[ Environmental problems, etc.--was Re: new to list]

[Guest guest]

Dear ,

Thank you for your kind words. I didn't write to tell you all I have

been through (I didn't come close to doing that!) but to make several

points.

One is, research on cause and effect, and the allocation of legal

responsibility for environmental damage to the public health, is next

to impossible in situations where many industries and companies are

polluting at once. The scientific method generally depends on

controlling the number of variables that are changed at one time.

Another is, we all have the responsibility to protect our own health

and that of our families as much as possible and to advocate for

political change. I tried to concentrate on spirituality while I was

out there in Michigan, and God kept putting these situations right in

front of my face. I couldn't get away from them. Even when I was on an

airplane flying to give a talk on healing at a conference in Kansas,

the person in the next seat was the head of the health effects dept. of

the EPA of the US and she had quite a lot to say about our local paper

mill and those like it. I would go to a meeting that was supposed to be

evangelistic and the person sitting across the table from me would turn

out to have been the former director of operations of one of the

polluting factories, who had resigned and blown the whistle and was

ostracized as a result.

A third point is, that in every population there will be certain

families and genetic strains of people who will be more vulnerable to

harm. Just because everybody doesn't get sick in a given environment

doesn't mean that it is not toxic to some people or families. For

instance, I told you about the mice who were genetically vulnerable to

mercury. They developed positive ANAs (anti-nuclear antibodies), ANA

is a screening test for lupus. The " pattern " of these ANAs was

nucleolar. Within six weeks of moving to western MI, I had a positive

ANA titer of 1:2650, and the pattern was nucleolar. The power plant

with the cracked smokestack (which was supposed to protect the local

populace from air pollution containing mercury residues from the coal

it burned) was putting out mercury. I had a high level of mercury

measured in my red blood cells two years later. My daughter was

exposed to some chemicals a few years later in vet school. She also

developed a positive ANA with a nucleolar pattern, and came down with

systemic lupus. Apparently our family is genetically similar to those

vulnerable strains of mice. A large monograph on Autoimmunity and the

Environment was published a few years ago documenting a lot of these

sorts of situations.

The problem in western Michigan is that short-sighted people were

focused on improving " the economy, " i.e., on greed or " survival, " and

did not apparently realize that when enough people get sick, the

economy will collapse. Not to speak of the ability of the human race

to survive and to reproduce successfully. Not to speak of our quality

of life! The local vet said he thought it was the " environmental

armpit of the universe, " he tried to get the health department

interested in the fact that he had found malignant lymphoma in two

young dogs of different breeds right next door to one another where the

water had been polluted by the failed wells, but they weren't

interested.

To advocate means to stand by and speak for the voiceless ones, the

workers who are afraid if they speak up they will lose their jobs, the

children who have been injured before birth, and all the defenseless

creation. I think it's in Proverbs 31:8. " Speak out, yourself, for

those who cannot speak... " that should be the motto for this list.

When somebody speaks out, property values can go down. This is not

popular. The truth is often not popular.

EFAs and other antioxidants are a help in assisting our bodies to

detoxify and recover from the effects of the chemicals they have

received. Good quality vitamins and minerals can help our livers with

the detoxification. Filtered water--reverse osmosis filtering is

probably the most practical and least expensive. It removes volatile

organic chemicals better than distillation. Many of these chemicals

bioaccumulate. They aren't just excreted. They build up in body fat

or cause damage to organs. They may be released and make you sick when

you lose weight.

You can't allow your children to wade through the glop coming out of

the local factory no matter how much fun you had as a kid playing in

streams, etc. It's poisonous in many places now. Air filters should

include an activated carbon filter to remove organic chemicals as well

as a HEPA filter to remove particulate matter.

By the way, cooking with gas is dangerous, there is radon in it and

carbon monoxide. I did a large epidemiological study at Cornell of all

the vital statistics from upstate NY and Long Island, and the

communities with a higher percentage of gas cooking had much higher

mortality rates from heart disease, cancer and infant deaths than the

other communities, after correction for demographic factors...it was a

multivariate analysis, I don't want to get technical, but please

believe me.

The difficulty is that all these things are not just additive, they

multiply the health risks, one after another. To give a hypothetical

example, say smoking increases the death rate from disease x by 10%.

And then air pollution increases it by 10%. It is likely that if you

smoke in a polluted area, your risk of contracting disease x will not

be 20% higher but 80% or 100% higher. And nobody will be able to blame

it on either one. If you say it was the tobacco--Joe Camel will tell

you, no, it was the pollution. If you say it is the pollution, you

will be told you shouldn't have been smoking. While that is probably

true, it doesn't help.

In the meantime, it makes absolutely perfect sense to take EFAs and

other high quality supplements, and to take other simple precautions,

if you cannot move away from a highly polluted environment. We are

more at risk than previous generations. It's not paranoia, it's a

fact. I hope this is helpful and doesn't lead to undue alarm. You can

only do what you can do. Maybe we should put the movie about

Silkwood, or Brockovich on the homework list next to Lorenzo's

Oil.

Off the soapbox..need to pick up the house. Benny and his mom are

recovering from the flu. I noticed his speech improved while he was

feverish, not sure why. By now some of you probably think the mercury

really did get to my brain...anyway, sometimes I get a bit passionate.

I'm not going to apologize, though.

Peace,

Kathy E.

On Dec 17, 2003, at 11:39 AM, kiddietalk@... wrote:

> Hi Kathy,

>

> I'm so sorry to hear all you have been through and can't imagine you

> and the word " unpopular " in the same sentence. You are amazing.

>

> I advocate to bring our children a voice -and knew you would

> probably be one of the few brave enough to respond to my message to

> help us stand together to bring our children a voice.

[Guest guest]

and I had a conversation yesterday regarding just this. I have a neighbor

two doors away, whose daughter was born just 3 months before Jordan. She has

apraxia.....verbal, oral, and it seems some other issues. The mother,

unfortunatly, is not someone I have or would ever befriend....but how ironic

that our two children, born YEARS away from all the rest of the neighborhood

children, should be born just months apart, and suffer the same disorder. Oh,

and btw.....we live in a private culdesac tucked away from everything,

surrounded by trees.....which used to be a SOD FARM.....lots of fertilizer

<eg>......

<sigh>

Sorry for my half witted responses here, as many of you know I have an online

business that takes me away from life from November through January...I actually

ventured out of my house yesterday for 3 hours. I haven't cooked a meal in over

a month. My butt is flat from not leaving this chair.....

Hope you are all doing well, my prayers continue for all of you and your

children.

God's Blessings.....

~Karyn

[Guest guest]

Actually I wasn't thinking about individual civil litigation as much as

being able to prove--legally--that a given industry is causing health

effects so that they can be stopped. It's just about impossible in

many cases. And I do have a background in epidemiology.

Peace,

Kathy E.

On Dec 19, 2003, at 12:56 PM, kiddietalk wrote:

> I just want to clarify that I am not the type of person that

> believes in lawsuits unless the money is needed to do good. I want

> awareness so that parents like myself -like -can decide " Is

> this where we want to live while pregnant? Is this where we want to

> raise our children? "

[Guest guest]

That's interesting too, so was mine. On the immune-deficiency list we

have a lot of military people and dependents...they gave us a lot of

extra vaccinations.

Peace,

Kathy E.

On Dec 19, 2003, at 2:23 PM, merrywbee wrote:

> since Dad was

> military

[Guest guest]

Jeanne

My husband grew up in Wyckoff, NJ. Is that where some of this

happened?

Thanks

Kate