The Body Toxic

Nena Baker, the author of "The Body Toxic", is featured in an interview with Christine which can be found by searching the author's name or the title on the Resources page. I ordered the book from Amazon recently and the information in it was enough to confirm to me something I had suspected about the epidemic of pelvic organ prolapse. We know there are many factors which include posture and diet (physical development and lifestyle) and intrusive and misguided obstetrical and other medical practices. This book points out an additional factor, our chemical body burden. By this point in our history (about 150 years after the beginning of the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, chemical pharmaceuticals, etc.) we cannot deny that the saturation of chemicals in our environment (global, local, but especially our very personal environments) has caused all sorts of detrimental physical effects and diseases. (That the damage far outweighs the benefit is for another soapbox.)

There's one particularly interesting account involving a scientist named Tyrone Hayes and his study with frogs. From "The Body Toxic" (page 59), "The genes (of frogs) are turned on and off by hormones that are chemically the exact same hormones that circulate and regulate (human) physiology." The book goes on to explain better than I can here why frogs are used in these kinds of experiments and that they are kind of the canaries in our environment. (Do you know that canaries were lowered into mine shafts to detect lethal gases? If they died, the men didn't go into the mine.) Hayes also has an interesting personal history and philosophy that puts his integrity as a scientist above the norm. Google "atrazine" (a chemical commonly used in pesticides and herbicides) or his name to find his webpage and look into just one of the chemicals Ms. Baker focuses on in her book. "...Haye's discoveries added up to a holy-shit moment" (page 65). Atrazine is an aromatase stimulator and his studies showed that exposed male frogs had eggs in their gonads instead of sperm!!!!! Holy shit, indeed.

Other chapters feature information on phthalates, polybrominated diphenyl ethers, bisphenol A, perfluorinated chemicals, and how the EPA protects the financial interests of corporations manufacturing these rather than the health and safety of the public it is supposed to serve. In the last chapter American regulations are compared to the new reforms legislated by The European Parliament which places safety first.

I hope you read all the way to this point. The reason I wanted to know these things and to bring them forward to your attention is to say, Ladies, it's not our fault. Most of us have suffered self-recrimination and lowered self-esteem, despair and depression. It does stir indignation to realize that something has been done to you, but it seems better to me to know that I didn't do some mysterious and horrible thing to myself to bring this on besides willing and unwilling participation in the lifestyle.

I thought on reading the book that I hadn't used or been exposed to an inordinate amount of chemicals during my formative years, that it really didn't apply to me; but the first five years of my life were spent on a dairy farm where they raised their own corn for the cattle. Atrazine was in the pesticide especially designed for use on corn. That's just one example of the kind of exposure throughout our lives that we may not be aware of. (And it isn't proven that atrazine causes POP. Most of these studies are done with regard to males, but as the book says "hormones are hormones.") While it's not about blaming someone else, it is about not blaming myself and it's just good to know.