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Date Published: 22/04/2001
Author: Martin J Walker
In the first of a two-part series,
Martin J Walker explores the health hazards of everyday life in
the modern world. |
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Most of us believe that life today is
generally healthier than in the past. Doctors and medical
scientists, certainly, tell us that we are healthier than we have
ever been: they explain that medical science has eradicated the
major diseases of the nineteenth century; that mortality rates
have fallen; that people live longer, in more sanitary conditions;
that we are all, as a result, healthier.
What they rarely say is that, while medical science has certainly
eliminated many of the killer diseases of the past, they have been
replaced by a growing list of new disorders; often less obvious
but no less dangerous. Growing lists of cancers, asthma, heart
disease, multiple chemical sensitivity, allergies, pesticide and
chemical poisonings, infertility… What is striking about modern,
post-industrial society, in fact, is not how healthy it is, but
how unhealthy.
Growing concern
The list of new and resurgent illnesses in Britain, as elsewhere
in the ‘developed’ world, can be depressing. Most strikingly,
cancer rates are increasing. Incidences of male cancers rose by
around 25 per cent in the period 1970 to 1990, and the mortality
rates from all cancers taken together continue to rise. In some
categories, male cancer deaths have rocketed; male prostate cancer
cases, for example, have doubled and cancer of the oesophagus has
almost doubled too. And while we are often told that these
increases are due to our increased longevity, this is not borne
out by the statistics – the mean age of death for many cancers
hovers around 71, falling with cancer of the breast in women to 69
and with malignant melanoma of the skin to 63. And some of the
fast-expanding cancers – testicular and breast cancer, for example
– increasingly affect younger people.
While cancers rise, new illnesses have sprung up in certain age
groups and locations. Asthma now affects one in four 5-year-olds
living in London’s inner city. Admissions to hospital amongst
under 4-year-old male asthma sufferers rose from 6 per 10,000 to
over 100 per 10,000 between 1955 and 1991. The US National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases suggests that
allergies affect as many as 40 to 50 million people in the US –
one in five. Ischaemic heart disease in men aged between 45 and 54
quadrupled between 1921 and 1994.
Increasing numbers of people, meanwhile, are finding themselves
intolerant of a variety of foods and sensitive to many unregulated
chemicals. In America, an increasing number of people report
adverse reactions to chemicals. Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
(MCS) is regarded by many physicians to be a growing disease of
modern society. And each new wave of patients who suffer adverse
reactions to a toxic environment, whether at war or on a sheep
farm, have to fight with the state, the medical profession and
insurance companies, to get their illness recognised.
Modern risk
Although medical scientists try to convince us that a longer,
healthy life and levels of health risk are fairly evenly
distributed throughout society, contemporary health risk, in fact,
reflects deeper inequalities worldwide. In all important areas of
illness, over the last 40 years, mortality amongst the
professional classes has decreased, while increasing amongst the
poor. While we now live longer than we did 60 years ago, we also
suffer from longer and more debilitating illnesses. In the 52
years between 1935 and 1987, the number of Americans living with
one or more chronic diseases doubled from 22 per cent to 45 per
cent, while by the late 1990s, one in every four American children
had a chronic condition. In the 10 year period from 1981-2 to
1991-2, the incidence of all cancers, malign and benign, for the
whole population increased by 77 per cent, diabetes in males
escalated by 61 per cent, asthma in younger males and females
increased by 114 per cent and 165 per cent respectively,
osteoarthritis increased in men by 58 per cent and in women by 214
per cent and breast cancer in woman rose by 39 per cent. It is a
long, growing and chilling list, and the trend it highlights is
becoming clear: the post-industrial age has introduced its own
chemical- and environmentally-caused illnesses.
Life, of course, has never been without illness, and never been
without risk. But what is striking about today’s world is the
cumulative nature of that risk. The ultimate health risk, for
example, from a cocktail of pesticides is considerably higher than
that of the single minimum quantity found on one vegetable or a
piece of fruit. And today’s world is so complex that the risks
multiply often before we can identify them.
And what is most striking of all is that the source of many of
these risks can be found where you might least expect them: inside
your own home.
No place like home
In January this year, The Mirror newspaper conducted tests on a
36-year old woman who ate organically and avoided major
environmental pollutants. The tests found an array of 39 toxic
chemicals in the woman’s fat and blood, including chemicals
supposedly no longer used in Britain like DDT. There was also
lindane, and three times the average level of xylene, a car
exhaust emission. A similar test carried out on volunteers by the
Daily Mail, also found lindane, together with carcinogenic wood
preservers and chemicals from cleaning fluids. Overall, more than
400 toxic chemicals – some found in household products and food –
have been found in human blood.
This may point to the real story behind the increasing, and
rapidly spreading, array of diseases already mentioned in this
article. The chemical ingredients used by industry in food and
household products have risen dramatically over the last 50 years.
In 1940, the world output of chemicals was 1 billion lb; by the
1980s, this had risen to 500 billion lb. About 60,000-70,000
synthetic chemicals are presently in regular use. This level of
artificial chemical use is unprecedented in human history; and
increasingly, the link between the pervasive chemical soup that
surrounds us all, even in our own homes, and the increasing
sickness of modern society, is being made.
Watch where you step
What is genuinely worrying about this situation is how the simple
act of staying at home and living a normal life can expose us to
risks that previous generations would never have experienced. A
brief trip through the average home will demonstrate this well.
One of the most damaging and persistent chemicals found in the
home is an old staple: formaldehyde. It was first created in the
late 1800s, when scientists created a transparent elastic
substance which came to be used to glue wood together and to
produce a self-hardening insulating foam. These products have been
used widely in the building trade in America and Britain. More
recently, formaldehyde has come to be used in latex paints,
fabrics, automotive resins and cheap furniture. Few houses today
are likely to be without it in some form.
But formaldehyde is also one of the best-known volatile organic
compound (VOC) pollutants, and a potent carcinogen. Products made
with it release unstable particles into the atmosphere, a process
called ‘outgassing’. It may take anything up to two or three years
before all the fumes have released themselves from the products.
It has been known since the 1920s that formaldehyde fumes are
toxic but, ironically, the trend towards energy conservation has
meant that many such fumes come to be trapped within new
buildings. The inhalation of formaldehyde fumes cause flu-like
symptoms, rashes, neurological illnesses and ultimately cancer.
Gassed
But formaldehyde is only one of a wide range of household products
that emit potentially poisonous fumes into our homes. In 1996, the
Building Research Establishment monitored 174 homes in Avon, in
the west of England, and found that levels of formaldehyde gas
were 10 times higher indoors than out. Twelve homes also exceeded
World Health Organisation air quality levels. This was partly due,
the research concluded, to the cleaning agents used, and gases
generated by modern appliances: carbon monoxide, benzene vapour
and volatile organic compounds.
Once this can of worms is opened, the contents can be shocking.
Household cleaners, personal care products, pesticides, paints,
hobby products solvents: all these very common household products
can, effectively, gas us in our homes. Spray cans and atomisers
release particles into the air which can cause headaches, nausea,
shortness of breath, eye, throat and lung irritation, skin rashes,
burns and liver damage. The use of sprays can lead to an indoor
build-up of large quantities of carcinogenic vapours. The fumes
from chlorine products, such as bleaches, can irritate the skin
and eyes. If chlorine bleach is mixed with other cleaning
solutions, it can produce deadly gases.
Spring cleaning?
Wander around your house and see if you can find any of the
products mentioned above. It’s highly likely. Links between all of
them and illness have been established. And there are many more.
Clean your upholstery; use a phosphate detergent to do the dishes;
use a chemical spot remover to remove those carpet stains; polish
the floor; paint the ceiling; it’s highly likely that the products
you use to do all these things can, and perhaps will, make you
ill.
Many carpet and upholstery cleaners, for example, contain
perchlorethylene, a known carcinogen which can cause anaemia,
damage to the liver, kidneys and nervous system. Others contain
ammonium hydroxide, which is corrosive, irritating the eyes, skin
and respiratory passages. In 1999, in an unparalleled move, Right
Guard upholstery cleaners, produced by the multinational 3M, were
taken off the market. The company said it was ‘playing safe’ after
suggestions that some of the contents were carcinogenic.
Benzene vapour, created by car exhausts and refineries, and from
cigarette smoke as well as solvents used in the home, is
potentially extremely poisonous. The use of chemical-based
products such as bathroom spray cleaners is another domestic
danger. Furniture polishes are petroleum distillates, which are
flammable and can cause skin and lung cancer. They contain
nitrobenzene, which is highly toxic and easily absorbed through
the skin.
Then there is simple washing-up liquid; responsible for many
everyday cases of stomach upset. Dishwasher detergents are even
more toxic; most of them containing poisonous chlorine in a highly
concentrated dry form. In the US, these detergents are the primary
cause of child poisonings.
Dying to look good
Perhaps if you never cleaned your house, you could avoid most of
these risks. Maybe; but it would depend on what you did with the
rest of your time at home. Do you ever wear make-up, for example,
or simply use deodorants, after-shave, talcum powder? The US
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health has found
that 884 chemicals used in personal care products and cosmetics
are known to be toxic. It is estimated that women absorb up to two
kilograms of chemicals through toiletries and cosmetics every
year.
Thinking of dyeing your hair? You should know that long-term use
of dark hair dye increases the risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
(NHL) by up to four times. Hair dyes have also been implicated in
breast cancer.
Bath time? It’s almost impossible to buy a soap, shampoo or bubble
bath which does not contain synthetic sodium laurel sulphate or
sodium laureth sulphate (SLS). This highly potent degreasing agent
can destroy delicate tissues in the eye. The American Journal of
Toxicology reported that SLS irritates skin tissue, corrodes hair
follicles and impairs the ability to grow hair. It also permeates
the heart, liver, lungs and brain.
But the most dangerous chemicals to be included in personal care
products are ammonia derivatives, such as diethanolamine,
triethanolamine, and monoethanolamine. Known to have
hormone-disrupting effects, they are added to soaps, bubble baths
and facial cleansers. When they are mixed with products containing
nitrates, carcinogenic nitrosamines can be formed. The
International Agency for Research on Cancer, based in Lyon,
concluded in 1978 that, although no epidemiological data existed,
nitrosodiethanolamine ‘should be regarded for practical purposes
as if it were carcinogenic to humans’.
Finally, before you go to bed, you’ll probably want to brush your
teeth. Beware: the ingesting of too large a quantity of fluoride,
a substance that is more toxic than lead, leads to dental
fluorosis and skeletal fluorosis, a crippling bone disease.
Fluoride is a waste product from the aluminium industry which, as
well as mass-medicating the water and some milk in many areas of
Britain, is put into toothpaste. Most industrial toothpastes also
harbour the same toxic chemicals that are put into industrial
cleaners and cosmetic soaps: sodium laureth sulphate (SLS) and
propylene glycol. Both are skin irritants and can, in conjunction
with other substances, be carcinogenic.
Getting ahead
If you have children, it’s a safe bet that, at some stage, they’ll
pick up a dose of headlice. For many years, the treatment for
headlice and mites has involved a healthy dose of toxic
pesticides. The three types of pesticide used in preparations are
organophosphates, carbamate and pyrethroids. All are neurotoxins,
which have also been shown to interfere with the functioning of
the immune system. They can also cause endocrine disruption which
may not become apparent until a child is older. Carbaryl and the
pyrethroids are considered to be potential carcinogens.
Some lice shampoos also contain lindane which, when inhaled,
ingested or absorbed through the skin, causes vomiting and
diarrhoea. It can cause liver damage, stillbirths, birth defects
and cancer.
As if this wasn’t grim enough, the risk of childhood brain cancer
is associated with the use of domestic pesticides to control
termites, flea collars on pets, insecticides in the garden and
herbicides to control weeds. In the US, there are over 20,000
different household pesticide products, containing over 300 active
ingredients and up to 1,700 inert ingredients (unregulated
chemicals not listed on the label). In 1990 in America, nearly
18,000 pesticide-related hospital emergency admissions were
reported; 74 per cent of them were of children aged 14 and under.
A rose by any other name
Most women wear perfume at some stage in their lives. Perhaps if
they knew what was in it, and how it is produced, though, they
might be less keen to spray it on. The perfume industry, which
launches thousands of toxic chemicals onto an unsuspecting public,
is unregulated. In fact, the industry is protected by laws which
allow it to keep the contents of its fragrances secret. And
because no serious epidemiological work has been done on perfumes,
there is little science to support the view of some doctors and
chemists that perfumes are as damaging to health as tobacco smoke.
But suspicions are growing. More than 5,000 chemicals are used in
fragrance manufacture, 95 per cent of which are made from
petroleum. Most fragrances are produced from mixtures of up to 600
synthetic chemicals. The great majority of these substances have
never been tested for human toxicity. In the US, the National
Institute of Occupational Safety and Health reported that 884
toxic substances were identified in a list of perfume
constituents.
Many chemicals found in common perfumes and fragrances are
designated as ‘hazardous’, including methylene chloride, toluene,
methyl ethyl ketone, methyl isobutyl ketone, ethyl alcohol and
benzyl chloride. Many of these toxins are capable of causing
cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders and
allergic conditions. They can also cause psychological, emotional
and physiological changes in the human body. All fragrances are
able to breach the blood-brain barrier. When tested, a famous
American brand of perfume was found to have 41 carcinogenic
ingredients.
Many of the chemicals in perfumes are easily absorbed through the
skin and reach major organs, where they accumulate. The rise in
asthma cases in children has often been linked to fragrances and
there is considerable evidence that toluene, one of the
petrochemical ingredients of many perfumes, can cause asthma in
previously healthy people.
Scents are now worked into many products besides perfumes; they
are in air fresheners, deodorisers, cosmetic products, tissues,
washing powders, detergents and cat litter. Many of these scents
are produced from potentially carcinogenic chemicals.
Eat up your pesticides
Even if you never wash, never use perfumes or cosmetics and never
clean your house (you’d be a rare breed), you’ll need to eat.
Today, even this is a health hazard. The nature of food, how it is
produced, how it is sold, how we buy it and re-process it has
changed radically over the last half century. Today, the British
consume around a quarter of a million tons of food chemicals a
year. And despite endless official reassurances, the links between
this consumption and serious illness are becoming clearer by the
year.
The World Health Organisation reports that there are over 1,000
pesticides, in over 100,000 commercial formulations, being used
worldwide. In 1988, the UK chemical industry sold 23,504 tons of
pesticide active ingredients in Britain. Commercial chemical
fertiliser production went up from around 2 million tons in 1950,
to about 50 million tons in the 1980s. UK production of synthetic
pesticides increased by over 700 per cent from 1948 to 1982. By
1988, pesticides were applied to 97 per cent of all arable crops,
involving 22.4 million kg of active ingredients.
Most pesticides and herbicides have ingredients that affect the
nervous system of insects; they also affect humans. Some contain
dimpylate, which is better known as diazinon, an extremely toxic
chemical. Some contain chlorinate hydrocarbons, which are
carcinogenic and mutagenic. These chemicals are not necessarily
evacuated from the body with food waste but accumulate in fatty
tissue, where they can ultimately be responsible for degenerative
diseases.
In Britain in the 1980s, Peter Snell, a food technologist, looked
at 426 pesticides cleared in Britain by the regulatory authorities
and found that 68 were possible carcinogens, 61 were possible
mutagens, 35 had been linked with reproductive effects and a
further 93 were known irritants.
OP, OK?
Back in 1960, Dr Franklin Bicknell published a book called
Chemicals in Food and in Farm Produce: their Harmful Effects. This
small book was a straightforward account of the chemical sources
in food and their possible effects upon human health. Even then,
more than 40 years ago, Bicknell was writing:
‘The deliberate or accidental addition of possibly injurious
chemicals, or “non nutritive substances”, to food is not new, but
only in the last few hundred years have such additions become so
universal that it is now virtually impossible not to eat several
every day. The chemicals commonly present in food number many
hundreds, and each year new ones are introduced with an ever
increasing chemical complexity and with an unknown effect on the
body.’
Bicknell referred, long before they were commonly known about, to
organophosphorous (OP) compounds. Detailing how much pesticide
residue was found in the 1950s on sprayed fruit and vegetables, he
cited the 1957 report of a Plant Protection Conference.
Presentations at this conference suggested that Greek olive oil
had been found to contain up to 14mg of parathion per kilo, and
French wine up to 4mg per kilo. Bicknell then went on to discuss
how OPs damage the human body:
‘The symptoms of acute poisoning... are, contraction of the
pupils; headaches; photophobia; bronchial spasm; abdominal pain,
nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea; muscular weakness, twitchings,
convulsions, asphyxia and death... Other less obvious damage is
done, which may be more important from the point of view of covert
prolonged poisoning from food... I cannot overstress my belief
that in the future unexpected insidious damage to many organs will
be found to be due to protein metabolism, essential amino acid
metabolism, being deranged not only by insecticides but also by
other chemicals, like those used to treat flour, present in our
staple foods.’
Bicknell, who died in 1964, was a visionary whose vision went
unacclaimed by the government and its research establishments. It
was not until the 1990s, when sheep farmers began to complain
about the damaging effects of organophosphate sheep dip, that
scientists were again faced with the health problems they bring
about.
Organophosphate pesticides were compulsorily used on cattle in the
1980s and early 1990s, and are still being used with antibiotics
on salmon and trout farmed for food. Organic farmer Mark Purdey
has promulgated the view that organophosphate chemicals were
responsible for BSE.
Organophosphates, though, are only the most obviously toxic of all
the pesticides that we find in our foods. Organochlorines, also
found in pesticides, constitute a wide range of chemicals, many of
them carcinogenic, some of them damaging to the ozone layer and
most of them damaging to wild life. Organochlorines are very
stable and not water soluble, they can remain in the human body
and the environment for long periods. One of them is the notorious
DDT which, despite being banned in the USA and restricted in
Europe, is still, along with its breakdown products such as DDE,
being observed in the blood of European and US citizens. A great
deal of research indicates a relationship between chlorinated
chemicals, such as the 209 PCBs, banned in the USA, and breast
cancer, liver cancer and pancreatic cancer.
Globalising poison
Why is such chemical poisoning of our everyday food products
allowed? One reason it happens is the globalisation of food
production; this has meant that low cost, high energy food often
comes from the ‘developing’ world. The minimal regulation of
chemicals in Europe and America is not echoed in these new
producing countries; quite the opposite. Multinationals dump
dangerous pharmaceuticals and food production chemicals in massive
quantities on them. As the West imports increasing quantities of
food from the ‘developing’ world, consumers find their health
threatened by pesticides of which they imagined the ‘developed’
world was now free. What goes around comes around, it might be
said.
In December 2000, The UN Environmental Programme came to an
agreement to prohibit the production of 12 of the world’s worst
‘Persistent Organic Pollutants’ (POPS). Developing countries which
still use many of these deadly chemicals are to be funded by
developed countries to phase out their use and destroy
stockpiles. The participating countries have been given five years
to complete phasing-out. Eight of these 12 chemicals are
pesticides developed in America and Europe – some of which, like
DDT (Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), evangelists for the
chemical industry still swear were, anyway, always safe.
In 1990, the World Health Organisation estimated that there were a
minimum of 3 million acute, severe cases of pesticide poisoning –
not including chronic cases – and 20,000 unintentional deaths each
year, mostly in developing countries. A study by Jayaratnam, also
in 1990, estimated that 25 million third world agricultural
workers are acutely poisoned every year. In 1991, Greenpeace
commissioned a study which looked at the effects of pesticides in
three Mediterranean countries (Greece, Tunisia and Morocco). The
study found that in the region around Athens there were 500 acute
pesticide poisoning cases reported annually, which led to 30
deaths; 67 per cent of these incidents were caused by
organophosphate pesticides.
Americans put an estimated 62.7 million lb (28.5 million kg) of
pesticides and 278.5 million lb (126.6 million kg) of
antimicrobials (disinfectants) into their home each year. In the
mid 1990s, it was estimated that in America pesticides killed
about 10,400 people.
The rest of your dinner plate
Unfortunately, pesticides are not the only pollutants in foods. As
you sit down to dinner, reflect upon the fact that all processed
foods contain additives which are toxic in varying degrees. Over
200,000 tons of these additives are added each year to food in
Britain. Most processed foods also have quantities of hidden
sugars or salts in them, which can add up to considerable amounts.
Excess sugar interferes with insulin functions and essential fatty
acids functions. In some foods, of course, sweeteners are not
sugar but artificial sweeteners. It has been suggested that one
artificial sweetener, aspartame, used in many soft drinks might be
implicated in the formation of brain tumours [see Sweet Talking,
The Ecologist Vol 30 No 4].
Fats in food play an important role in health, and for many years,
different types of fats have been suspected of causing a range of
illnesses, including cancer. Hydrogenation changes essential fatty
acids, which are nutritional necessities, into ‘trans-fatty’
acids. These are found in margarine, shortenings and partially
hydrogenated vegetable oils. Trans-fatty acids are widespread in
food: in breads, cakes, biscuits and junk food. The absorption of
trans-fatty acids has been shown to raise the risk of
cardiovascular disease, increase abnormal sperm, correlate with
low birth weight in babies, interfere with liver enzymes necessary
for detoxification, increase cholesterol.
Fats also become toxic when they are fried. Research shows that
fried fats cause cancer and hardening of the arteries. Finally,
all oils which are not first pressed virgin olive oils have been
treated by a number of chemical processes which leave them not
only with a different colour and consistency but containing
toxins. They are degummed with a corrosive cleaner used to clean
clogged kitchen sinks, they are refined with acid, bleached, and
finally deodorised.
Taking stock
What conclusions can be drawn from this depressing array of facts?
Some seem clear: regulation of chemicals is not working. ‘Experts’
in various fields cannot apparently be trusted to protect the
public from potential poisons. Many of our new and resurgent
diseases increasingly appear to be a result of such laxity. If a
person’s home was once his castle, it will, while these issues
remain untackled, increasingly become a chemical dump.
Next month: Martin J Walker examines the health risks of everyday
life beyond the front door.
Martin J Walker is a writer and researcher, author of Dirty
Medicine and five other books. He is presently writing about
alternative cancer treatments in Britain since the 19th century.
Any information on this subject, or on Dr Franklin Bicknell, will
be gratefully received. Contact him at Slingshot Publications, BM
Box 8314, London WC1N 3XX. |
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