Just a thought...

tonyb

In light of the other threads on eating, foods, lifestyle, I got to thinking about the chemical industry. So much of it has made it's way into our food chain, some beneficial but alot not so much. Then I started thinking about how much we are exposed to chemicals in our daily lives, breathing it, absorbing it threw our skin.

You wake up in the morning from sleeping on chemical treated sheets and pillows, jump in the shower with chemically treated water, use soap,shampoos that are also treated. Dry yourself off on a treated towel. Then proceed to spread treated shaving cream on your face, use hair products that are also treated and get dressed for the day with treated clothes washed in a bunch of chemicals we call detergents. Then you may eat breakfast, on plates washed in chemicals, eat foods laden with additional chemicals, drink milk with added junk or coffee also with added chemicals. You grab your wallet, money, car keys, phone, and get in the car to go to work. All treated with chemicals. Then you step outside....pollutants, etc, you breath in. No matter the routine, everything we touch, eat, wear, sleep on or breath in some fashion has chemicals added to it.

My question is....how much of this gets absorbed by the skin and are there any studies depicting the results over time ? I know it's unavoidable in todays day and age and I'm sure there are studies to indicate most of these chemicals are safe....but so many....together ? Makes one wonder. I know this sounds on the extreme side of things, and you definately can't go back to an 1800's style of living, but isn't there a happy medium somewhere in all this?

Then I ask myself what chemicals would you do without ? I couldn't answer, aside from a few food related ones. Plastics is in everything, metals, pollutants, building materials, manufacturing,are all needing to be chemically treated somehow. How much of it is a necessity ? I really don't know. How much is added for B.S. reasons to line the pockets of chemical companies ? Don't know that either. What I do know is, you can't escape it and you really don't know what the heck all these chemicals are.

Just a random thought and maybe alot to do about nothing, but it does make you stop and think about it. Whats your take on it ?

mhardy6647

My take is that there is a risk/benefit assessment implicit in essentially everything one does in life. Unfortunately, most people have no concept of making these judgements - i.e., of the relative risks of our everyday activities. People worry about, e.g., exposure to GHz radiation from their cell phones, or 60 Hz from power lines, or thiomerosal persevatives in vaccines, or refined sugar... but the same people don't think twice about getting in their cars and driving to work in a busy metro corridor! The real risk to life of the latter is far, far greater than any of the former - but it's lost on most folks.

The benefit, of course, is earning one's living... but I don't think many folks actually look at it that way.

EDIT: Here's a relevant article on the topic - it's not the one I was looking for, but illustrative nonetheless:
http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-05/lifestyle/30116458_1_heart-disease-european-heart-journal-risk-factors

EDIT^2: Actually this one is cogent, too - a presentation I saw as a grad student at JHU by Bruce Ames (inventor of the "Ames test" used as a surrogate to predict carcinogenicity of chemicals) in the 1980s greatly impacted my thinking on this topic: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/1514/

We pay an immense price for "modern convenience" - most folks really wouldn't prefer to go back.

tonyb

mhardy6647 wrote: »

.

The benefit, of course, is earning one's living... but I don't think many folks actually look at it that way.

Here's a relevant article on the topic - it's not the one I was looking for, but illustrative nonetheless:
http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-05/lifestyle/30116458_1_heart-disease-european-heart-journal-risk-factors

We pay an immense price for "modern convenience" - most folks really wouldn't prefer to go back.

Oh, absolutely my good man. It's impossible to go back, but not impossible to adopt some good habits long forgotten. Which I think is very easy to do in todays fast society.

As a side note, we are also very quick to complain about all that ails us without ever stopping to think about the reasons.

Polkersince85

Your starting to sound like Candyliquor. On a side note, I don't want to drink water that nothing will grow in. Down at the Clarks Hill Dam lake, some areas around the high tension lines are getting about 3 volts AC when measured from the water to the docks. But power lines are good for you.

DMara

The average age in the 19th century was in the 30s, so to me the listed risks are too minimal to worry about, enjoying the present I am.

tonyb

Lol !! Please...no comparisons to CL. If I indeed sound like that, then my appologies to the forum. Seemed like a nice guy and all, but both oars were never in the water. :biggrin:

mhardy6647

DMara wrote: »

The average age in the 19th century was in the 30s, so to me the listed risks are too minimal to worry about, enjoying the present I am.

heh, the crux of the issue - unfortunately. Evolution has no use for us (so to speak) after we are incapable of reproduction; there's no selective pressure to lengthen life. Couple that with the fact that, for whatever reason, the lifespan of all multicellular organisms is finite. The situation's pretty hopeless.

Even 100 years ago, the most likely causes of death were accident, malnutrition, or infectious disease. In the "first world", most of those causes have been wiped out or considerably mitigated... but we've still all gotta die. Thus, with today's longer lifespan, we're seeing the truly awful "clean up" mechanisms operating to keep our lives finite - cancer, neurodegenerative disease, cardiovascular disease; stuff like that.

As I like to say: The thermodynamics is never in question, only the kinetics.

:-(

cfrizz

I certainly wouldn't want to go back to an 1800's mortality rate. People might not have been ingesting all these chemicals, but don't doubt that they weren't dying of the same disieses that still take us out today. They were also dying of disieses that thanks to modern medicine, & knowledge about sanitation, and what affects the body have pretty much been wiped out. Most didn't live to reach 70, now many go many years past that even with illnesses that would have killed them back then.

What I find more disturbing are these ignorant parents who have decided to not have their children get vaccinations and these kids are now getting sick with diseases that we pretty much eliminated in this country and infecting scores of other children to boot!

It should be mandatory regardless of ones beliefs, religion, or whatever other foolishness their stupidity thinks up, that if your children aren't vaccinated then they are not allowed into any school, and you will face penalties for neglecting their health & education. It used to be that this was the rule, not the exception, they need to go back to it.

All of us got our vaccinations, or had the illnesses therefore having the antibodies in our systems, we are still here alive and kicking decades later. If it didn't hurt us, it won't hurt the kids. But we are finding out increasingly that not getting these vaccinations are hurting these children.

cfrizz

Take a look at this chart to see how some of these disieases are making a come back.

http://apps.who.int/immunization_monitoring/en/globalsummary/timeseries/TSincidenceByCountry.cfm?C=USA

cnh

Throughout history and even in gathering and hunting societies there have been individuals who have lived relatively long lives if they had escaped the childhood diseases we have conquered and had adequate nutrition. In fact, a lot of gatherer/hunters did have adequate nutrition and did not live short brutish lives.

Is life generally longer today, sure, in Developed countries, mostly? But I do think tony has a point above. The amount of chemicals we are exposed to today has increased exponentially since I was a kid. More additives in food than ever before for one thing. If I am not mistaken there are very simple "tests" for toxicity in ones body that can be performed fairly easily with hair samples, etc. The tests show up various substances and their possible concentrations within ones body. What shows up in most "normal" human beings is usually somewhat scary!

Currently, we have an aging population that was born from the '20s to the late '30s early which probably grew up with fewer additives in their formative years. It will be interesting to see if Baby boomers lifespans will match or exceed their parents, and even more interesting to see what happens to the children of Baby boomers who have been exposed to even more toxic environments! I am not an actuary but I'm sure we will be seeing some different "patterns", spikes, very soon!

I am reminded in closing, and I can't remember what company it was but it was something like DOW or DUPONT...that once had this wonderfully ironic TV commercial whose main phrase was "Without chemicals, life would be impossible"! It was a direct response to the concerns that tony is addressing above! Dismissing them, of course!

gimpod

To the OP I don't want to really know, I'm liable to go all Howard Hues. Besides I rather look at it like Timothy Leary & Dow Chemical --

BETTER LIVING THROUGH MODERN CHEMISTRY

And besides if you really think about it, It's to late anyway and I'm sure it's the reason most of us feel like crap all the time.

mhardy6647

cfrizz wrote: »

...
What I find more disturbing are these ignorant parents who have decided to not have their children get vaccinations and these kids are now getting sick with diseases that we pretty much eliminated in this country and infecting scores of other children to boot!

It should be mandatory regardless of ones beliefs, religion, or whatever other foolishness their stupidity thinks up, that if your children aren't vaccinated then they are not allowed into any school, and you will face penalties for neglecting their health & education. It used to be that this was the rule, not the exception, they need to go back to it.

All of us got our vaccinations, or had the illnesses therefore having the antibodies in our systems, we are still here alive and kicking decades later. If it didn't hurt us, it won't hurt the kids. But we are finding out increasingly that not getting these vaccinations are hurting these children.

Darn tootin'... as an R&D guy in the biopharmaceutical industry (and knowing a teeny-weenie bit about public health) this is a pet peeve as mine. It is just incredibly (INCREDIBLY) selfish and foolish of parents not to have their children vaccinated. It is rather literally a crime against society.

As to life and chemicals - it is literally true, of course; we're made of chemical compounds; no magic dust, phlogiston, or soniferous aether - just proteins, nucleic acids, polysacchrides, lipids, and the small molecule building blocks and cofactors of the macromolecules.

DMara

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Darn tootin'... as an R&D guy in the biopharmaceutical industry (and knowing a teeny-weenie bit about public health) this is a pet peeve as mine. It is just incredibly (INCREDIBLY) selfish and foolish of parents not to have their children vaccinated. It is rather literally a crime against society.

As to life and chemicals - it is literally true, of course; we're made of chemical compounds; no magic dust, phlogiston, or soniferous aether - just proteins, nucleic acids, polysacchrides, lipids, and the small molecule building blocks and cofactors of the macromolecules.

How about the God particle? :biggrin:
It's just a dilemma. Almost everybody don't want to die early. However with that "selfishness" comes the inevitable threat of running out of supply for our demand since the population will increase exponentially day by day. We are bitching and whining just because there are way more competition out there in all facets of life. So I enjoy life by chucking most of the worries out. Just as Mark Twain said: "I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened," or the weather man said: "This s#!t life... we must chuck some things. We must chuck them... in this s#!it life." :biggrin:

pdxfj

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbfW_CMMe48

newrival

Lasareath wrote: »

Chemicals are good for you. Before all this chemical usage people lived 50 to 60 years, now they live 80+ years.

Thats ridiculous.

correlation does not prove causality. By your logic, then, TV must also be good for you. And fast food. It certainly must be, life expectancy has gone up since its introduction.

tonyb

lol !!

You guys kill me man.:cheesygrin:

Look, I'm certainly not advocating we ditch chemicals on a massive scale, but does anyone know long term effects of literally millions of different chemicals you or I never even heard of ? Seems somewhat odd to me that more studies aren't done or at least made public.

Now life spans, I want to say were probably shorter 200 years ago because of lack of medical knowlege/care. I'm pretty sure they died from clogged arteries, diabetes, heart disease, and all the other goodies that today we can prevent and/or cure. Vaccines were none existant back then too so thats a huge role in infant mortality rates. I can imagine if they had the same medical technology a few centuries ago we do today, coupled with the fresh foods they ate and work ethic most had, they'd probably live to be 120.

I also brought this subject up because lately I've been reading labels at the grocery store and damn if I don't know what all this crap is they are putting in the food. I walk around, look around, nothing floats my boat anymore at the grocery store. Gassed tomatoes.....say what ? Produce that never had a chance to begin with. Meats laden with chemicals, canned stuff....god knows whats really in there. Boxed stuff....hell man, there's more chemicals in that stuff than your medication. Stop the car infront of a farmers stand out in the middle of nowhere and I get a woody, excuse the language people. I guess because at an early age I was able to taste what fresh foods was like and somewhat rediscovered it a few years ago. Reminded me of what I was missing.

Are all these added chemicals really necessary though ? I'm having a hard time believing that. I know....feeding 300 million people is no easy task and logistics come into play along with seasonal foods, so shelf life is very important. My shelf life too, is just as important and I have a feeling not too many others care about that who are putting this stuff in our foods.

Polkersince85

We used to ride the school bus through cotton dust (DDT) with the cloud passing through the windows. Get to school and when walking up the stairs to the second floor, the kids would hit the insulated (asbestos) water pipes overhead causing "snow" to fall down on everybody. Used mecurochrome on all wounds. Took the Salk polio sugar cube vaccine. Lead paint everywhere and don't forget the leaded gasoline or mercury fillings. Not to mention what may have gone on in the 60s-70.

Who knows what's out there that we don't know about. I've made it 57 years but I guess it may catch up with me yet. BASF, Dow, Dupont, Monsanto and others make your life liveable. Ever read the side effects of modern drugs that keep us alive? Scary stuff!

GlennDog

tonyb wrote: »

I also brought this subject up because lately I've been reading labels at the grocery store and damn if I don't know what all this crap is they are putting in the food. I walk around, look around, nothing floats my boat anymore at the grocery store. Gassed tomatoes.....say what ? Produce that never had a chance to begin with. Meats laden with chemicals, canned stuff....god knows whats really in there. Boxed stuff....hell man, there's more chemicals in that stuff than your medication. Stop the car infront of a farmers stand out in the middle of nowhere and I get a woody, excuse the language people. I guess because at an early age I was able to taste what fresh foods was like and somewhat rediscovered it a few years ago. Reminded me of what I was missing.

Are all these added chemicals really necessary though ? I'm having a hard time believing that. I know....feeding 300 million people is no easy task and logistics come into play along with seasonal foods, so shelf life is very important. My shelf life too, is just as important and I have a feeling not too many others care about that who are putting this stuff in our foods.

Tony, I hear ya! . . . . It's next to impossible to do, in our day and age, But "understand" Jack LaLannes' Earth moving? quote "If man made it , don't eat it"

Check out mercola.com

peace, bro

G

DMara

tonyb wrote: »

lol !!

You guys kill me man.:cheesygrin:

Look, I'm certainly not advocating we ditch chemicals on a massive scale, but does anyone know long term effects of literally millions of different chemicals you or I never even heard of ? Seems somewhat odd to me that more studies aren't done or at least made public.

Now life spans, I want to say were probably shorter 200 years ago because of lack of medical knowlege/care. I'm pretty sure they died from clogged arteries, diabetes, heart disease, and all the other goodies that today we can prevent and/or cure. Vaccines were none existant back then too so thats a huge role in infant mortality rates. I can imagine if they had the same medical technology a few centuries ago we do today, coupled with the fresh foods they ate and work ethic most had, they'd probably live to be 120.

I also brought this subject up because lately I've been reading labels at the grocery store and damn if I don't know what all this crap is they are putting in the food. I walk around, look around, nothing floats my boat anymore at the grocery store. Gassed tomatoes.....say what ? Produce that never had a chance to begin with. Meats laden with chemicals, canned stuff....god knows whats really in there. Boxed stuff....hell man, there's more chemicals in that stuff than your medication. Stop the car infront of a farmers stand out in the middle of nowhere and I get a woody, excuse the language people. I guess because at an early age I was able to taste what fresh foods was like and somewhat rediscovered it a few years ago. Reminded me of what I was missing.

Are all these added chemicals really necessary though ? I'm having a hard time believing that. I know....feeding 300 million people is no easy task and logistics come into play along with seasonal foods, so shelf life is very important. My shelf life too, is just as important and I have a feeling not too many others care about that who are putting this stuff in our foods.

So how do you feed the whole world without chemical?
Let's see:
Year .................... Population
1800 .................... 1 billion
1900 .................... 1.8 billion
2000 .................... 6 billion
2012 .................... 7 billion
2100 .................... 16 billion

How do you produce enough cows, chickens, pigs, fish, etc. to keep that many people happy? Chemical is the solution, my friend :biggrin: Yes, for some picky people, there's organic stuff at a premium price. But of course, who knows what "organic" really means concerning chemical application :biggrin:

headrott

Your inital post remnds of the movie "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" with Lily Tomlin et. al. The idea of being innundated with chemicals all day every day was the theme of the movie. It reminds me of the song "Galaxy glue, Galaxie Glue....What would you do without Galaxy Glue"


<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/teLyY4W3sEE&quot; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

cnh

DMara wrote: »

So how do you feed the whole world without chemical?
Let's see:
Year .................... Population
1800 .................... 1 billion
1900 .................... 1.8 billion
2000 .................... 6 billion
2012 .................... 7 billion
2100 .................... 16 billion

How do you produce enough cows, chickens, pigs, fish, etc. to keep that many people happy? Chemical is the solution, my friend :biggrin: Yes, for some picky people, there's organic stuff at a premium price. But of course, who knows what "organic" really means concerning chemical application :biggrin:

Barring a Zombie Apocalypse, of course. Or a pandemic outbreak possibly related to human chemical activity or just nature's way of saying, we have to reduce the number of humans here? Either way I suspect a decline is around the corner, unfortunately.



cnh

mhardy6647

Sooner or later, more or less brutally, world population level will be self-regulating.

as some used to say in the 1970s: Nature... it's a mother....

DMara

mhardy6647 wrote: »

Sooner or later, more or less brutally, world population level will be self-regulating.

as some used to say in the 1970s: Nature... it's a mother....

Chemical not only can help feed us but also might assist in regulating world population level, sooner or later :biggrin:

tonyb

Jesus guys, lets not hit the extremes.

Perfect example of what I'm talking about just today in the news.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/08/14/chemical-in-many-antibacterial-soaps-linked-with-impaired-muscle-function/?test=latestnews

As far as food additives go, how about we get the boot off the farmers and give them some room to grow what people want, not what the big corporations want. Lots of small farmers are getting killed these days with regulations, taxes, seed, can't grow this,can't grow that crappola, EPA rules, etc.

I realize we need chemicals, lots of 'em, but is that open ended ? When is enough....enough ? When does the negatives start out weighing the positives.....and who decides that ?

mhardy6647

The "local food" movement is big, big, big in New England - we have a terrific farmer's market in our tiny Massachusetts town.
Mrs H & I grow a fair amount of food in a plot at our community garden*, as well - nothing tastes better than vegetables in which one has sweat equity (sort of like DIY hifi equipment)!

* Our own yard has grown too shady for successful gardening any more.

vcwatkins

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mhardy6647

heh, finally found a copy of the "relative risks" table (from a Boston Globe article, ca. July 2010) that puts, from my perspective, all of the little stuff in perspective.