Food in the U.S. Is Still Tainted with Chemicals
That Were Banned Decades Ago
Thirty-eight years after DDT was banned, Americans still consume trace
amounts of the infamous insecticide every day, along with more than 20
other banned chemicals.
By Emily Elert
AlterNet, April 22, 2010
In a photograph from a 1947 newspaper advertisement, a smiling mother
leans over her baby's crib. The wall behind her is decorated with rows
of flowers and Disney characters. Above the photo, a headline reads
"Protect Your Children From Disease Carrying Insects."
The ad, for wallpaper impregnated with DDT, captures a moment of
historical ignorance, before the infamous insecticide nearly wiped out
many birds and turned up inside the bodies of virtually everyone on
Earth.
The story of DDT teaches a lesson about the past. But experts say it
also provides a glimpse into the future.
Thirty-eight years after it was banned, Americans still consume traces
of DDT and its metabolites every day, along with more than 20 other
banned chemicals. Residues of these legacy contaminants are ubiquitous
in U.S. food, particularly dairy products, meat and fish.
Their decades-long presence in the food supply underscores the dangers
of a new and widely used generation of chemicals with similar properties
and health risks. "They're manmade, and they're toxic, and they
bio-accumulate," said Arnold Schecter, a professor at the University of
Texas School of Public Health who has been studying human exposure to
chemicals for more than 25 years. "So the fact that they're still around
a long time after they've been banned isn't surprising."
Recent studies sketch a complex profile of legacy contaminants in U.S.
food - a profusion of chemicals in trace amounts, pervasive but uneven
across the food supply, occurring sometimes by themselves, but more
often in combination with others. Included are DDT and several
lesser-known organochlorine pesticides as well as industrial chemicals
such as polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which were used until the
late 1970s in electrical equipment.
This picture raises a host of equally complicated questions: Are small
amounts of these chemicals dangerous, by themselves or in mixtures? Why
are they still around and how are they getting into our food?
Think of these chemicals like sand in your shoes after a trip to the
beach. Despite our efforts to rid ourselves of it, we discover more
later - sometimes that evening, sometimes years later - when we put on
the same pair of summer shoes and feel the grains between our toes.
Like those grains of sand, many chemicals stick around. They belong to a
class called "persistent organic pollutants" or POPs - which take
decades to break down in sediment and soil and can travel globally on
wind and water, ending up in regions as remote as the Arctic. These
migratory POPs, when ingested, take up semi-permanent residence in the
fat tissue of living organisms. In animals, and sometimes in humans,
many of them can raise the risk of cancer or other diseases, alter
hormones, reduce fertility or disrupt brain development.
The good news is that DDT and other organochlorine pesticides, PCBs and
industrial byproducts called dioxins have declined significantly in food
and the environment since they were banned or restricted decades ago. A
few have dipped below detectable levels. "We don't expect the levels in
food or people to go down abruptly, we expect them to go down over time.
And that's what we're seeing," Schecter said.
Precise trends of chemicals in food are hard to identify because both
government and independent studies have focused on different foods in
different places at different times. However, levels in human breast
milk indicate that, by 1990, DDT had dropped to one-tenth of 1970
levels, according to a 1999 report in the International Journal of
Epidemiology. Similar trends exist for PCBs and dioxins. In most places,
POPs are a mere fraction of what they were.
Last year, as part of an ongoing study of POPs in the food supply,
Schecter and his colleagues collected and analyzed more than 300 samples
from supermarkets around Dallas, Texas. The samples were combined into
31 food types, such as yogurt, chicken and peanut butter, and tested for
old contaminants as well as newer ones. "Every food within this study
contained multiple pesticides," the authors wrote in a paper published
in February in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. The DDT
metabolite DDE was the most prevalent, occurring in 23 of the 31 foods
sampled.
COMMENTS:
Things you should know when you injest genetically modified foods and
the impact that a gene that is implanted into the food you consume could
have on a cellular level when incorporated into your body- GMO's are
banned in Europe. Monsanto is hidding the studies to make profits and
starving the rest of the world! They put local farmers out of business
if they don't us their Round up ready that is poison for us and wildlfe
and they don't give a shit! Anything goes at any cost to us and to
people around the world. Thank god Europe is smart enough to know.
"So the facts are as follows: We eat corn and corn derivatives that have
been genetically modified, which has been banned for being unsafe in
other countries -- the FDA has not done independent testing on the
health effects of at least three types of corn that we are eating, and
have instead taken Monsanto's word for the fact that they are safe.
Monsanto resisted releasing their data to independent researchers --
environmental groups had to sue to get it. Once it was released and
analyzed by one group of scientists, they wrote a dense study in a
non-peer reviewed journal and found statistically significant amounts of
organ failure in the rats in Monsanto's own study. Consumers often have
no way of knowing clearly if they are eating genetically modified food.
Tell your rep that you will not buy GMO's - did you know that Surpeme
Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, just reported on POV on PBS, used to
work for Monsanto as have the heads of the EPA under Bush and other
regulartory positions.
Monsanto is a company that is endangering our health, safety and welfare
and our entire food chain and has infultrated our agancies that are
supposed to protect us. Tell your rep you won't vote for them if they
accept bribes from special interests! 202-224- 31 21 - your life is at
stake.
Article originally published at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/146576/food_in_the_u.s._is_still_tainted_with_chemicals_that_were_banned_decades_ago
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