressants in water trigger autism genes in fish

Pharmaceuticals and Personal Care Products as Pollutants (EPA web page)

WHO/Pharmaceuticals in drinking-water (downloadable report from WHO)

 

Pesticide Drift, Sick Rural Residents Force Face-Off With Big Agriculture

Bonnie Wirtz recalls the nurse practitioner's private words as she was released from a rural Minnesota hospital last month: "I want to let you know that you are not the first person I've seen that has come in for this."

The evening before, in the small farming community of Melrose, Minn., a plume of pesticides from an overhead crop duster seeped into Wirtz' bedroom via her air conditioner. Within minutes, her heart began to race and she struggled to breathe.

Read the rest of the story at www.huffingtonpost.com

SOCM Fights Against Poor Water Quality and Landfills in Maury County

From SOCM eNews for May 16th:

The Maury County Chapter held its monthly meeting in the town of Mt. Pleasant to hear the ongoing concerns of local residents about their water supply. Residents expressed outrage that they are unable to afford water/sewer bills of more than $100 per month, when the water isn't even safe to drink!

 

At the meeting, members pointed to the irresponsible activities of Tennessee Aluminum Processors (TAP) and Smelter Services Corporation, particularly in the two landfills they operate together (Associated Commodities and Hoover Mason Recycling). Both TAP and Smelter have a long and well-documented history of violations of the Clean Water Act resulting from their discharge of toxic materials into local bodies of water - Sugar Creek, Quality Creek, and Arrow Lake. The City of Mt. Pleasant itself has its own record of violating various environmental regulations, and local residents continue to suffer the consequences of a poor sewer and water infrastructure through the form of high utility bills and undrinkable water.  

 

Mt. Pleasant is the poorest town in the county and has the highest percentage of African-American residents. Strong anecdotal accounts of higher cancer rates and other illnesses in Mt. Pleasant, particularly among people of color, also concern SOCM members. These are serious threats to the community's well-being so SOCM will continue to be involved.

 

Please contact Middle Tennessee Organizer Brad Wright at 615.355.9356 or brad@socm.org for more information or to get involved.

Effects of environmental toxicants reach down through generations

ScienceDaily (Mar. 2, 2012) — A Washington State University researcher has demonstrated that a variety of environmental toxicants can have negative effects on not just an exposed animal but the next three generations of its offspring.

via www.sciencedaily.com

Here is the abstract from the study which you can download free at PLoS ONE:

Environmental factors during fetal development can induce a permanent epigenetic change in the germ line (sperm) that then transmits epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of adult-onset disease in the absence of any subsequent exposure. The epigenetic transgenerational actions of various environmental compounds and relevant mixtures were investigated with the use of a pesticide mixture (permethrin and insect repellant DEET), a plastic mixture (bisphenol A and phthalates), dioxin (TCDD) and a hydrocarbon mixture (jet fuel, JP8). After transient exposure of F0 gestating female rats during the period of embryonic gonadal sex determination, the subsequent F1–F3 generations were obtained in the absence of any environmental exposure. The effects on the F1, F2 and F3 generations pubertal onset and gonadal function were assessed. The plastics, dioxin and jet fuel were found to promote early-onset female puberty transgenerationally (F3 generation). Spermatogenic cell apoptosis was affected transgenerationally. Ovarian primordial follicle pool size was significantly decreased with all treatments transgenerationally. Differential DNA methylation of the F3 generation sperm promoter epigenome was examined. Differential DNA methylation regions (DMR) were identified in the sperm of all exposure lineage males and found to be consistent within a specific exposure lineage, but different between the exposures. Several genomic features of the DMR, such as low density CpG content, were identified. Exposure-specific epigenetic biomarkers were identified that may allow for the assessment of ancestral environmental exposures associated with adult onset disease.

EPA Releases Formerly Confidential Chemical Information

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced today that EPA is making hundreds of studies on chemicals that had formerly been treated as confidential business information (CBI) available to the public. Release of the data will expand the public’s access to critical health and safety information on chemicals that are manufactured and processed in the U.S. Newly available information can be found using EPA’s Chemical Data Access Tool.

“EPA is increasing the availability of critical health and safety studies on chemicals that children and families are exposed to every day. We are making important progress in making this information public and giving the American public easy access to it,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “Over the next year, we expect to review several thousand additional studies on industrial chemicals and make many of these more accessible to the public.”

Read the whole press release at yosemite.epa.gov

For more information see EPA's webpage: Increasing Transparency in Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA)